Author Archives: Neil

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 2: Prayer works.

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CaptureThe Bishop of Honolulu, Larry Silva, is upset. He wants true believers to pray away the gay. He’d really like God to stop same-sex marriage from coming to Hawaii. And prayer is the answer, because, without it, God might not be inclined to bother himself.

It worked so well in the UK. Groups of Christians muttering about abomination, sin and damnation petitioned God to stop equality from happening here too. Which is why, last month, the same-sex marriage bill passed into law.

So what went wrong?

According to those who know God better than the rest of us, he’s pretty uncool about the gay (Leviticus 20:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 etc) so we might wonder why he didn’t just veto same-sex marriage and have done with it. Maybe, though, he couldn’t be trusted to do the Right Thing, and needed reminding, by the most fallible of human beings, of what it was he was required to do.

Still he didn’t take the hint and even though they told him, God decided in the end – or maybe it was In The Beginning – not to bother preventing same-sex marriage in the UK and in other parts of the world.

So what does this tell us about all those unanswered prayers Christians sent heavenward? There are four possible explanations of why they failed miserably.

Either:

1. God has other plans. Namely, he wants to use same-sex marriage to bring about the End Times (yes, really).

2. The faithful didn’t pray hard enough, – though why intensity of prayer should have any bearing on whether God decides to grant petitions is never explained. Be that as it may, on this occasion Christians just didn’t pray with sufficient feeling to persuade their Heavenly Father to buy them the chocolate bar at the check-out er… prevent gay marriage. (Yes, it’s completely nonsensical, but I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here).

3. God doesn’t give two hoots about human politics, institutions, social arrangements… and has no interest in who marries who.

Or,

4. God doesn’t actually exist. How else to explain his unresponsiveness, his perpetual invisibility, his total absence from any sphere of existence outside human imagination?

Whichever alternative applies in this scenario – and let’s be honest, there are no others – it is evident that prayer doesn’t work in the way Jesus said it would (Matthew 18.19, John 14.13 &16.23). Not even the most devout Christians can get it to, demonstrating emphatically that, actually, it doesn’t work at all.

So good luck, Bishop Silva. Looks like we can expect to see same-sex marriage in Hawaii some time soon.

New series: Christians’ favourite delusions!

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Number 1. My version of Christianity is the only true version

GodHates

It’s very easy for the believer to convince himself that his particular set of beliefs is the Absolute Truth and that this Truth needs defending from the ‘man-centred’ philosophies and heresies that threaten his false security. He is compelled to declare to the ever-contracting walls of his make-shift reality, ‘there’s only one Truth: mine!’

There are 34,000 different, distinct churches, groups and sects within Christianity, all claiming that they alone possess the absolute Truth. Their insistence that only their doctrines are based on ‘inerrant’ scripture demonstrates just how imprecise and wide-open to interpretation ‘God’s Word’ is. Take a look at Possessing The Treasure, Apprising Ministries and Slaughter Of The Sheep for a flavour of the delicious in-fighting. And don’t forget the Westboro Baptist Church, whose repellant views I’ve added to the picture above. These are, according to the church’s website, all Biblically based.

To the outsider, all Christian groups – from evangelicals and Roman Catholics, to Methodists and Baptists – differ very little. They all believe fantastic, unsubstantiated ideas so that their arguments between themselves are no different from disputes about whether the tooth-fairy wears a pink dress or a green one. What they don’t seem to realise is that it’s irrelevant what she wears when she doesn’t exist.

The one thing that all dissenting groups do appear to agree on, however, is that the more demanding and unpalatable aspects of Jesus’ teaching should be ignored. Instead of trashing each other, Christians might set about selling all they have and giving to the poor, just like their leader told them to. That, and not petty doctrinal squabbles loosely based on books of the Bible, many of which we know to be forged, would be real Christian living.

Jesus’ false promises

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I'llBeBackIf Jesus was the Son of God, or maybe God himself, as Christians like to claim, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see his promises come true.  After all, if God says he’ll do something, we should expect to see it happen… shouldn’t we?

