God is imaginary part 1

[watermouse]

ORIGINAL FOR THIS WEBSITE: http://godisimaginary.com/

Proof #1 - Try praying
What would happen if we get down on our knees and pray to God in this
way:

Dear God, almighty, all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe,
we pray to you to cure every case of cancer on this planet tonight. We
pray in faith, knowing you will bless us as you describe in Matthew
7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew
18:19 and James 5:15-16. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
We pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this completely
heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will glorify God
and help millions of people in remarkable ways.
Will anything happen? No. Of course not.

This is very odd. Jesus makes specific promises in the Bible about how
prayer is supposed to work. Jesus says in many different places that
he and God will answer your prayers. And Christians believe Jesus --
according to this recent article, "54% of American adults believe the
Bible is literally true." In some areas of the country the number goes
as high as 75%.

If the Bible is literally true, then something is seriously amiss.
Simply look at the facts. In Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it
will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who
seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of
you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he
asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your
Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
If "every one who asks receives", then if we ask for cancer to be
cured, it should be cured. Right? If "our Father who is in heaven
gives good things to those who ask him", then if we ask him to cure
cancer, he should cure it. Right? And yet nothing happens.
In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says:

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will
move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
If "nothing will be impossible to you", then if we ask to cure cancer
tonight, cancer should disappear. Right? Yet nothing happens. Note
that if we take the Bible less-than-literally here, the statement
"nothing will be impossible to you" becomes "lots of things will be
impossible to you," and that would mean that Jesus is lying.
In Matthew 21:21:

I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can
you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this
mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If
you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
If "you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer", then if we ask
to cure cancer tonight, cancer should dissappear. Right? Yet nothing
happens. Note again that there is not a non-literal way to interpret
"you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer", unless you replace
"whatever" with "nothing" or "little."
The message is reiterated Mark 11:24:

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you
have received it, and it will be yours.
If God says, "believe that you have received it, and it will be
yours," and if we believe in God and his power, then what should
happen if we pray to cure cancer tonight? It should be cured. Either
that, or God is lying.
In John chapter 14, verses 12 through 14, Jesus tells all of us just
how easy prayer can be:

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have
been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am
going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so
that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for
anything in my name, and I will do it." [ref]
Look at how direct this statement is: "You may ask me for anything in
my name, and I will do it." This is the "Son of God" speaking. Have we
taken him "too literally?" No. This is a simple, unambiguous
statement. Have we taken his statement "out of context?" No - Jesus
uses the word anyone. Yet Jesus' statement is obviously false. Because
when we ask God to cure cancer tonight, nothing happens.
We see the same thing over and over again...

In Matthew 18:19 Jesus says:

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they
ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or
three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
In James 5:15-16 the Bible says:
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the
Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so
that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and
effective.
In Mark 9:23:
All things are possible to him who believes.
In Luke 1:37:
For with God nothing will be impossible.
Nothing could be simpler or clearer than Jesus' promises about prayer
in the Bible. Yet, when we pray to eliminate cancer, nothing happens.
And keep in mind that this is Jesus talking here. These are not the
words of human beings. These are not the words of "inspired" human
beings. These are supposedly the words of God himself, incarnated in a
human body. Jesus is supposed to be a perfect, sinless being. And yet,
it is obvious that Jesus is lying. What Jesus says is clearly
incorrect.


Jesus is supposed to be God. God is supposed to be perfect.
When Jesus speaks, he should speak the truth.
Yet when we look at what Jesus says about prayer,
he is clearly lying.
If you would like additional proof, gather a million faithful
believers together into a giant prayer circle. Have them all pray
together in Jesus' name that God cures every case of cancer on the
planet tomorrow. Pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this
completely heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will
glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways. Now, we
certainly have two or more people gathered together, and they have
asked in Jesus' name, and we have not one but a million faithful
believers who, by definition, have faith and believe. We have
fulfilled every one of Jesus' requirements.

Will Jesus answer the prayer now? Of course not. Your prayer will go
unanswered, in direct defiance to Jesus' promises in the Bible. In
fact, if you pray for anything that is impossible, your prayer will
always go unanswered.

If you are an intelligent, rational human being, all of the examples
mentioned above show you that the God of the Bible is imaginary. What
Jesus says about prayer in the Bible clearly is not true.

In fact, we have ample scientific evidence to demonstrate that the
belief in prayer is nothing but pure superstition, as shown in the
next proof...









Proof #2 - Statistically analyze prayer
The fact is, God never answers any prayers. The entire idea that "God
answers prayers" is an illusion created by human imagination.

How do we know that "answered prayers" are illusions? We simply
perform scientific experiments. We ask a group of believers to pray
for something and then we watch what happens. What we find, whenever
we test the efficacy of prayer scientifically, is that prayer has zero
effect:

It does not matter who prays.
It does not matter if we pray to God, Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, Ra or any
other human god.
It does not matter what we pray about.
If we perform scientific, double-blind tests on prayer, and if the
prayers involve something concrete and measurable (for example,
healing people with cancer), we know that there is zero effect from
prayer. Every single "answered prayer" is nothing more than a
coincidence. Both scientific experiments and your everyday
observations of the world show this to be the case every single time.
For example, this article says:

One of the most scientifically rigorous studies yet, published earlier
this month, found that the prayers of a distant congregation did not
reduce the major complications or death rate in patients hospitalized
for heart treatments.
And:
A review of 17 past studies of ''distant healing," published in 2003
by a British researcher, found no significant effect for prayer or
other healing methods.
This article from March, 2006 discusses the fact that the same
conclusion was reached in another study:

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people
pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their
recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a
slightly higher rate of complications.
In this article we find an amazing quote where theologians and
religious leaders declare that prayer has no actual effect:
Religious leaders will breathe a sigh of relief at the news that so-
called intercessory prayer is medically ineffective. In a large and
much touted scientific study, one group of patients was told that
strangers would pray for them, a second group was told strangers might
or might not pray for them, and a third group was not prayed for at
all. The $2.4 million study found that the strangers' prayers did not
help patients' recovery.
This is a remarkable example of "positive spin" -- religious leaders
are "breathing a sigh of relief" because prayer has been shown to be
meaningless. The fact that prayer is a total waste of time does not
matter to them. It does not matter that all of Jesus' promises about
prayer in the Bible have been proven completely false.
A peer-reviewed scientific study published in 2001 did indicate that
prayer works. According to this article:

"On October 2, 2001, the New York Times reported that researchers at
prestigious Columbia University Medical Center in New York had
discovered something quite extraordinary. Using virtually foolproof
scientific methods the researchers had demonstrated that infertile
women who were prayed for by Christian prayer groups became pregnant
twice as often as those who did not have people praying for them. The
study was published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. Even the
researchers were shocked. The study's results could only be described
as miraculous."
This study was later proven to be completely fraudulent. However,
everyone who cut out the original article in the NYTimes and posted it
on their refrigerators still has that article as "proof" that prayer
works.
This article entitled A prayer before dying uncovers another case
where a "scientific study" of prayer is unmasked as fraudulent.

