The Flawed Argument Against Secularism

You have all heard the hype.  Every year the Fox News Channel (it pains me to even write that oxymoron of a title to describe a television a station full of slimy political manipulators in journalist clothing) celebrates their imaginary “War on Christmas” where they tell you what atheists think and why they’re wrong, even though no atheists I know think anything like that.  And you’ve all heard of the “War on Christianity” which we are all apparently engaged in, each and every atheist plotting the next way we are going to destroy Christianity.

Now, to be fair, some atheists do like the idea of ridding the world of religion altogether.  I, myself, don’t think it would be a bad thing any more than I think it would be a bad thing to rid the world of charlatan psychics, faith healers, holistic medicine and other such voodoo tripe with no purpose other than to separate the gullible from their money, sometimes at the cost of human lives and health.  But I would like to get rid of religion through education.  I have no desire to persuade people to give up their petty superstitions through legislation and brute force, nor does any other atheist I know.  Even Richard Dawkins, who is very against religion, would never condone a literal “war on religion” where we force people to give up the various baubles, trinkets and silly beliefs that make them feel good about themselves.  No atheist I have ever talked to or heard about would condone such a travesty of justice, a sacrifice if liberty to get rid of religion.

So what is this war everyone is talking about?  The movement goes by the name, “Secularism”.  A strict definition of secularism from Webster is, “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations”.  It seems most Christians take that as meaning “to do away with religion” or “to shun those who are religious”.  That is total hogwash.  As usually Christians have redefined what we are saying to make us out to be attacking them.  You see, Christians seem to have this primal need to feel persecuted, whether they are truly being persecuted or not.  More often than not the thing that makes them feel persecuted is being told they can’t persecute someone else.  That is exactly the case here.

Religion is a very personal thing between an individual and whatever deity or deities they believe in.  Religion belongs in a church.  That is not to say that I think religious people should not be able to speak about their religion outside of their church or their home, and that is not what secularism is about, another false claim religious people fighting secularism tend to make.  In fact, the false claims about secularism are so numerous that some of them are outright moronic.  One Catholic cardinal, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, recently went on a tirade about the evils of secularism.  He felt the need to point out that “Indeed, in the last century, most violence was perpetrated by secular states on their own people.”  I noticed he didn’t say much about the centuries between the foundation of the Catholic Church and the last century.  Nor did he mention the rampant anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church which ended only in the middle of the last century.  Nor did he mention the ongoing persecution of homosexuals, nor the Catholic view that women are somehow less than men, nor the massive cover up of sexual abuse within the Catholic church where the church repeatedly chose to protect a few priests rather than the hundreds of children they abused.  No, we are supposed to believe that a lack of beliefs causes violence because secularist China has a terrible human rights history.  And we are supposed to just ignore 8 year old girls being legally raped by their husbands in Yemen, the fact that Sunni leaders in Iraq started getting arrested by rival Shiite members a single day after the United States withdrew, Saudi women being beheaded for witchcraft or adultery or an Iranian women being stoned to death for adultery, all under Sharia (religious) law.  We are also supposed to ignore the various genocides in Africa over the last few decades, in Rwanda, which is predominantly Christian, Darfur, which is predominantly Muslim and, of course, Joseph Kony, the self proclaimed “spokesperson of God”.  The fact of the matter is that there have been more atrocities committed within the last 50 years by religious countries than over the past century by secularist countries, and let’s not forget the fact that while the Rwandan genocide was not perpetrated by any church, the Roman Catholic church was faulted for failing to condemn the genocide.  Apparently those in the Roman Catholic church can only see violence in secular countries.

Clearly Cardinal Dipshit didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but let’s put a few nails in that coffin, just to be sure.  What countries in the world have the most people who claim no belief in any gods or spirit forces?  Surely they’ll be the worst of the worst.  According to Wikipedia, topping the list is France at 33%.  I stand corrected.  There’s a group of warlords for you.  You drop a bomb on France they’ll pick up the pieces, glue it back together and send it back to you with a note apologizing for breaking your bomb.  Next on the list is the Czech Republic at 30%.  A 2011 census puts 79.4% of the population at being agnostic, atheist or irreligious.  Boy, we’re really getting into some human rights nightmares there.    Next we have the Netherlands and Belgium tied at 27%.  Another rough bunch, clearly.  Estonia is next at 26%.  We’ve all heard of the atrocities in Estonia, right?  Me neither.

