Tim Tebow, not God, Throws the Ball

What does it take to be a quarterback for an NFL team? It starts with a kid who is willing to put in thousands of hours in high school and all through college then into the big leagues. It takes inborn athleticism combined with a fast-thinking intelligence and relentless determination.

That's just to be on the team. To be a first-string quarterback, you have to be the best of the best.

Tim Tebow is such a man. He worked extraordinarily hard to get where he is ... which is why Tim Tebow's religion is a real shame. Christianity has stolen Tebow's pride. Instead of taking pride in his accomplishments, he gives the credit away to God. The simple fact is that it's Tebow throwing the ball, not God.

In less than a second or two, Tebow's mind absorbs the receiver's position, speed and direction, and on

Canadian Christians Just as Discriminatory as Americans?

I've always thought of Canada as a bit more progressive than the United States. Their health care is way ahead of ours, and they don't go around blowing up other countries for no reason.

But apparently the Canadian Christians (in this case, it's mostly Catholics) take their cues straight from the same playbook as Americans. When it comes to religious discrimination, they're in the big leagues.

The city council of Saguenay, Quebec refused to take a crucifix down from the City Council's chambers. It took a lawsuit from a local atheist and a court order to settle the issue. But is it settled? No. The mayor still refuses to take the crucifix down! Not only that, he's vowed to fight the court order and has started privately gathering funds for the battle.

But what's even more amazing is that he's claiming discrimination!

"Why is it us Christians that always have to bend?" [Mayor] Tremblay told the Globe and Mail newspaper. "Our values have no importance. I am the first mayor in the history of the world to be punished for reciting a prayer."

Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but Christians have been killing each other for 2,000 years for

Is God Afraid of Banks? Church Foreclosures in the News

Does praying to God work ... except for when the bank is after you? Maybe the banks have gotten so powerful that even God is afraid to meddle with them!

There has been a rash of stories lately about church foreclosures. Today it's the First Family Church in Overland Park, Kansas that's facing a $14 million overdue mortgage. DeKalb County Georgia may lose their oldest African-American church. Churches everywhere are being foreclosed at record rates.

Even Faux News, always ready to distort the news and make churches look saintly, published a major story, Dramatic Rise In Church Foreclosures Nationwide.

I joke about prayer, but this isn't about prayer or faith. It's just economics.

IHOP vs IHOP, Pancake House has No Sense of Humor!

It's IHOP versus IHOP in a battle of trademarks!

It seems the International House of Pancakes (IHOP-pancakes) is out to get the International House of Prayer (IHOP-prayer) for trademark infringement! A religious group in Kansas City made the foolish decision to use a long-established trademark as its own logo.

What the heck were they thinking? Did IHOP-prayer think maybe Jesus would intervene and convince IHOP-pancake to ignore this deliberated infringement? That maybe IHOP-pancake would just love to have their pancake house associated with a Christian prayer group?

Or maybe they didn't even bother to check the law books about trademark rights, brand-name dilution and so forth.

Whatever their reasons, it was a dumb move. The law is crystal clear: IHOP-prayer is going to get hammered on this one.

Mozambique "Praying Cures" Study: A Pile of Steaming Dung

Groan. A new "study" is out showing that prayers can heal the sick. The evangelical Christians, Jews and Muslims are going to jump all over this, fling their arms to the sky in victory and say, "See! We told you so! God is at work! We proved all you smarty-pants scientists wrong!"

The problem is, they didn't. This so-called "scientific study" was worse than just flawed science. It wasn't science at all.

Here's the story in a nutshell (read the details here). These "researchers" took 14 hearing-impaired people and 9 vision-impaired people and told them what the experiment was about. They tested the subject's hearing or vision, and then did some intensive praying in close physical proximity with the experimental subject. After the praying, they tested the subjects' hearing or vision again.

Lo and behold, the people had dramatically! Or ... maybe it was a completely bogus experiment?

Let's see if we can count the mistakes in this experiment.

Franklin Graham: A Dishonest Christian

If you're telling a story and you leave out the most important fact, are you a liar?

If so, then it seems to me Franklin Graham is a Big Fat Liar. I just heard him interviewed on CNN (sorry, no web video yet), and what a sleaze he's turned out to be. Billy Graham should be ashamed of his son.

CNN was interviewing Franklin Graham because he started a campaign to oust Obama from the Presidency in 2012. Graham has his underwear all in a knot because he was invited to pray at the Pentagon for the National Day of Prayer (which, by the way, has been declared unconstitutional by a district court), and then uninvited because of his disrespectful remarks about Islam. He called Islam an evil, dangerous religion.

I have no problem with his opinion about Islam – he's entitled to say what he likes.