It's not just prayer that is ineffective. Not even a hopeful attitude
helps. According to this article:

A positive attitude does not improve the chances of surviving cancer
and doctors who encourage patients to keep up hope may be burdening
them, according to the results of research released Monday.
The dictionary defines the word "superstition" in this way:

An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not
logically related to a course of events influences its outcome. [ref]
The belief in prayer is a superstition. It has been proven
scientifically over and over again. When a prayer appears to be
answered, it is a coincidence. Quite simply, prayer has absolutely no
effect on the outcome of any event. The "power of prayer" is actually
"the power of coincidence."
Prayer does not work because God is completely imaginary.

<<< Proof #1 | Home | Go to Proof #3 >>>
Understanding the Rationalizations
You can find many believers who will say, "The reason why scientific
experiments fail to detect God is because God must remain hidden. He
does not answer prayers if he knows that he will be detected."

In order to see the truth, you need to accept that this explanation is
silly. If God must remain hidden, then he cannot answer any prayers.
Any "answered prayer" would expose God.

The whole notion that "God" must remain "hidden" is a total cross-
threading of religious doctrine. On the one hand, believers will say
that "God wrote the Bible, God incarnated himself and died on the
cross for us, and God answers millions of prayers on earth every day."
Then in the next breath they will say, "God must remain hidden." God
obviously cannot "remain hidden" and "incarnate himself." These two
items are mutually exclusive. Therefore, the explanation that "God
must remain hidden" is impossible. As soon as you accept how
impossible it is, you can begin to see see that God is imaginary.

In order to see the truth, you need to accept the fact that the
scientific evidence is accurate and irrefutable. We have
scientifically proven that God does not answer any prayers on earth.
Every single "answered prayer" is nothing more than a coincidence.

We can see reality by looking at a simple example. Imagine that the
rate of remission for some particularly nasty type of cancer is 5%.
That means that if 20 people get this type of cancer, it is almost
always fatal. Only one in twenty of the people who get the disease
will survive. Knowing this, you can see what happens if we actually
analyze prayer:

20 believers contract the disease
All of them have read James 5:15, so all of them pray.
19 of them die
The one who lives proclaims, "I prayed to the Lord and the Lord
answered my prayers! My disease is cured! It is a miracle! I KNEW God
would answer my prayers!"
You never hear about the 19 who died. No one ever writes about them in
a magazine. "Person prays, then dies" is not a great headline. And
since they are dead, you will never hear from any of these people.
Therefore, if you don't look at all the facts around the "answered
prayer," and you only hear about the one out of twenty prayers that
succeed, it appears that prayer is successful.
The fact is, believers who pray die from this disease at exactly the
same rate as people who do not.
We can see the reality of this situation simply by opening our eyes
and looking at the data. But we do have to open our eyes -- We have to
look at both the successes AND the failures of prayer to see the
reality of our world. When we take a scientific approach and we do
look at both sides, we see what is really happening. God does not
answer any prayers because God is imaginary.









Proof #3 - Look at historical gods
The belief in "god" seems to be ubiquitous through the ages.

We know, for example, that the ancient Egyptians believed in their
gods so fervently that they built massive structures like the Great
Pyramid -- still today one of the largest and most enduring human
constructions ever created. Despite that fervor, however, we know with
complete certainty today that the Egyptian gods were imaginary. We
don't build pyramids anymore and we do not mummify our leaders.

More recently we know that tens of millions of Romans worshiped
Jupiter and his friends, and to them they built magnificent temples.
The ruins of these temples are popular tourist attractions even today.
Yet we know with complete certainty that these gods were imaginary
because no one worships Zeus any more.

Much more recently, we know that the Aztec civilization believed in
their gods so intensely that they constructed huge temples and
pyramids. In addition, Aztecs were so zealous that they were
sacrificing hundreds of human beings to their gods as recently as the
16th century. Despite the intensity, however, we know today that these
gods were completely imaginary. The Aztecs were insane to be murdering
people for their gods. Killing a person has no effect on rainfall or
anything else. We all know that. If the Aztec gods were real, we would
still be offering sacrifices to them.

Today's "God" is just as imaginary as were these historical gods. The
fact that millions of people worship a god is meaningless.

The "God" and the "Jesus" that Christians worship today are actually
amalgams formed out of ancient pagan gods. The idea of a "virgin
birth", "burial in a rock tomb", "resurrection after 3 days" and
"eating of body and drinking of blood" had nothing to do with Jesus.
All of the rituals in Christianity are completely man-made.
Christianity is a snow ball that rolled over a dozen pagan religions.
As the snowball grew, it freely attached pagan rituals in order to be
more palatable to converts. You can find accounts like these in
popular literature:

"The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable.
Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of
Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint
for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And
virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual - the miter, the
altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of "God-eating" - were
taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions."
"Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian God Mithras -
called the Son of God and the Light of the World - was born on
December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in
three days. By the way, December 25 is also the birthday or Osiris,
Adonis, and Dionysus. The newborn Krishna was presented with gold,
frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity's weekly holy day was
stolen from the pagans."
It is extremely hard for a Christian believer to process this data,
but nonetheless it is true. All of the "sacred rituals" of
Christianity, and all of Christianity's core beliefs (virgin birth,
resurrection, etc.) come straight from pagan religions that were
popular around the time of Jesus. Articles like this and this can help
you learn more. Once you understand the fundamental truth of
Christianity's origins, the silliness of this whole thing becomes
apparent.
Obviously the pagan believers, from whom Christianity derived its
myths, worshipped gods that were imaginary. And thus our "God" today
is just an extension of these imaginary forerunners. All human gods
are imaginary.

<<< Proof #2 | Home | Go to Proof #4 >>>
Understanding the Rationalizations
A Christian will often rationalize this situation by saying, "Yes, the
Egyptians and the Romans worshipped false Gods, but Christianity is
real. Just look at the billions of people who believe in Jesus
Christ." This strength-in-numbers rationalization may feel comforting,
but it is meaningless. The fact that millions of people worship a god
is meaningless.