The fact is, though, that so many of Jesus’ promises have turned out to be false. They haven’t materialised in the time-frame Jesus set for them. Here are just five that turned out to be a complete let down:

1) I’ll be back…

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels… I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom. (Matthew 16:27-28) 

Just in case we don’t get this the first time, he tells us again in Matthew 24:27, 30-31, 34 and Luke 21:27-28, 33-34, while ‘Saint’ Paul peddles the same nonsense in 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17 and 1 Corinthians 15.51-52. Did JC return with the angelic host for company to establish God’s kingdom on Earth before his disciples died? Nope,’fraid not.

2) Anything I can do…

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14.12)

Do we see Christians walking on water? Changing water into wine? Raising the dead? Doing feats even more remarkable than these? We should, if Jesus is telling the truth here. I guess the fact we don’t means this is another fib.

3) Ask and it’s yours…

I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14.13)

Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. (John 16.23)

Does he? When Christians ask of him, does he always provide what they ask, as he says he will here and again in Matthew 18.19? Absolutely not, which is why Christians like to tell us God’s answer to prayer is often ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ or ‘in a while’. But that’s not what Jesus says here; looks like he got it wrong again.

4) Signs and wonders…

These signs will accompany those who believe: …they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover’ (Mark 16.17).

Clearly, this why we’ve had no need for medicine or hospitals these last two thousand years. The Christians have been taking care of it all. Or perhaps not.

5) God will provide…

Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” But strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6.25-7.1)

Which is why true believers don’t need to go out to work to earn money to provide for themselves or their family. Everything they need, the good Lord provides – so long as they ‘strive’ for the kingdom, whatever that entails. Except no amount of chasing the Kingdom of God is going to manifest food and clothing. Jesus must know this because he acknowledges in Matthew 25 that there are people who are hungry, thirsty and without clothes. So why doesn’t God provide for them? It must be that they don’t strive strenuously enough for the Kingdom.

The gospels are full of these empty promises of Jesus’. He fails to deliver on every one, even for those who worship him as God. How would we react if a supposed friend lied to us as often as Jesus does? If we’d any sense, we’d recognise them as a fraud and a failure and send them packing.

Time to do the same to this old con-artist.

Throwing stones

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WomanNew laws in Putin’s Russia have seen a wave of persecution directed at gay people. Christian websites have been quick to condemn the torture, beatings and murders that have taken place in recent weeks, pointing out that this isn’t the way to treat others (Matthew 7.12) or to show love for one’s neighbour (Mark 12.31) or to support a minority group (Matthew 25.45).

Oops. I interrupt this post for a reality check.

Needless to say, no Christian website has done this. Some have come out in support of Russia’s punitive new laws, because – well – God hates all that gay stuff, and, as we know, the odd Bible verse that grumbles about it trumps anything Jesus had to say about being nice to each another. Other Christian sites have ignored the subject entirely.

Our very own Christian Voice, while avoiding any mention of the Russian situation, has posted yet another anti-gay piece. Two thirds of their posts are on the subject, because this is what ‘the gospel’ is really all about. Upset that same-sex marriage is now law – even though they prayed really, really hard to the baby Jesus to stop it – Stephen Green’s sidekick, Robin (had to be really) points out that our bodies matter and, though it will come as some surprise to them, gay people don’t understand this.

You can read the full thing here, where you’ll note C.V. tries to avoid the word ‘gay’ and always puts inverted commas around same-sex ‘marriage’; pathetic doesn’t even begin to describe it .

I’ve attempted to comment on the article on the Christian Voice site, but so insecure are the dynamic duo in their faith, they can’t bring themselves to publish dissenting views. So here, with some slight amendment, are the points I made:

Oh, if only those pesky homosexuals were more like heterosexuals – always monogamous, faithful and never divorcing or remarrying.