Clearly Cardinal Dumbass is confusing “secular” with “communist”, as many Christians like to do.  Or they throw Hitler in as an atheist.  Forget the fact that he was raised Roman Catholic, died Roman Catholic (he never denounced his membership in the church and was never excommunicated and, thus, WAS a member of the Roman Catholic Church at the time of his death), was backed by several high members of the Catholic Church (Cardinals Faulhaber and Bertram congratulated him on surviving an assassination attempt), had communications with the Pope personally and never once declared himself to be an atheist.  In truth, this is a little nugget Christians like to pull out of their asses to support the unfounded belief that secularism leads to evil.  There has never been any evidence to support this belief, so instead they say misleading things like, “Indeed, in the last century, most violence was perpetrated by secular states on their own people.”  The truth is the most secular countries in the world are some of the most peaceful.

So, what is this secularism that everyone keeps talking about which leads to such great evil?  It is nothing more than taking one person’s religion out of everyone’s government.  It is the opposite of Sharia Law.  It is, quite simply, the rejection of religious doctrine in public policy.  You can’t teach my children that the world is 6,000 years old because that’s stupid.  You can’t make laws that say marriage is between one man and one woman because it’s none of your damned business what two or more adult human beings do.  It is the fight for justice “for all”, not just “for those who think like me”.  And what to anti-secularists have to argue against secularism with?  Lies, deceit, falsehood and dishonesty.  Arguments like, “If you let two men marry what’s to say a man can’t marry a horse?”  How about the fact that nobody is arguing for a man marrying a horse?  How about the “two consenting adults” part of what gays want?  How about you stop being so damned obtuse and just come out and say, “My religious views dictate that I dislike this.”

The really sad thing is that I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a Christian give an honest argument without any form of deceit.  The Christian population should be ashamed of themselves for the silver tongued serpents they have all become.  There is not an honest argument out there for why gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry.  “It will harm traditional marriage!”  Will I have to divorce my wife and marry a man, tow goats and a little boy if gays get the right to marry?  No.  Does ANYONE even WANT that?  No.  “It will harm traditional family values!”  Is there ANY evidence to support that?  No.  Children raised in the homes of same sex couples are just as stable as any other children.  And what the hell are “family values” anyway?  The divorce rate is right around 50%.  How does that fit into the “traditional family”?  And what if I don’t want to follow someone else’s “tradition”?  Why is that anyone’s business?  THIS is EXACTLY what secularism is fighting.  It is fighting the persecution of those not of the prominent religious view, the same reason people came to the American Colonies in the first place.

Science Against Magic

Last week we were on the subject of how science can’t be used to prove magic.  I think it’s only fair that this week we discuss how science also can’t be used to disprove magic.

I have seen many an argument about religion where someone will bring up the scientific problems with some miracle or another.  They will break out the math to show that there is not enough water on the Earth to cover the entire surface of the planet to prove that Noah’s flood was impossible or they will point out the problems with stopping the spin of the earth without killing everyone to prove that the sun standing still in the sky is impossible.  I always hated these arguments.  They seem completely pointless to me.

You see, we are talking about magic here.  The claim is that the fairy that created everything made it happen with his magic.  Where did all the water come from?  Magic, of course.  Where did it all go?  Again, magic.  Why didn’t people go flying through the air when the Earth stopped spinning?  Magic again.  Frankly I don’t know how these arguments even seem to confound Christians at all, but they do seem to.  Yes, the entire planet being covered with water is impossible.  I don’t need to know how many cubic meters of water there are on the planet and the surface area that water would have to cover to flood the entire world to know that no fairies ever flooded the Earth.  And if I believed that the entire planet was covered in water for 40 days because my fairy made it happen, you’re not going to convince me that it didn’t happen with facts.  Quite frankly, if I believed that I wouldn’t be much interested in facts anyway.

The argument my fellow atheists are making in this case is basically, “This magic thing could not have happened because this part of it is scientifically impossible.”  Well, it’s magic, so ALL parts of it are scientifically impossible.  The arguments you should be making are things like, “There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest a global flood ever happened.  In fact, the evidence says just the opposite” and “No historical document ever recovered has made the slightest mention of the sun ever stopping in the sky except the one that claims a fairy did it”.  If these marvelous magical events had happened there would be evidence of them somewhere other than Grimm’s Fairy Tales…er…the Bible.  There is not.  Yes, magic is scientifically impossible.  That’s why it’s called “magic” and not “the theory of magic”.