It was once the case that most people believed the world to be flat.
Widespread belief did not change the fact that the world is a sphere.
The scientific and observational evidence that we have available today
is undeniable -- the world is a sphere.

All scientific evidence shows that God is imaginary. So does all
historical evidence. This leads any rational person to conclude that
Christian beliefs are pure mythology. Christianity is just like every
other mythology that mankind has dreamed up through the ages.










Proof #4 - Think about science
Notice what happens when anyone is "miraculously cured". A person is
sick, the person prays (or a prayer circle prays for the person) and
the person is cured. A religious person looks at it and says, "God
performed a miracle because of prayer!" That is the end of it.

A scientist looks at it in a very different way. A scientist looks at
it and says, "Prayer had nothing to do with it - there is a natural
cause for what we see here. If we understand the natural cause, then
we can heal many more people suffering from the same condition."

In other words, it is only by assuming that God is imaginary that
science can proceed.

You can see a direct example of science at work in this article:

Fleming had so much going on in his lab that it was often in a jumble.
This disorder proved very fortunate. In 1928, he was straightening up
a pile of Petri dishes where he had been growing bacteria, but which
had been piled in the sink. He opened each one and examined it before
tossing it into the cleaning solution. One made him stop and say,
"That's funny."
Some mold was growing on one of the dishes... not too unusual, but all
around the mold, the staph bacteria had been killed... very unusual.
He took a sample of the mold. He found that it was from the
penicillium family, later specified as Penicillium notatum. Fleming
presented his findings in 1929, but they raised little interest. He
published a report on penicillin and its potential uses in the British
Journal of Experimental Pathology.

Fleming worked with the mold for some time, but refining and growing
it was a difficult process better suited to a chemist. The work was
taken over by a team of chemists and mold specialists, but was cut
short when several of them died or relocated.

In 1935, Australian Howard Florey was appointed professor of pathology
at Oxford University where he headed up a laboratory. This was a
daunting task in an economically depressed time, and seeking funding
for the researchers and work he hoped to do took much of his time. One
researcher he hired soon after his arrival was Ernst Chain. Chain was
paid to do cancer research, and work that spilled over into Florey's
own interest and work on lysozyme. Chain became quite enthusiastic
about the search for antibacterial chemicals. In looking back at old
articles written about lysozyme, including those by Fleming in the
1920s, he happened across Fleming's paper on penicillin. "I had come
across this paper early in 1938 and on reading it I immediately became
interested," he wrote.

The Oxford team, as Florey's researchers have become known, began
experimenting with the penicillin mold. They took it one step further
than Fleming did: they did not just try it topically or in a petri
dish, but injected it in live mice. With controlled experimentation,
they found it cured mice with bacterial infections. They went on to
try it on a few human subjects and saw amazing results. By now it was
1941, and England was at war. As Fleming first foresaw, the wartime
need for an antibacterial was great, but resources were tight and
penicillin still very experimental. Florey had connections at the
Rockefeller Foundation in the United States, however, and it funded
further research.

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.
All of science works in this way. Only by assuming that God is
imaginary and prayer is meaningless can science proceed.

The reason why scientists must assume that God is imaginary in order
for the scientific method to work is because God is imaginary.












Proof #5 - Read the Bible
Imagine that we are good friends. One day we are talking:


Watch the video
Me: Wow, you will not believe this new book I've been reading!
You: What's it about?

Me: It is a manual for living a better life. It is also a guide to
creating a better society for ourselves and our children. It has
changed my life!

You: That sounds like an important book. Who wrote it?

Me: The author is supposed to be the smartest person in the universe.

You: That's amazing -- if the author is the smartest person in the
universe, the book must be absolutely brilliant. I can't wait to see
it. Do you have a copy with you?

Me: Absolutely! I carry it with me everywhere I go! Here, have a look
for yourself...

You open the book to a random page, and you find this:
Any of the people of Israel, or of the aliens who reside in Israel,
who give any of their offspring to Molech shall be put to death; the
people of the land shall stone them to death. I myself will set my
face against them, and will cut them off from the people, because they
have given of their offspring to Molech, defiling my sanctuary and
profaning my holy name. And if the people of the land should ever
close their eyes to them, when they give of their offspring to Molech,
and do not put them to death, I myself will set my face against them
and against their family, and will cut them off from among their
people, them and all who follow them in prostituting themselves to
Molech.
If any turn to mediums and wizards, prostituting themselves to them, I
will set my face against them, and will cut them off from the people.
Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am the Lord your
God. Keep my statutes, and observe them; I am the Lord; I sanctify
you. All who curse father or mother shall be put to death; having
cursed father or mother, their blood is upon them.

If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the
adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. The man who lies
with his father’s wife has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of
them shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. If a man lies
with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death; they
have committed perversion; their blood is upon them. If a man lies
with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an
abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
[Leviticus, chapter 20]

You are not quite sure what to say. You look at me for a moment.
You: I thought you said that this is written by the most intelligent
person in the universe. If we are going to follow what this author
says, we have to kill half the people in America. We are supposed to
kill everyone who has cursed his father or mother, everyone who has
committed adultery, and every homosexual.
Me: Well, that's in the old testament, you see. The book is really two
books, and the "old" part of the book doesn't really apply.

You: Are you saying that the smartest person in the universe once
wanted us to kill every adulterer and homosexual, but then changed his
mind? That somehow makes it better? If the "old part" no longer
applies, then why did you hand it to me when I asked to see the book?

Me: Well, parts of it do apply.

You: Didn't you just tell me that it doesn't apply?

You open the book to another random page and you find this:
When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years, but in
the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes
in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his
wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she
bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her
master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave declares, ‘I love
my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person’,
then his master shall bring him before God. He shall be brought to the
door or the doorpost; and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl;
and he shall serve him for life.
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the
male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who designated her
for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right
to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt unfairly with her.
If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a
daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish
the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife. And if he
does not do these three things for her, she shall go out without debt,
without payment of money.

Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death. If it was not
premeditated, but came about by an act of God, then I will appoint for
you a place to which the killer may flee. But if someone wilfully
attacks and kills another by treachery, you shall take the killer from
my altar for execution.

Whoever strikes father or mother shall be put to death.

Whoever kidnaps a person, whether that person has been sold or is
still held in possession, shall be put to death. Whoever curses father
or mother shall be put to death.

When individuals quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or
fist so that the injured party, though not dead, is confined to bed,
but recovers and walks around outside with the help of a staff, then
the assailant shall be free of liability, except to pay for the loss
of time, and to arrange for full recovery.