If only all gay people were Christians, then the morality you espouse – but which not all Christians live by – might apply to them. As it is, it doesn’t.

If only they could have an encounter with Jesus then they’d be cured of their same-sex attraction.

If only there was some proof of this magical cure or that homosexuals need to be ‘cured’ in the first place.

If only gay people could be celibate, because that worked out so well for the Catholic Church.

If only they’d marry a person of the opposite sex and involve them in living a lie.

These are the options. So what is it you want homosexuals to do, Robin?

What indeed? I suspect he and the other Christians who rant about gay people would be happy only if they disappeared from the face of the Earth or if the great Jehovah were to smite them out of existence. What so many Christians seem unable to do is accept and show the love to their gay brothers and sisters that Jesus demands of them.

Morality Tale

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Preaches   A man who believes in the impossible – and it is a man more often than not – appears as a moral authority every morning on national BBC radio. This same man is frequently asked by television networks to give his views on moral issues of the day, be they assisted suicide, pay-day loans, same-sex marriage & adoption, abortion or capitalism. And even when he hasn’t been asked, the views he expresses on these subjects are widely reported, sometimes all around the world. The man can, in one of his roles, sit in the second most important legislative body of the land, again as a moral authority, influencing laws that are binding on everyone else whether they believe in the impossible or not. Indeed, the man has an automatic, unelected right to be part of this august body.

   Where, you might ask, does this man’s moral authority come form? Is he a psychologist with a profound understanding of human behaviour? Or a geneticist with knowledge of the biological bases of our decision making? Maybe a philosopher who has analysed the cognitive processes that lead to moral decisions? An ordinary, educated person, then, who has given much rational thought to how we might best treat one another?

   No, he’s none of these. He’s just a man who believes in the impossible and wears funny clothes to prove it. Invariably, it is true, he has become quite an expert in believing the impossible and he’s even been granted a special place in society that allows him to encourage others to believe the impossible. As a result, he has somehow made the leap into thinking that, because he believes in the impossible, he must therefore be a moral authority.

   Now, we may not object to the man believing in the impossible in the first place – it’s a free country after all – but we don’t accept, surely, that because he does, it means he knows much more than the rest of us about morality?

   Yes, I’m sorry to report that we do. We acquiesce to the man and say ‘because you believe in the impossible, and for no other reason, you must know more about morality than we do.’ And when we are looking for moral guidance, we turn to him – whether we are the BBC, the rest of the media or the government – and we say, ‘what do you say about this? What should we think about it, because, after all, you are the authority here by virtue of the fact that you believe in the impossible?’ And the man, in whatever guise he appears – pope, archbishop, bishop, reverend, imam, rabbi – says, ‘this is what it says in my magic book (even when it doesn’t) and you should follow it, even though you might not believe in either the magic book or in the impossible.

   And we say, ‘Well, you’re the expert and we respect that you should tell us how to behave, if for no other reason than you believe in the impossible.’

Who is the Pope to judge?

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CoverSnip2I hope all you gay people out there are feeling mighty grateful to Pope Francis who this week had this to say about you:

“They say they exist. If someone is gay, who searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?” he added. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society.”

His words were widely reported as reflecting a new found tolerance of gay people by the Catholic church, the world’s largest cult. Nonsense; what his words reflect is the same old intolerance, this time with a smile on its face. The Pope’s words are disingenuous (“they say they exist”), condescending and conditional (‘happy to have you around  – but only so long as you’re interested in the same superstition as me’).

What the media generally failed to report was that Frankie also ‘reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are a sin.’ Nor did most of it find it necessary to mention that ‘the official position of the Catholic Church on the issue is that while homosexual desires or attractions are not in themselves sinful, the physical acts are.’

This view, which is held by other Christians too, that gay people should forego all sexual fulfilment in their lives and deny themselves loving relationships, simply because these would, of necessity, be with a person of the same sex is not treating people as Christians themselves would like to be treated (Matthew 7.12). Would Christians be happy with an ‘acceptance’ that allowed them to believe whatever they wanted, provided they didn’t act upon it – church attendance, worship, hymn singing, prayer meetings and overt expressions of faith all disallowed?

