A common theme among most
atheists I've come across is the necessity for believers to provide evidence to
their belief as a satisfaction of the burden of proof. In fact, several
podcasters, just for the sake of isolating one group I am aware of, routinely
reference how if the bible were to be the true, inerrant word of an all
knowing, timeless god then there should
be references to future events or items that people 2000 years ago would be
mystified by. Usually these are spoken of in jest but I'm not so sure it is an
idea one can easily brush away the severity of.
Just to provide a quick example,
an early episode of Thomas and the bible has the host making reference to god
showing people something by means of an Xbox, or even a PlayStation. A brief
explanation of this podcast for those unfamiliar is that Thomas has dedicated
his time to reading the King James Version of the bible but sprinkles the dry
content with his brand of wit and humour. So that said, the example given is
delivered, I'm assuming, in a tone of jest. But let’s take it seriously for a
moment;
And lo,
the Lord put forth a box unto the ground. When Moses inquired to God as to the
nature of this thing his eyes did lie upon and God did call it a box of X. He
did speak that after this sight, mankind would not see another thing such as
this for many a generation.
Sorry Sony fans, I’m an Xbox
person so you will have to suffer through my example. So this seemingly
innocuous little addition to the KJV, like most prophecies in the bible, is fairly
primitive and vague in what it is actually talking about. In fact, it is one so
vague that you can retro-fit any number of inventions to meet its description.
Perhaps creating something so ambiguous so as to easily be fulfilled by any
person seeking to make a god out of their self.
Something as simple as a weak
prophecy just won’t do when it comes to proclaiming the truth of a 2000 year
old book, let alone the truth of a supposed timeless god it purports to
represent. You see, going down the generations there would be countless
incarnations and conjugations of “box” and “X.” Every would-be prophet and
so-called holy man or even man of the cloth would have their own copyrighted
box that somehow incorporated the letter x into its name. This would be done until
the horse had not only been beaten, pummelled into a bloody mess and left 6
feet under for a few hundred years, but we would see a modern version of this
where every box was somehow sacred and worthy of worship. Don’t even get me
started on the boxes that happened to have an alleged appearance of the Virgin
Mary or Jesus himself.
It bears repeating that this
would not be proof of the inerrant word of god. Or proof of god. However, what
this would further prove humanity’s lack of ability to wean itself off of any
and every sacred cow. It would demonstrate perfectly that we as a species are
hardwired based off of a brain that was developed to operate in survival mode
to the point of unshakeable pareidolia. Seeing patterns is what we do to a
fault in the modern age. This is just further proof that we bear the stamps of
our lowly origins. A hit, no matter how much we have to warp our logical
faculties to consider it a hit, is still a hit to people who refuse to question
their own preconceived notions and put to the test their beliefs in any
theistic doctrine or supernatural claim.
Let’s take an existing demonstration
of this; psychics. How many of them put forth yearly predictions? What do those
predictions typically constitute of? High probability hits, i.e. an earthquake
on a known fault line such as the pacific rim or that some sort of tragedy will
befall the US, or events so ambiguous that we will see the prediction be
fulfilled so many times as to reach tedium. At the end of each calendar year
they tally up the hits, near hits and probably-not-hits-but-they-get-counted-as-successes-anyways
and smile while they stroke their egos. And genitals. All the while completely
neglecting to mention the numerous hits that they didn’t make.
Once again, we see the believers
and the faithful falling all over themselves just to get a taste of the
ejaculate of these psychics while failing to factor in the probable rate of
occurrence of some of these events with the mental contortions and failed
claims to realize the “psychic” really didn’t do a damned thing. Well, didn’t
do a thing outside of play off basic functioning of the human brain mixed with
some con-artistry.
So when an atheist or unbeliever
of any claim, which on its surface is too good to be true, dismisses evidence
they’re accused of moving the goal post or being just plain ignorant. When a
true believer hoists up some worthless prediction that has more holes in it
than my grandmother’s colander and it is held to the burning light of reason or
scrupulous testing, it quickly is ignited into a small inferno of cries that “you’re
just not listening.” Cries that you need to think the thing is true and only
then will you see that it is indeed true. It is a bit of Olympics-level
gymnastics for the intellect to suppress any knowledge or awareness of the
probability or more importantly, the plausibility of a claim’s truth. Even more
contorting is mixing that logic that starts with a conclusion, ignores
counter-evidence and then eagerly distorts everything else into some way of
comforting and consoling the childish tantrum that is hell-bent on clinging to
some emotionally satisfying idea.