When a slave-owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the
slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave
survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is
the owner’s property. [Exodus, chapter 21]

Again, you are dumfounded. Here the author of the book is advocating
slavery, the branding of slaves, and the wholesale beating of slaves.
You are not quite sure what to say. You look at me for a moment.
You: You have to be kidding me. Here the "smartest person in the
universe" is telling us that slavery is OK and that we are free to
beat our slaves.

Watch the video
You open the book to another random page and you find this:
I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up
holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress
themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their
hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with
good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let
a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to
teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam
was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman
was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through
childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness,
with modesty. [1 Timothy, chapter 2]
You are nearly speechless. But you manage to find your voice.
You: Is this some kind of joke? "I permit no woman to teach or to have
authority over a man." That is totally sexist! In America, there are
millions of female teachers and we have women throughout our corporate
and govenment hierarchies. No intelligent person believes that women
should be silenced.
As you page through the book further you find that it is totally
sexist from beginning to end.
You keep opening the book to random pages, and nearly everything you
find is utter nonsense. Either it is meaningless, completely
irrelevant, disgusting or downright wrong.

If you are a scientist it is even worse, and it starts with the very
first line:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...
That's not true. In the beginning a natural event created the universe
as we know it, and the earth did not form until billions of years
later. The creation story in Genesis is completely wrong. Simply read
Genesis and you can see it. For example, the Bible says that light and
darkness are created after the water but before the sun. Everyone
knows that the sun came first, then the planet and its rotation (which
is what causes light and darkness to occur on a daily basis) and then
the water, and this all happened over million of years. There are many
other problems with the Bible:
Man did not come from a handful of dust through some mythological
being. Man evolved from other species like every other living thing
has for hundreds of millions of years.
The Bible talks about a world-wide flood that covered earth in 5.5
miles of water and killed everything, yet we know it never happened.
That is clear from the archeolgical record.
There was no tower of Babel where God confounded the languages of
mankind.
The list goes on and on. The Bible is nonsense in a thousand different
scientific ways.
Ask yourself this simple question: Why, when you read the Bible, are
you not left in awe? Why doesn't a book written by an omniscient being
leave you with a sense of wonder and amazement? If you are reading a
book written by the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of
the universe, wouldn't you expect to be stunned by the brilliance, the
clarity and the wisdom of the author? Would you not expect each new
page to intoxicate you with its incredible prose and its spectacular
insight? Wouldn't you expect the author to tell us things that
scientists have not been able to discover yet?

Yet, when we open the Bible and actually read it, we find it is
nothing like that at all. Instead of leaving us in awe, it leaves us
dumbfounded by all of the nonsense and backwardness that it contains.
If you read what the Bible actually says, you find that the Bible is
ridiculous. The examples shown above barely scratch the surface of the
Bible's numerous problems. If we are honest with ourselves, it is
obvious that an "all-knowing" God had absolutely nothing to do with
this book.

The reason why the Bible contains so much nonsense is because God is
imaginary. The Bible is a book written thousands of years ago by
primitive men. A book that advocates senseless murder, slavery and the
oppression of women has no place in our society today.











Proof #6 - Ponder God's Plan
"God's plan" is the way that Christians traditionally explain things
like amputations, cancer, hurricanes and car accidents. For example,
if a Christian dies a painful and tragic death because of cancer, she
dies as part of God's plan. Her death has a purpose. God called her
home for a reason. Even if something bad happens to a Christian, it is
actually good because it is part of God's plan.

You can see how pervasive "God's plan" is by looking in Christian
inspirational literature. For example, if we look in the book A
Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, we find this remarkable paragraph
in Chapter 2:

Because God made you for a reason, he also decided when you would be
born and how long you would live. He planned the days of your life in
advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and death. The Bible
says, "You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life
before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your
book!" [Psalm 139:16]
There is also this:
Regardless of the circumstances of your birth or who your parents are,
God had a plan in creating you.
Under this view of the universe, God plans everything.
Take a moment and think about what Rick Warren said. Rick said, "He
planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time of
your birth and death." Let's examine one simple implication of this
statement. What this means is that God has pre-planned every abortion
that has taken place on our planet.

If the concept of "God's plan" is true, you can first of all see that
God wants us to be aborting children. Every single abortion is planned
by God, so God must be doing it for a reason. Second, you can see that
both the mother who requests the abortion and the doctor who performs
it are blameless. Since it is God who planned the abortion of the
child (God chose the "exact time" of the death, according to Rick
Warren), the mother and doctor are simply puppets who are fulfilling
God's plan, are they not? What about all the Christians who are
fighting against abortion? If abortion is part of God's plan, why are
they fighting it? God is the all-powerful ruler of the universe, and
his plan is for more than a million children a year to die in the
United States through abortion. [ref] If God's plan is true, then each
one of those abortions was meticulously planned by God.

If God does not intend for us to perform abortions, is Rick Warren
then wrong that God has a plan? If God has a plan, is he not the
direct cause of every abortion? Simply think it through, and you will
begin to see the problems in Rick's proposition.

Think about Adolph Hitler. He was evil incarnate, and Hitler is well
known for the atrocious things he did. What I would like you to do
right now is to consider this statement: "Hitler is part of God's
Plan." Think about what Rick said:

He planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time
of your birth and death. The Bible says, "You saw me before I was born
and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day
was recorded in your book!" [Psalm 139:16]
Rick also says:
God never does anything accidentally, and he never makes mistakes. He
has a reason for everything he creates. Every plant and every animal
was planned by God, and every person was designed with a purpose in
mind.
If God has a divine plan for each of us, then he had a divine plan for
Hitler too. It is when you stop to think about it deeply that the
contradictions hit you.
Now let's imagine that you say a prayer in this sort of universe. What
difference does it make? God has his plan, and that plan is running
down its track like a freight train. If God has a plan, then everyone
who died in the Holocaust died for a reason. They had to die, and each
death had meaning. Therefore, Holocaust victims could pray all day,
and they would still die. The idea of a "plan" makes the idea of a
"prayer-answering relationship with God" a contradiction, doesn't it?
Yet Christians seem to attach themselves to both ideas, despite the
irresolvable problem the two ideas create.

Think about what God's plan means for you personally. If the plan
happens to say that you will get hit by a bus tomorrow, or that
terrorists will blow you up, or that you will be shot in the head four
times, then that's what will happen. It would be the same with any
disease. If you contract cancer this afternoon and die three months
later, that is God's plan for you. Praying to cure the cancer is a
waste. God plans for you to die, so you will die. He has pre-
programmed the exact time of your death. There is nothing you can do
to change the plan -- no amount of prayer will help -- because your
death will have meaning and your death will cause side-effects that
are also part of the plan.