Of course, this particular flaw goes both ways, as I point out regularly.  Many Christians try to pervert science to prove that their particular fairy exists.  They do this by starting with a conclusion and any evidence they find to support it is absolute proof.  It’s really too bad that they don’t understand science better.  If they did, maybe they wouldn’t distrust it so much.  The way science works is you start with the evidence and you use that, alone, to draw what conclusions you can.  You can’t support a conclusion with evidence, you draw a conclusion based on the evidence.  This is the biggest flaw with religious pseudoscience today and, unfortunately, people have become so ignorant and distrustful of the ways of science that these pseudosciences are fooling a large percentage of the population into believing they have some merit.

More to the point, though, if there was a super powerful fairy which created our universe and which resides outside of our universe you could not prove its existence with science.  Science can only speak to our observations.  Our observations are limited to phenomena within our own universe.  Since we cannot peer outside of our own universe to where this fairy resides, we can find no evidence that it resides there, especially given that we can’t even tell where “there” might be, much less that “there” even exists at all.  Scientific method requires a “natural explanation” based on observation.  Fairy magic is not a “natural explanation”.  It is a supernatural explanation.  The very design of science precludes using magic as an answer and the very nature of a being capable of creating our universe precludes its creation from being powerful enough to detect it.  Unless, of course, it specifically made itself detectible!  Didn’t think of that, did you!  But then you have to ask, “Why?”

Why would it make itself detectible by science?  What would the purpose be?  Does it want to show itself to us?  This is ludicrous.  This is, basically, the same argument given for crop circles.  Aliens are trying to communicate with us!  Really?  Are they retarded aliens?  Do space ships come standard with the crop flattening ray, but aliens can’t afford the deluxe package to get the ship with the radio?  Is the Wing Dings font the only public domain font on their planet?  As a form of peaceful communication flattening crops to draw unintelligible symbols is pretty damned stupid.  Their society would have to have devolved into something akin to the society in the movie Idiocracy.  Likewise, a God who wishes to communicate with us would be pretty damned dumb to think the best way to do that is irreducible complexity, something most people don’t really understand and those who do mostly refer to as “bullshit”.  The idea that any god would try to communicate with us through such a strange and confusing means as science instead of just talking to us like he supposedly used to is just plain stupid.  To communicate with all of mankind he chooses a method which only a very small percentage can understand, which those who can understand only see if they want to and which those who haven’t drawn the conclusion first, then looked for supporting evidence simply don’t see…well, I wouldn’t think the smartest being in the universe would forget how to talk to its own creation.

There are no miracles any more.   There are no miracles because we have the technology to expose hoaxes.  Yes, some are still claimed here and there.  Mostly either the standard for “miracle” has either dropped so low that the fact that the sun shines counts or it happens in butt-crack-of-the-world little countries whose biggest income is…can you guess?...miracle based tourism.  Of course, they still happen in churches.  At least, that’s the claim.  I used to go to church.  I heard this claim all the time.  I’ve never seen a miracle.  And there has never been one scientifically proven either.  If God wants to communicate with us he’s sure doing a piss poor job of it.  And I’m supposed to be convinced he left some convoluted evidence of his existence in some “undisprovable” so-called science?  If he wants to show me that he exists I’m pretty sure he knows where to find me.  The idea that he left clues in science is as stupid as the idea that aliens are leaving friendly messages for us by destroying our crops to draw symbols whose meaning we can only guess at.  That’s not communication at all.  That’s just being an ass.

Something from Nothing

Intelligent design proponents often argue that it is impossible to get something from nothing.  They argue that something must have caused the formation of the universe and that God is that cause, himself being uncaused.  To them, this is the only reasonable explanation.  When asked where, then, God came from they claim he always was.  Let’s have a look at that claim and the explanation they give about God.

So, God is the cause for everything.  It is impossible for anything to exist unless something caused it to exist.  But God, being outside of and greater than our universe, is exempt from this rule.  Once again a perfect example of what I like to call, “The absolute and the exception” where a claim of absolute “truth” is made and an exception is made for God.  Technically in this case it is called “special pleading”.  So, does it hold up?