Doctor Death is Back! Kevorkian on CNN 360

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the famous or infamous "Doctor Death" of euthanasia, is back, and is a powerful advocate for the rights of terminally ill patients to have doctor-assisted suicide. Kevorkian spent six years in prison and two on probation after his conviction for assisting a suicide, and now that he's off probation, he's free to speak again.

Anderson Cooper on CNN had an amazing interview with Kevorkian last night. Here is one of my favorite exchanges. They were talking about one particular suicide Kevorkian assisted, and Cooper asks:

Cooper: "Did you find it sad?"

Kevorkain: "Well of course! You don't like to end a life. ... If someone has cancer of the hip, you don't take the leg off ... because you want to do it. ... Nobody says, 'I can't wait to take that leg off.'"

Cooper: "But a lot of people say that you're playing God ..."

Kevorkian: "Isn't the doctor who takes a leg off playing God?"

Pray for Me: April Fools Day is Pray for an Atheist Day!

Ok, all you Christians, it's time to pray for me!

April Fools Day 2010 is Pray for an Atheist day! (Here's their Facebook page!)

Do you believe God can do amazing things through prayer? We want you to select an atheist friend or relative and pray for them by name each day during the month of April, 2010 (and beyond!) It’s easy and could make an eternal difference for someone you love.

And I'm your man! A real Atheist, but also an honest one who would admit that he's wrong! But I'll warn you, I'm a pretty hard case.

In fact, why not make it a challenge? If all you Christians each pray for a different atheist, what's God going to do? He can't convert us all, that's too much work even for Him. So why don't you all get together and pick ONE atheist, and everybody pray for that person?

Religious People More Afraid of Death than Atheists

According to this article on the BBC, those who are the most religious are three times more likely to receive intensive life-prolonging care, and are much more likely to die in a hospital rather than at home with their loved ones.

I know the Atheist community likes to point to studies like this and ask, "What are you afraid of?" It seems logical that those who believe in an afterlife would be less likely to fear death than those who don't. So Atheists are fond of implying that the faithful, by fearing death, show that their faith really isn't that strong.

I don't buy this argument. I don't think a fear of death should be held against anyone, whether religious, agnostic or Atheist.

In fact, it could easily be just the opposite: Those who don't fear death in the first place are far more likely to become Atheists. It could (for example) be that our desire to live, and our consequent fear of death, is more of an inborn trait, or something that we acquire as children as loved ones die. Who knows? And those who, for whatever reason, happen to fear death the most, would naturally have the hardest time accepting the Atheist's understanding of the world.

Death is a sad thing, no matter what you believe. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood in the movie Unforgiven, when you die, you lose everything you ever had, and everything you'll ever be. Your friends and family lose your love, your wisdom, and your friendship. Your coworkers lose your skill and knowledge. There is nothing good about death, except that from an evolutionary point of view, it makes room for the next generation.

I suspect that the truth about why religious people fight death so hard has very little to do with any lack of conviction in their faith. If anything, I believe it's the other way around, that their faith is (in part) inspired by their fear of death.

It takes a certain degree of calm and fortitude to be an Atheist. It's hard to accept that when you die, you're dead and gone. The desire for immortality — life here on this Earth with our friends and loved ones, not some abstract second existence — is strong in all of us, even if some of us don't believe it will come true.

Praying to Legalize Discrimination?

The bad news: Hundreds of pastors in California are calling on their congregations to help pass a ban on gay marriage in California.

The good news: Their main weapon is prayer!

(I'm breaking from my "ethics" series to bring you this breaking story...)

Prayer gives many people comfort and strength, and unlike many Atheists, I have no problem with people who pray in times of trouble. They see it as a connection to God, I see it as meditation, and drawing on their own inner strength. I wish people who get strength from prayer could give themselves more credit for their accomplishments, but if prayer is their way of drawing on that inner strength, what's wrong with that?

On the other hand, I'm offended when people pray for God to intervene, to take sides in our worldly affairs. The idea that God, the purported creator of the Universe, really cares whether the home team wins the football game, is ludicrous. Asking God for help in a war against a Muslim country on trumped-up charges of having weapons of mass destruction is so offensive it's hard to know where to begin.

But when hundreds of pastors advocate prayer as their main tool in a campaign to legalize discrimination against gay couples, I'll encourage them to pray, and pray, and pray some more! Do it all day and night, and since prayer has obviously been so effective in the past (you know, stopping hurricanes, quenching wildfires, starting wars, or was that ending wars?), it will surely work to legalize discrimination in California. Why, if you pray enough, maybe God Himself will come down and cast his vote in the November election!

By the way, those of you who abhor discrimination of all kinds, including against our gay family members and friends, should buy a pair of Levi's jeans today. The Levis company has donated $25,000 to help defeat this offensive amendment to our state constitution.