Who will you marry? You actually have no choice in the matter. God has
pre-planned your wedding in minute detail. Rick Warren says, "God knew
that those two individuals [your parents] possessed exactly the right
genetic makeup to create the custom 'you' that he had in mind. They
had the DNA God wanted to make you." Therefore, your spouse was pre-
chosen by God for you so that you would create the children who are a
part of his plan. You also have no choice in the number of children
you will have -- God has pre-planned their births.

In addition, this sort of universe means that Hitler is blameless.
Hitler was not "evil," because Hitler had no free will at all. Hitler
was simply an actor forced to play his role in God's plan. God planned
for millions of people to die in the Holocaust -- he planned their
deaths in exact detail according to Rick Warren. Hitler had to kill
those people. Hitler was God's puppet in making that those millions of
deaths happen right on schedule.

In the same way then, every murderer is blameless. Since God has
planned each of our deaths in exact detail, murderers are actually
essential to God's plan. Why do we punish them? We should be rewarding
them for doing their God-planned duty. What if you get raped tomorrow
and get pregnant? God did that because he planned the exact time of
that child's birth and death. God actually pre-planned your rape, and
the rapist was God's puppet. Rather than hating the rapist, we should
celebrate God's plan.

Do you believe that murderers and rapists should be rewarded? Do you
believe that Hitler was sent by God to kill millions of people in the
Holocaust? Do you believe that God is the direct cause of every
abortion on this planet? Do you believe that you have no choice in
your spouse or the number of children you have? Probably not. But that
is what you are saying when you state that Hitler or cancer or
anything else is part of "God's plan."

If you think about it as an intelligent person, you will realize that
the statement "It is part of God's plan" is one of those meaningless
palliatives. When you sit down and think it through using your common
sense, the statement makes no sense. That lack of sense shows us how
imaginary God is.
























Proof #7 - Understanding religious delusion
Let's imagine that I tell you the following story:

There is a man who lives at the North Pole.
He lives there with his wife and a bunch of elves.
During the year, he and the elves build toys.
Then, on Christmas Eve, he loads up a sack with all the toys.
He puts the sack in his sleigh.
He hitches up eight (or possibly nine) flying reindeer.
He then flies from house to house, landing on the rooftops of each
one.
He gets out with his sack and climbs down the chimney.
He leaves toys for the children of the household.
He climbs back up the chimney, gets back in his sleigh, and flies to
the next house.
He does this all around the world in one night.
Then he flies back to the North Pole to repeat the cycle next year.
This, of course, is the story of Santa Claus.
But let's say that I am an adult, and I am your friend, and I reveal
to you that I believe that this story is true. I believe it with all
my heart. And I try to talk about it with you and convert you to
believe it as I do.

What would you think of me? You would think that I am delusional, and
rightly so.

Why do you think that I am delusional? It is because you know that
Santa is imaginary. The story is a total fairy tale. No matter how
much I talk to you about Santa, you are not going to believe that
Santa is real. Flying reindeer, for example, are make-believe. The
dictionary defines delusion as, "A false belief strongly held in spite
of invalidating evidence." That definition fits perfectly.

Since you are my friend, you might try to help me realize that my
belief in Santa is a delusion. The way that you would try to do that
is by asking me some questions. For example, you might say to me:

"But how can the sleigh carry enough toys for everyone in the world?"
I say to you that the sleigh is magical. It has the ability to do this
intrinsically.
"How does Santa get into houses and apartments that don't have
chimneys?" I say that Santa can make chimneys appear, as shown to all
of us in the movie The Santa Clause.
"How does Santa get down the chimney if there's a fire in the
fireplace?" I say that Santa has a special flame-resistant suit, and
it cleans itself too.
"Why doesn't the security system detect Santa?" Santa is invisible to
security systems.
"How can Santa travel fast enough to visit every child in one night?"
Santa is timeless.
"How can Santa know whether every child has been bad or good?" Santa
is omniscient.
"Why are the toys distributed so unevenly? Why does Santa deliver more
toys to rich kids, even if they are bad, than he ever gives to poor
kids?" There is no way for us to understand the mysteries of Santa
because we are mere mortals, but Santa has his reasons. For example,
perhaps poor children would be unable to handle a flood of expensive
electronic toys. How would they afford the batteries? So Santa spares
them this burden.
These are all quite logical questions that you have asked. I have
answered all of them for you. I am wondering why you can't see what I
see, and you are wondering how I can be so insane.
Why didn't my answers satisfy you? Why do you still know that I am
delusional? It is because my answers have done nothing but confirm
your assessment. My answers are ridiculous. In order to answer your
questions, I invented, completely out of thin air, a magical sleigh, a
magical self-cleaning suit, magical chimneys, "timelessness" and
magical invisibility. You don't believe my answers because you know
that I am making this stuff up. The invalidating evidence is
voluminous.

Now let me show you another example...

Another Example

Imagine that I tell you the following story:

I was in my room one night.
Suddenly, my room became exceedingly bright.
Next thing I know there is an angel in my room.
He tells me an amazing story.
He says that there is a set of ancient golden plates buried in the
side of a hill in New York.
On them are the books of a lost race of Jewish people who inhabited
North America.
These plates bear inscriptions in the foreign language of these
people.
Eventually the angel leads me to the plates and lets me take them
home.
Even though the plates are in a foreign language, the angel helps me
to decipher and translate them.
Then the plates are taken up into heaven, never to be seen again.
I have the book that I translated from the plates. It tells of amazing
things -- an entire civilization of Jewish people living here in the
United States 2,000 years ago.
And the resurrected Jesus came and visited these people!
I also showed the golden plates to a number of real people who are my
eye witnesses, and I have their signed attestations that they did, in
fact, see and touch the plates before the plates were taken up into
heaven.
Now, what would you say to me about this story? Even though I do have
a book, in English, that tells the story of this lost Jewish
civilization, and even though I do have the signed attestations, what
do you think? This story sounds nutty, doesn't it?
You would ask some obvious questions. For example, at the very
simplest level, you might ask, "Where are the ruins and artifacts from
this Jewish civilization in America?" The book transcribed from the
plates talks about millions of Jewish people doing all kinds of things
in America. They have horses and oxen and chariots and armor and large
cities. What happened to all of this? I answer simply: it is all out
there, but we have not found it yet. "Not one city? Not one chariot
wheel? Not one helmet?" you ask. No, we haven't found a single bit of
evidence, but it is out there somewhere. You ask me dozens of
questions like this, and I have answers for them all.