First, special pleading is a well known logical fallacy.  You can’t claim something is “always true” then add, “except for this one case” because then it isn’t “always true” at all.  If you allow for a single exception to a rule then you must allow for other exceptions as well.  You can never claim that there is only one, single possible exception.  Why?  How do you know?  We’ll get into this in more detail in a little bit.

So, either the rule applies to BOTH the universe AND God or it’s not a rule at all.  The rule is, “You can’t get something from nothing.”  So, what is God?  Is he something or is he nothing?  He can’t be nothing because the claim is that he created everything and the rule is that you can’t get something from nothing.  The claim and the rule are mutually exclusive.  So he must be something.  If he is something and he created everything then neither the claim nor the rule are violated, but it means that God must have had a creator, and that creator must have also had a creator back into infinity.  I’ve never heard a Christian admit that their God may have, himself, been created by an even more powerful and wondrous God.  To even suggest it seems offensive to many.  But the rule is that you can’t get something from nothing, God is something, so he could not have come from nothing.

This is where the “He always was” argument comes in.  Okay.  We can use that.  The universe DID come from “something”.  Scientists call it a “singularity”.  And the singularity always was.  This argument is not only as valid as the argument for a creator, it’s actually MORE valid as it is backed by scientific observation, an idea born of the mathematics which define the universe as we know it, a theory based on the evidence at hand and cold, unbiased mathematical calculations.  It is based on facts.  Or maybe you don’t like that.  Okay, the singularity didn’t always exist.  It was created when two 11^th dimension membranes collided.  The 11^th dimension always was.  Why are either of these explanations any less acceptable than the explanation that a giant fairy in space created everything?  For no reason other than that ID proponents believe in fairies, but they don’t believe in science.

Now we’ll get back to that “How do you know that you can never claim that there is only one, single possible exception” thing I mentioned earlier.  As I said, no Christian I have ever talked to has ever been willing to even consider the notion that God was, himself, created.  Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the universe does require a “cause” and that God is that cause.  The Jehovah’s Witnesses who try relentlessly to convert me call him the “uncaused cause”.  How do they know that?  How can they possibly be certain that there is nothing greater than their God, so far above him that he could not possibly understand it?  Perhaps God, himself, is an atheist simply denying the reality of his own creation.  And really, even if you were to assume he really existed, what reason would you have to believe that he is who he says he is?  When you get right down to it you only have the word of men who have interpreted the word of other men who wrote down the word of still other men as it was passed down to them through the word of other men who claimed it was the word of God.  By my count that’s at least a 5^th person account, and that’s just the New Testament.  Much of the Old Testament is known to have been oral tradition generations before it was ever written down.  When it all comes down to it the reason to believe is nothing more than “…because I say so because he told me it’s so because someone told him it’s so…on back nearly 2,000 years…because the writers of some scrolls told him it was so because (best case) Jesus told him it was so because God told him it was so.”  No wonder so many Christians have trouble accepting science.  It’s backed by facts, which are certainly not as trustworthy as hearsay.

The truth is you can’t possibly “know” anything about this being.  In fact, many Christians are quick to point that out the very moment you bring up something their God did which they cannot rationalize as being not evil.  But they know him very well when they claim he would never lie, that he is the greatest being in all of everything and that there is no possible way he, himself, had a creator.  Well, how can something come from nothing?  God isn’t nothing, so he must be something and it takes something to create something.

The “first cause argument” states that everything that has a beginning has a cause.   The universe had a beginning.  It goes on to state that at some point there must have been an “uncaused” first cause and that cause was God.  So, let’s look at that logically.

Everything that has a beginning has a cause.  This seems logical enough.  We live in a universe governed by cause and effect.  It is a fundamental law of the very nature of all we know within our universe.  So it seems reasonable to assume that the beginnings of the universe must have a cause.  However, you can’t make such an assumption.  The law of cause and effect are laws WITHIN OUR UNIVERSE.  For them to apply to the origin of the universe the universe would have to be within itself, which, itself, violates a law of physics or two.  The laws of physics are the laws ONLY within our universe.  They DO NOT apply to an event outside of our universe which may have created our universe.  What laws apply then?  Any answer you are given is a wild guess since we have never had a single observation or data point from outside of our own universe, thus any answer is pure speculation.  The beginning of the universe MAY HAVE had a cause, but we cannot say for sure that the laws of cause and effect even applied before our universe existed.