I’m guessing not. And it is far more extreme to deny individuals something as integral to their identity as their sexuality, than it is to suppress the expression of a set of spurious beliefs.

What the Pope was actually trotting out yesterday was the same old ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ line. And there’s nothing remotely loving – or even biblical – about that. We are our behaviour, all of us, and are entitled to be loved (or not) for what we are, not in spite of it. If you can’t do that for another person, or group of people, then you’re not demonstrating love, whatever else you may be doing.

So, thanks Frankie, but no thanks. Until the Church you lead finds it in its heart to demonstrate real, unconditional love, your ‘tolerance’ is nothing more than an insulting irrelevance.

Why I could never be a Christian

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RidiculousIn Through The Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll has the White Queen boast that in her youth she could believe ‘six impossible things before breakfast’. Pfa! Only six? Today’s Christian can beat that with ease, and not only before breakfast!

To be a Christian you must accept through faith, and contrary to the evidence, that:

  • there is a reality above and beyond nature wherein exist angels, archangels, devils, demons, principalities (whatever they are), spirits (holy and otherwise) and God himself;

  • virgins can conceive and give birth;

  • a man who died 2,000 years ago is still alive;

  • this man could, when he lived, defy gravity; control the weather; sweat blood; reanimate corpses (his own included); pass through solid objects and project himself into space;

  • an intangible part of everyone survives death;

  • believing in a magic formula (‘Christ died for me’ or similar) leads to eternal life;

  • after death, believers will live again in an improved copy of the body they had when alive;

  • God reversed the laws on which the universe operates to make all of this possible, because he wanted to sacrifice a part of himself to himself;

  • he can do this because he is God;

  • he prompted men to explain his plan in a special book;

  • all you have to do to live forever is believe this book is true.

In addition to ‘essential’ beliefs like these, there are still more that Christians choose to accept on faith, add-ons that Christians are invited to see as the underpinning of ‘important’ doctrines. While not absolutely crucial, they are recommended as a means of adhering to (uncorroborated) biblical truth. Consequently, we find Christians who believe that:

  • God created the universe 6,000 years ago (because this is the time-scale that can be calculated from the Bible’s genealogies);

  • dinosaurs and humans co-existed (because this must be the case if the creation stories in Genesis are literally true);

  • evolution didn’t happen; God created the Earth and everything on it in just six days.

  • reality can be changed by the simple expedient of asking God to change it (prayer);

  • God directly controls the weather (omnipotence/divine irritability);

  • Jesus is coming back – with a selection of scenarios available to true believers about what this will be like (the second coming);

  • all unbelievers will be consigned to hell / oblivion / annihilation: again, take your pick (judgement).

There is not one scrap of evidence outside the special book that any of these items of faith are true. None is verifiable, and consequently none has ever been verified (accounts written inter-dependently fifty years after the alleged miracle-man lived don’t count).

There is, on the other hand, overwhelming evidence that virgins don’t conceive; that there is no agency behind the weather and natural disasters; that nothing of an individual’s self survives death and that dead bodies stay dead. This has always been the case and always will be. It was how nature operated two thousand years ago when all of the ‘essential’ items of faith, invented by the kinds of mind that believed earthquakes and floods were deliberate acts of God, were gaining currency.

Though I once did, I can’t subscribe to any of these ridiculously ‘impossible things’ in the vain hope that I might live forever.

Can you?

Jesus Doesn’t Approve of One Man One Woman Marriage

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WeddingWhat does Jesus really have to say about marriage? It’s not what you think.