Most people would assume that I am delusional if I told them this
story. They would assume that there were no plates and no angel, and
that I had written the book myself. Most people would ignore the
attestations -- having people attest to it means nothing, really. I
could have paid the attesters off, or I could have fabricated them.
Most people would reject my story without question.

What's interesting is that there are millions of people who actually
do believe this story of the angel and the plates and the book and the
Jewish people living in North America 2,000 years ago. Those millions
of people are members of the Mormon Church, headquartered in Salt Lake
City, Utah. The person who told this incredible story was a man named
Joseph Smith, and he lived in the United States in the early 1800s. He
told his story, and recorded what he "translated from the plates", in
the Book of Mormon.

If you meet a Mormon and ask them about this story, they can spend
hours talking to you about it. They can answer every question you
have. Yet the 5.99 billion of us who are not Mormons can see with
total clarity that the Mormons are delusional. It is as simple as
that. You and I both know with 100% certainty that the Mormon story is
no different from the story of Santa. And we are correct in our
assessment. The invalidating evidence is voluminous.

Another example

Imagine that I tell you this story:

A man was sitting in a cave minding his own business.
A very bright flash of light appeared.
A voice spoke out one word: "Read!" The man felt like he was being
squeezed to death. This happened several times.
Then the man asked, "What should I read?"
The voice said, "Read in the name of your Lord who created humans from
a clinging [zygote]. Read for your Lord is the most generous. He
taught people by the pen what they didn't know before."
The man ran home to his wife.
While running home, he saw the huge face of an angel in the sky. The
angel told the man that he was to be the messenger of God. The angel
also identified himself as Gabriel.
At home that night, the angel appeared to the man in his dreams.
Gabriel appeared to the man over and over again. Sometimes it was in
dreams, sometimes during the day as "revelations in his heart,"
sometimes preceded by a painful ringing in his ears (and then the
verses would flow from Gabriel right out of the man), and sometimes
Gabriel would appear in the flesh and speak. Scribes wrote down
everything the man said.
Then, one night about 11 years after the first encounter with Gabriel,
Gabriel appeared to the man with a magical horse. The man got on the
horse, and the horse took him to Jerusalem. Then the winged horse took
the man up to the seven layers of heaven. The man was able to actually
see heaven and meet and talk with people there. Then Gabriel brought
the man back to earth.
The man proved that he had actually been to Jerusalem on the winged
horse by accurately answering questions about buildings and landmarks
there.
The man continued receiving the revelations from Gabriel for 23 years,
and then they stopped. All of the revelations were recorded by the
scribes in a book which we still have today.
[Source: "Understanding Islam" by Yahiya Emerick, Alpha press, 2002]
What do you make of this story? If you have never heard the story
before, you may find it to be nonsensical in the same way that you
feel about the stories of the golden plates and Santa. You would
especially feel that way once you read the book that was supposedly
transcribed from Gabriel, because much of it is opaque. The dreams,
the horse, the angel, the ascension, and the appearances of the angel
in the flesh -- you would dismiss them all because it is all
imaginary.
But you need to be careful. This story is the foundation of the Muslim
religion, practiced by more than a billion people around the world.
The man is named Mohammed, and the book is the Koran (also spelled
Qur'an or Qur'aan). This is the sacred story of the Koran's creation
and the revelation of Allah to mankind.

Despite the fact that a billion Muslims profess some level of belief
in this story, people outside the Muslim faith consider the story to
be imaginary. No one believes this story because this story is a fairy
tale. They consider the Koran to be a book written by a man and
nothing more. A winged horse that flew to heaven? That is imaginary --
as imaginary as flying reindeer.

If you are a Christian, please take a moment right now to look back at
the Mormon and Muslim stories. Why is it so easy for you to look at
these stories and see that they are imaginary fairy tales? How do you
know, with complete certainty, that Mormons and Muslims are
delusional? You know these things for the same reason you know that
Santa is imaginary. There is no evidence for any of it. The stories
involve magical things like angels and winged horses, hallucinations,
dreams. Horses cannot fly -- we all know that. And even if they could,
where would the horse fly to? The vacuum of space? Or is the horse
somehow "dematerialized" and then "rematerialized" in heaven? If so,
those processes are made up too. Every bit of it is imaginary. We all
know that.

An unbiased observer can see how imaginary these three stories are. In
addition, Muslims can see that Mormons are delusional, Mormons can see
that Muslims are delusional, and Christians can see that both Mormons
and Muslims are delusional.

One final example

Now let me tell you one final story:

God inseminated a virgin named Mary, in order to bring his son
incarnate into our world.
Mary and her fiancé, Joseph, had to travel to Bethlehem to register
for the census. There Mary gave birth to the Son of God.
God put a star in the sky to guide people to the baby.
In a dream God told Joseph to take his family to Egypt. Then God stood
by and watched as Herod killed thousands and thousands of babies in
Israel in an attempt to kill Jesus.
As a man, God's son claimed that he was God incarnate: "I am the way,
the truth and the life," he said.
This man performed many miracles. He healed lots of sick people. He
turned water into wine. These miracles prove that he is God.
But he was eventually given the death sentence and killed by
crucifixion.
His body was placed in a tomb.
But three days later, the tomb was empty.
And the man, alive once again but still with his wounds (so anyone who
doubted could see them and touch them), appeared to many people in
many places.
Then he ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of God the
father almighty, never to be seen again.
Today you can have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. You
can pray to this man and he will answer your prayers. He will cure
your diseases, rescue you from emergencies, help you make important
business and family decisions, comfort you in times of worry and
grief, etc.
This man will also give you eternal life, and if you are good he has a
place for you in heaven after you die.
The reason we know all this is because, after the man died, four
people named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote accounts of the man's
life. Their written attestations are proof of the veracity of this
story.
This, of course, is the story of Jesus. Do you believe this story? If
you are a Christian, you probably do. I could ask you questions for
hours and you will have answers for every one of them, in just the
same way that I had answers for all of the Santa questions that my
friend asked me in Example 1. You cannot understand how anyone could
question any of it, because it is so obvious to you.
Here is the thing that I would like to help you understand: The four
billion people who are not Christians look at the Christian story in
exactly the same way that you look at the Santa story, the Mormon
story and the Muslim story. In other words, there are four billion
people who stand outside of the Christian bubble, and they can see
reality clearly. The fact is, the Christian story is completely
imaginary.

