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They could have prevented this. I saw the signs as a Bernie supporter. We all did. If the DNC refused to nominate Bernie we might lose the general election The polls strongly suggested this. But the democratic party did not care. They nominated Hillary anyway. They were stupid stupid stupid. This morning I am embarrassed to be a Democrat. Let all Hillary supporters in the primaries chime in right now and apologize. Profusely. You were seriously wrong.
I'm being interviewed for a book. So I'll paste my answers here as I answer the questions.
"What is the worst argument for the existence of God you have ever heard?"
There are so many bad ones it's hard to choose. The topper is probably that a private subjective ineffable experience provides objective evidence that the universe was created out of nothing and that one particular god out of thousands created it. The only explanation for why believers think this is a good argument to their sect specific god is because of the delusionary nature of faith, which is the mother of all cognitive biases.
The faithful admit it: They are there on Sunday morning to worship God. A friend of mine once defined himself and his status as a believer. “I am a worshipper,” he said. Why would that be important or appropriate?
Schools are for learning, offices are for business, stadiums are for sports, hospitals for healing, and we all agree that they answer legitimate human needs (even stadiums). Churches, however, are dedicated to that most baffling of human obsessions: getting together frequently to boost God’s ego. When priests raise funds to build churches they always claim that the real purpose is to glorify God, which can only mean that there is a divine ego that must be stroked. My friend the worshipper had gulped the Kool-Aid. He has bought into this peculiar, warped view that our feelings of wonder and awe must be directed at a Supreme Being who isn’t satisfied unless the awe and wonder are directed at him.
One of the best verses in the Old Testament is Psalm 145:8: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”—lot’s of potential for decent religion here. In this verse, “the Lord” is actually a translation of “Yahweh,” and we regret that this sentiment about mercy and love didn’t have more influence on those ancient thinkers who fleshed out the character of Yahweh. This tribal god rampages violently through so much of the Old Testament.
And when the religious bureaucracy took over the forgiveness business, it decreed that Yahweh wasn’t easy to please; animal sacrifice became part of the formula for earning this god’s favor. For centuries animals were slaughtered at the Jerusalem Temple, and the flow of blood was thought essential for getting right with god. Hence the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could write (9:22): “…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” The too-full-off himself Jesus of John’s gospel took the ghoulishness to a new level (6:54-55): “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”
I suspect that the blood obsession still haunts the Christian psyche when I read that a vial of Pope John Paul II’s blood toured the U.S. in 2014, to be venerated by the faithful (not worshipped, church officials insisted), especially in the wake of John Paul’s canonization. Apparently, during one of the pope’s many illnesses, one nurse was savvy enough to spirit away a vial of his blood—no dummy she. A pope relic was a big prize; there were Catholic hearts to be set aflutter and coffers to be filled.