It is almost impossible to visit a Christian website these days and not find it making pronouncements about gay marriage, same-sex relationships and the ‘evil’ of homosexuality. Some, like Christian Voice, seem to think that the gospel is about nothing else. Elsewhere, Bishop John Quinn of Minnesota, a celibate, single male and thus an expert in matters matrimonial, writes that ‘from the beginning, the church has taught that marriage is a lifetime relationship between one man and one woman… It is a sacrament, instituted by Jesus Christ to provide the special graces that are needed to live according to God’s law and to give birth to the next generation”. Alas, the bishop doesn’t know his Bible, nor his Lord’s teaching. He is not alone in superimposing his own views of marriage on the Bible; it is a common practice among Christians today.

Should you be inclined to do so, you will once again search in vain either for Jesus ‘instituting’ modern marriage or for the early church promoting it. Those who claim he does usually cite Jesus’ apparent endorsement of Genesis 2.24 from Matthew 19.5-6:

“a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

In context, though, Jesus is actually discussing divorce, not marriage, and is making the point that Jewish law permits divorce only because men and women are weak. This prompts the disciples to observe that ‘if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry’, with which Jesus agrees, adding,

not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can. 

In other words, Jesus thinks it is better to be sexless than to marry, the better to pursue the interests of God’s Kingdom. He emphasises the point in Luke 20.34-35:

Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age [i.e. that of the Kingdom] and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 

This is even less ambiguous in its denigration of marriage; it is for this world only, for those who will not be part of the Kingdom, who will not survive death. Those who live in anticipation of the Kingdom, who would be resurrected from the dead, will have nothing to do with marriage in this life, as in the next. Far from ‘instituting’ marriage as Bishop Quinn claims, Jesus heralds the end of the institution.

The Kingdom, however, didn’t come when Jesus said it would. Newly formed groups of believers found themselves having to decide what to do about marriage in a world that was lasting longer than he’d promised. Consequently, ‘from the beginning’, the early church’s position was that marriage would do if believers couldn’t manage to control their sexual urges. But, Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 7.8-9, it is better to remain celibate and not to marry at all:

to the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practising self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

While it is true Paul assumes any marriage will be between a man and woman, this is hardly the ringing endorsement of marriage we might expect from the assertions of today’s Christians. For Paul, the leaders of the early church and Jesus himself there was no point to marrying when they lived in the end times. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, 7.28-29:

But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that. I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none…

Paul is not sanctioning marriage because he anticipated that any marriage could only be short-lived and traumatic; as he goes on to explain in 1 Corinthians 7.32-34, marriage is little more than a distraction from ‘the affairs of the Lord’. He is not therefore promoting ‘life long’ commitment in the sense Bishop Quinn, Christian Voice’s Stephen Green and Christians who don’t know their Bible claim, because those to whom Paul writes are not, in his view, going to continue in their existing lives for very much longer.

Above all, Jesus and Paul are most definitely not establishing rules for marriage for the rest of time, simply because, for them, there was no ‘rest of time’.

Same-sex marriage and Christian conscience

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PrinciplesThe Queen gave royal assent to same-sex marriage yesterday and the first such marriages are likely to take place next summer. The aspect of the bill that concerns me is that ‘religious organisations will have to “opt in” to offering weddings, with the Church of England and Church in Wales being banned in law from doing so.’ Even before the passing of bill there were already instances of religious individuals declining services to same-sex couples, including a Christian registrar who refused to conduct a civil ceremony on grounds of conscience.

Remarkably, given the tenuous nature of everything they believe, Christians insist they have the right to ‘live according to conscience’. What this means in practice is that in circumstances where they feel their God-given principles might be compromised, they are compelled to withhold their services from others, denying the rights of fellow human-beings.

By the same principle, however, everyone else must also have the right to live according to their own consciences. If we arrange society so that we don’t have to help, provide a service or care for those whose lifestyles or beliefs are contrary to our own, we end up with a society that operates only on exclusion. The hotel owners who exclude homosexual couples will be matched by gay hotel owners who don’t like Christians; Muslim shopkeepers who object to non-Muslims won’t have to serve them; vegan restaurateurs will, on principle, bar meat-eaters; atheist surgeons will be able to deny treatment to the religious. Such a society could not function because we would all, at some point, be excluded, while at others we would be those doing the excluding. Conscience-based rejection of others, taken to its logical conclusion, could only lead to the breakdown of civilised living, which is reliant on interdependency and mutual cooperation.