How do the four billion non-Christians know, with complete certainty,
that the Christian story is imaginary? Because the Christian story is
just like the Santa story, the Mormon story and the Muslim story.
There is the magical insemination, the magical star, the magical
dreams, the magical miracles, the magical resurrection, the magical
ascension and so on. People outside the Christian faith look at the
Christian story and note these facts:

The miracles are supposed to "prove" that Jesus is God, but,
predictably, these miracles left behind no tangible evidence for us to
examine and scientifically verify today. They all involved faith
healings and magic tricks - see this proof.
Jesus is resurrected, but, predictably, he does not appear to anyone
today - see this proof.
Jesus ascended into heaven and answers our prayers, but, predictably,
when we pray to him nothing happens. We can statistically analyse
prayer and find that prayers are never answered - see this proof.
The book where Matthew, Mark, Luke and John make their attestations
does exist, but, predictably, it is chock full of problems and
contradictions - see this proof.
And so on.
In other words, the Christian story is a fairly tale, just like the
other three examples we have examined.
Now, look at what is happening inside your mind at this moment. I am
using solid, verifiable evidence to show you that the Christian story
is imaginary. Your rational mind can see the evidence. Four billion
non-Christians would be happy to confirm for you that the Christian
story is imaginary. However, if you are a practicing Christian, you
can probably feel your "religious mind" overriding both your rational
mind and your common sense as we speak. Why? Why were you able to use
your common sense to so easily reject the Santa story, the Mormon
story and the Muslim story, but when it comes to the Christian story,
which is just as imaginary, you are not?

Try, just for a moment, to look at Christianity with the same amount
of healthy skepticism that you used when approaching the stories of
Santa, Joseph Smith and Mohammed. Use your common sense to ask some
very simple questions of yourself:

Is there any physical evidence that Jesus existed? - No. He left no
trace. His body "ascended into heaven." He wrote nothing down. None of
his "miracles" left any permanent evidence. There is, literally,
nothing.
Is there any reason to believe that Jesus actually performed these
miracles, or that he rose from the dead, or that he ascended into
heaven? - There is no more of a reason to believe this than there is
to believe that Joseph Smith found the golden plates hidden in New
York, or that Mohammed rode on a magical winged horse to heaven.
Probably less of a reason, given that the record of Jesus' life is
2,000 years old, while that of Joseph Smith is less than 200 years
old.
You mean to tell me that I am supposed to believe this story of Jesus,
and there is no proof or evidence to go by beyond a few attestations
in the New Testament of a Bible that is provably meaningless? - Yes,
you are supposed to believe it. You are supposed to take it on
"faith."
No one (besides little kids) believes in Santa Claus. No one outside
the Mormon church believes Joseph Smith's story. No one outside the
Muslim faith believes the story of Mohammed and Gabriel and the winged
horse. No one outside the Christian faith believes in Jesus' divinity,
miracles, resurrection, etc.
Therefore, the question I would ask you to consider right now is
simple: Why is it that human beings can detect fairy tales with
complete certainty when those fairy tales come from other faiths, but
they cannot detect the fairy tales that underpin their own faith? Why
do they believe their chosen fairy tale with unrelenting passion and
reject the others as nonsense? For example:

Christians know that when the Egyptians built gigantic pyramids and
mummified the bodies of their pharaohs, that it was a total waste of
time -- otherwise Christians would build pyramids.
Christians know that when the Aztecs carved the heart out of a virgin
and ate it, that it accomplished nothing -- otherwise Christians would
kill virgins.
Christians know that when Muslims face Mecca to pray, that it is
pointless -- otherwise Christians would face Mecca when they pray.
Christians know that when Jews keep meat and dairy products separate,
that they are wasting their time -- otherwise the cheeseburger would
not be an American obsession.
Yet, when Christians look at their own religion, they are for some
reason blind. Why? And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that the
Christian story is true. Your rational mind knows that with certainty,
and so do four billion others. This book, if you will let it, can tell
you why.
A simple experiment

If you are a Christian who believes in the power of prayer, here is a
very simple experiment that will show you something very interesting
about your faith.

Take a coin out of your pocket. Now pray sincerely to Ra:

Dear Ra, almighty sun god, I am going to flip this ordinary coin 50
times, and I am asking you to cause it to land heads-side-up all 50
times. In Ra's name I pray, Amen.
Now flip the coin. Chances are that you won't get past the fifth or
sixth flip and the coin will land tails.
What does this mean? Most people would look at this data and conclude
that Ra is imaginary. We prayed to Ra, and Ra did nothing. We can
prove that Ra is imaginary (at least in the sense of prayer-answering
ability) by using statistical analysis. If we flip the coin thousands
of times, praying to Ra each time, we will find that the coin lands
heads or tails in exact correlation with the normal laws of
probability. Ra has absolutely no effect on the coin no matter how
much we pray. Even if we find a thousand of Ra's most faithful
believers and ask them to do the praying/flipping, the results will be
the same. Therefore, as rational people, we conclude that Ra is
imaginary. We look at Ra in the same way that we look at Leprechauns,
Mermaids, Santa and so on. We know that people who believe in Ra are
delusional.

Now I want you to try the experiment again, but this time I want you
to pray to Jesus Christ instead of Ra. Pray sincerely to Jesus like
this:

Dear Jesus, I know that you exist and I know that you hear and answer
prayers as you promise in the Bible. I am going to flip this ordinary
coin 50 times, and I am asking you to cause it to land heads-side-up
all 50 times. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.
Now flip the coin. Once again, after the fifth or sixth flip, the coin
will land tails.
If we flip the coin thousands of times, praying to Jesus each time, we
will find that the coin lands heads or tails in exact correlation with
the normal laws of probability. It is not like there are two laws of
probability -- one for Christians who pray and the other for non-
Christians. There is only one law of probability because prayers have
zero effect. Jesus has no effect on our planet no matter how much we
pray. We can prove that conclusively using statitical analysis.

If you believe in God, watch what is happening inside your mind right
now. The data is absolutely identical in both experiments. With Ra you
looked at the data rationally and concluded that Ra is imaginary. But
with Jesus... something else will happen. In your mind, you are
already coming up with a thousand rationalizations to explain why
Jesus did not answer your prayers:

It is not his will
He doesn't have time
I didn't pray the right way
I am not worthy
I do not have enough faith
I cannot test the Lord like this
It is not part of Jesus' plan for me
And on and on and on...
One rationalization that you may find yourself developing is
particularly interesting. You may say to yourself: “Well, of course
Jesus doesn’t answer me when I pray about a coin toss, because it is
too trivial." Where did this rationalization come from? If you read
what Jesus says about prayer in the Bible (see this proof), Jesus does
not ever say, "don't pray to me about coin tosses." Jesus clearly says
he will answer your prayers, and he puts no boundaries on what you may
pray for. You invented this rationalization out of thin air.
You are an expert at creating rationalizations for Jesus. The reason
you are an expert is because Jesus does not answer any of your prayers
(see this proof). The reason why Jesus does not answer any of your
prayers is because Jesus and God are imaginary.