The very first part of this argument is true only as we have observed within our own universe.  To apply the laws which govern our universe to a pre-universe which may very well be governed by completely different laws is making an assumption that the laws of physics predate our universe.  There is no evidence to back this up.

The second part of the argument is also an assumption.  Yes, scientific evidence would suggest that the universe had a beginning, but that is not an absolute fact.  It is possible the universe existed for an eternity as a singularity and, at some point, it exploded.  Why, we cannot say.  That this explosion had a cause, we cannot assume.  But it is very possible for the singularity to have existed for an eternity if time was created by the explosion just like it appears space, energy and matter were.  This is a complex idea, so let me explain.  Imagine you have a time machine and you go back in time to the instant of the big bang, the moment at which time was created (assuming time was created by the big bang for the sake of this thought experiment).  Now try to go back further.  You can’t.  If time did not exist before the bang you could set your machine to keep going back for all eternity and it will never go back before the explosion, no matter how far back you try to travel.  This could be interpreted as the singularity existing for an eternity since traveling back for an eternity would not be able to take you to a time when it did not exist.

The final part of the argument before the conclusion states that there must have, at some point, been an uncaused cause.  Again, it seems reasonable.  I certainly can’t imagine an infinity of creators, each one created by another by another by another with no first “creator”.  That doesn’t mean it’s not possible.  Yes, it sounds absurd, but I haven’t really met many gods, so I really can’t speak to their nature.  It is possible there is an infinity of created creators.  But what’s really important here is the claim that this “first cause” or “uncaused cause” is God.  Based on what?  The word of the people who interpreted the word of the people who wrote down the word of other men who professed to deliver the word of God?  HOW DO YOU KNOW that God was the “first” cause?  Maybe he was the second; the tenth; the billionth.  Maybe there are a thousand gods above him who look down on him like we look down on a bacterium with a microscope.  Or maybe that cause was 11^th dimensional membranes which, themselves, have always existed.  Even if we concede that there MUST have been a cause in no way does that prove that cause was supernatural.

The purpose of this argument, of course, is to use science “when convenient” to give credibility to the notion of fairies and magic (Christians usually hate when you call “God’s power” magic, but really there is no difference between magic and miracles).  But science and logic is only applied when it’s convenient.  When it’s no longer convenient science and logic are thrown out and completely ignored.  Either something IS scientific and you can explain it solely with science or it IS NOT scientific and you don’t get to pretend science is explaining it.  It’s pretty straight forward.  It’s scientific or it’s not.  If it is then you must explain it using only science.  You must be able to explain scientifically how it is impossible that God has a creator who has a creator who has a creator named Reginald, who is the first and uncaused cause.  If that can’t be done using only science then there is no absolute rule which cannot be broken EXCEPT when it’s convenient.  Science doesn’t pander to explanations which are convenient to our beliefs.  Science is about facts and evidence that leads to conclusions, not conclusions for which evidence is found.

The Devil's Tools

We’ve all heard terms like “lying for Jesus” and, of course, who hasn’t heard about those lunatic hate mongers, the Westboro Baptist Church and their slogan, “God hates fags”.  I find these particular attributes of “holiness” to be quite confusing.  In fact, I find them downright stupid.  Ask any Christian who the father of lies is and they will tell you that it is Satan.  Ask them who inspires hatred and you will get the same answer.  The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that God doesn’t mind you doing his work with tools you borrow from the devil.  How does that make any sense?  Are God’s own tools of righteousness not good enough to get the job done?  Is God’s word, alone, not potent enough without using what could be referred to as “Satanic tactics” to spread that word?  After thinking about it for a while I can only come to one conclusion.  These people are Satan worshipers.