Proof #8 - Think about Near Death Experiences
Many Christians find the phenomenon of Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
to be proof that "God" and the "afterlife" exist. As described in this
article, an NDE contains these characteristics:

The sudden awareness that one has had a 'fatal" accident and not
survived.
An out-of-body experience. A sensation of floating above one's body
and seeing the surrounding area.
Pleasant feelings, calmness.
A sensation of moving upwards through a tunnel or narrow passageway.
Meeting deceased relatives or spiritual figures
Encountering a being of light, or a light (possibly a religious
figure, i.e. Jesus, God, Buddha)
Being given a life review
A feeling of being returned to the body, often accompanied by a
reluctance to return
Things like heart attacks, near-drowning and severe loss of blood can
all trigger near death experiences.
NDEs have been experienced by thousands of people and have been widely
cataloged in a variety of books. Many of these books are "spiritual"
or "religious" in nature.

What is not mentioned is that there is a drug called Ketamine that
produces all of the elements of an NDE when it is injected into
normal, non-dying people. In other words, an NDE is a natural,
chemically induced state that the human brain enters. The trigger for
an NDE is lack of oxygen to the brain and body. If you read scientific
papers like these, you find that there is a completely chemical and
completely non-spiritual reason for the features of every NDE.

Is this a direct proof that God is imaginary? No. However, it is a
direct proof that the NDE (which many people use as "indisputable"
proof that God and eternal life exist) has no supernatural meaning. We
can scientificaly prove NDEs to be chemical side-effects rather than
"a gateway to the afterlife" as many religious believers claim.







Proof #9 - Understand ambiguity
Let's imagine that you have cancer and that you are a believer. You
pray to God for a cure, you undergo surgery and chemotherapy, and the
cancer does in fact go into remission.

What cured you? Was it the chemotherapy, or was it God?

In other words, is there any way to know whether God is playing a role
or not when we pray?

The problem is that, in this imagined case, there is ambiguity. The
Christian believes that God answered the prayer, but it could also be
a simple coincidence.

All scientific evidence clearly indicates that it is, in fact, a
coincidence. Whenever we do a scientific experiment on the efficacy of
prayer, the data shows no effect from prayer (see this proof).
Scientific evidence indicates that "answered prayers" really are
coincidences every single time.

So how do we figure this out? Is God answering prayers as Christians
believe, or is it coincidence as science indicates?

The way to answer that question is to remove the ambiguity. We make it
impossible for the "answered prayer" to be a coincidence, and then we
see what happens.

The way to remove the ambiguity is to say a prayer that cannot be
answered by coincidence. For example, instead of praying that God
cures one person's cancer, pray that God eliminates all cancer
tomorrow. There is only one way for that to happen. God would have to
exist, and God would have to reach down from heaven and explicitly
work a miracle on earth.

What we find whenever we perform an unambiguous experiment like this
is that God never answers unambiguous prayers. Jesus promises in many
places in the Bible that he will answer prayers -- even impossible
prayers. But what you find whenever you put Jesus to the test is that
Jesus is making a false promise.

What we find is that God never answers impossible prayers - even if
the prayers are incredibly worthy. For example:

Pray to God to levitate a car and hold it floating in the air for ten
minutes. It will not happen, even if you are praying to levitate the
car because a drunk driver has run over a college freshman and she is
currently pinned under one of the wheels.
Pray to God to let you fly through the air like Superman. It will not
happen, even if you are praying to fly like superman so that you can
rise up to a tenth story window and save two children from their
burning apartment.
Pray to God to fill your basement with $100 million in small unmarked
bills. It will not happen, even if you plan to donate the $100 million
that God gives you to a worthy and deserving charity.
Pray to God to restore the amputated limbs of a deserving, penitent
believer. It will not happen, no matter how sincere you are in your
prayer.
None of these prayers will ever be answered. We know that with
certainty. If they were answered, we would see people flying thought
the air like Superman on the evening news. We would see amputated
limbs regenerating all the time. Every Christian charity would be
fully funded and there would not be 10 million children starving to
death every year. [ref]
These unambiguous prayers are how we know, for sure, that God/Jesus
are not actually answering prayers. The scientific evidence is
correct. "Answered prayers" are nothing more than simple coincidences
every single time. The whole idea of "God answering prayers" is a
complete illusion because God is imaginary.








Proof #10 - Watch the offering plate
Have you ever thought about the offering plate in church? If God is
real, why do they have to pass it? If you read these verses in the
Bible, you can see that God claims to be extremely powerful and
willing to answer any prayer:

Matthew 7:7
Matthew 17:20
Matthew 21:21
Mark 11:24
John 14:12-14
Matthew 18:19
Mark 9:23
Luke 1:37
Now consider this: Why don't the ministers and deacons of the church
gather together every Sunday morning and pray to Jesus for the money
they need? Why doesn't Jesus answer their prayers? Why do churches
have to beg for money from mere mortals when there is an immortal, all-
powerful God who should provide anything they ask for? Here is what
"God" is saying:
Pray to me for anything and I will hear and answer your prayers. I say
it in dozens of places in the Bible, but I like the way I say it in
Mark 11:24 the best: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in
prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
Anything you need -- money, love, happiness, you name it -- I am here
to provide it for you.
Now, there is just one thing I need in return. I need your money. I
need lots of your money. The Bible specifies that you tithe ten
percent of your income to me, but think of that as a starting point.
Feel free to give more!

Because even though I created the universe and everything in it, and
even though I will give you everything you ask for in prayer, I can't
give a cent to any church, ever. When they pass the offering plate at
church, be sure to give generously!

This, of course, is ridiculous.
The reason why they pass the offering plate at church is because God
is imaginary.

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Understanding the Rationalizations
A Christian might say, "God does answer the minister's prayers -- he
sends people to give money to the church!" If this is the case, then
the people are puppets, and God is stealing their money by forcing
them to give it to the church. The absurdity of that situation is
obvious.

If God were answering the prayers of the minister, there would be no
need for the offering plate. God would provide the money that the
church needs, not people.