Bear with me on this one.  Jesus said in Matthew 12:30, “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.”  Basically you are either all in or all out.  This type of thinking is what makes Christians relate atheists to Satan worshipers.  If you are not working for God then you are working for Satan.  There is no middle ground.  Since there is no middle ground then this applies to everyone, including people who think they are good Christians.  It is a well established, Biblically backed belief that you are one or the other, holy or unholy, doing the work of Christ or doing the work of Satan.  But can you do the work of Christ with Satan’s toolbox?  Again, the Bible says no.  In Matthew 12 the Bible states that Satan cannot cast out Satan because he would be “divided against himself”.  It says that “a house divided against itself cannot stand”.  Jesus is saying that Satan cannot do that which is not in his best interest.  So when someone is going out to do God’s work, why would Satan loan them his tools?  Obviously it’s in his best interest to loan out his tools or he wouldn’t do it.

All of this suggests that you cannot do God’s work with Satan’s tools.  If you use Satan’s tools then you, yourself, would be one of Satan’s tools.  To be “Christian” is to be “like Christ” and, based on what I’ve seen in the Bible, I can’t imagine Jesus calling anyone a “fag” or any other hateful name.  Certainly, as one young boy recently pointed out at a WBC protest, God doesn’t hate anyone according to the beliefs of literally every Christian I’ve ever talked to on the matter.  As Satan is the source of hatred for God to hate anyone would mean he is affected by Satan, which doesn’t fit in at all with any Christian teachings or beliefs.

So does God “hate fags”?  I don’t think Jesus would say so.  Maybe the WBC worships Old Testament God who, let’s face it, was very much not the same guy Jesus was talking about in the New Testament.  It certainly makes sense.  Old Testament God put the smack down on just about everyone, sometimes for almost no reason at all.  Moses couldn’t see the promised land because he hit a rock instead of speaking to it.  Any other time God would have absolutely loved the dramatic show of striking a rock to make water come out.  But this time he was feeling kind of dickish, which he did a lot in the OT.  In fact, he was pissed off more than not back then, killing babies and raining shitstorms down on nations and worlds.  Hell, he even rained a pretty decent shitstorm down on his own follower, Job just to win a bet with Satan, who apparently could walk right up to God and talk to him any time he liked, even though Hell is “to be separated from God”…somehow…  Hey, just because Satan was cast into Hell to be separated from God doesn’t mean they can’t still hang out, right?

So, yes, maybe OT God does, indeed, hate fags.  Maybe he wouldn’t even have a problem using a hateful slur to describe people he created, many of whom have known they were gay since puberty, suggesting it is, indeed, an inborn trait.  But Jesus sure as hell wouldn’t have anything to do with such hate mongers.  And even OT God wouldn’t have anything to do with liars.  He once killed a man for putting his hand on the Arc of the Covenant to keep it from falling to the ground for the love of his God.  If he kills a man for breaking a rule out of love for his artifact he certainly wouldn’t have nice things to say about someone who thinks so little of him that they believe they have to lie about him to make him interesting enough to talk about.

So, I guess the good people at the WBC are actually militant Jews.  To be Christian is to be Christ-like and they’re certainly nothing like Christ.  No, they’re more like OT God, the Great Desert Dick, as I’m sure he was known in the day.  Of course, that’s assuming he was known at all.  You would think Egypt would remember him in their long history.  Yet amongst the pyramids, statues and Sphinxes there is not one depiction of frogs falling from the sky, the death of every firstborn male child, the Nile turning into blood, boils covering all the people of Egypt or any of the other ridiculous things which are claimed to have happened but which all other sources of history conveniently seem to have forgotten.

I certainly can’t argue that the members of the WBC aren’t like that guy.  And that’s the problem with having a bipolar god.  There’s a mood to match any kindness or hatred you want to spread across the world.  You’re the same person you would be without a god because you shape your god to what you want it to be.  You hate gays?  How convenient that your god hates them more.  You have to lie to people to fill the pews?  How convenient that your god doesn’t mind.  You want to help the poor?  Good news!  That’s EXACTLY what your god wants you to do!  You want to kill people who aren’t like you?  Excellent!  Because that’s exactly what your god wants you to do now!  God seems to want so many things incompatible with many of the other things he wants.

People think they are bending to God’s will.  In reality they are building a god around their own will, the way people have always done.  It’s the nature of all the gods people have ever worshiped.  Those who worship weakly custom build their god to be exactly what they want.  Those who worship strongly are, themselves, weak, bending to the will of the people who tell them what their god wants from them.  The stronger the worship, the weaker the person.  And the louder the ranting, the dimmer the mind.  I would love to see IQ tests for the members of the WBC.  I bet the scores would give me a real chuckle.