A comment posted on the Guardian’s web-site following the case of a Relate counsellor who refused to help homosexual couples neatly summarises the issue:

Gay men and women have been giving good service to bigots for years. We’ve been nursing you through your illnesses, clipping your tickets, treating your diseases, teaching your kids, entertaining you on telly, delivering your mail, waiting on your table, shooting your enemies and cooking your dinner; all this time without ever claiming the “right” not to serve you if you don’t happen to approve of us. It’s time some straights grew up and stopped whining.

There is nothing biblical about living according to ‘principles’ that demand others be ostracised. On the contrary, Jesus demands that his followers give unconditionally to anyone and everyone who asks and treat others as they themselves would wish to be treated (Luke 6.30, 31, 35).

Christians who claim they have a right to reject and exclude others ‘according to conscience’ would do well to consider how they would react if ‘principled’ gays, Muslims and atheists refused them the services they sometimes feel ‘conscience bound’ to refuse others.  What cries of ‘persecution’ there would be then!

Oh wait! There already are…

And another three things…

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Following on from last time’s post, here, below the picture, are some more points I hold to be true.Image

Human behaviour, not sin.
There is no such thing as sin and we don’t need God’s forgiveness for it. Sin is a Christian construct with no purchase in the real world. There is only human behaviour – good, bad and indifferent. Most of it is indifferent (or neutral if you like) including what consenting adults may do with each other sexually. Some of it is good, in the sense that it benefits others significantly; some of it is bad – evil even – because of the harm it causes others. None of it is offensive to God, because there isn’t a God, and none of it is forgiven by him for the same reason. We are moral or not, without the assistance of a God. This seems to me to be self-evident: if there is no God and yet we are capable of behaving morally then any goodness cannot come from him. Similarly, immoral behaviour, of which the religious are as capable as the rest of us, is also entirely human.

We can draw two conclusions from this:

  1. No sin = nothing to be saved from = no redemption.

  2. The Christian claim that because atheists don’t acknowledge God they have no grounds for behaving morally is demonstrably false. The golden rule of ‘do unto others…’ is of value to us as social animals, which is why it pre-dates Jesus by millennia. Non-believers are as capable of behaving morally as believers, and sometimes a darn-sight better.

It is impossible to know the future.
No-one can know the future. The same Christians who castigate scientists for not being there when the Earth came into existence, have the temerity to claim they know what will happen at some indeterminate time in the future. There will be, they tell us, an anti-Christ, a rapture and Jesus will return from Heaven. They cannot know this of course, even if their holy book seems to predict it. It too was created by human beings with no more ability to read the future as anyone else. People have long wished they could tell what the future holds, which is why fortune tellers, astrologers, priests who read auspices, oracles and prophets have been with us throughout history. They’ve never been right, except by chance, for the simple expedient that humans are not gifted with accurate foresight. Biblical prophecies are no exception and have already failed, as we’ll see in future postings.

(Scientists do of course predict what the consequences of certain actions might be, but scientific predictions are subject to amendment as more information becomes available and are always open to refutation. They are not in the same category as prophecies purportedly from a deity who doesn’t actually exist.)

We are all humanists.
We are all utterly reliant on other human beings, not God, to help us fulfil our needs. Believers do not turn to God when they are hungry, because if they did they would starve (in spite of what Jesus says in Matthew 6.25). They don’t turn to him when they are ill, but look to medical science to help them (yes, there are a small minority of extremists who, because of faith in God and the likes of Mark 16.18, let their children die. But most believers don’t; they have faith in other humans, in science and technology). Christians and believers of all stripes demonstrate their faith, not in God but in human endeavours every time they get dressed, put on spectacles, catch a bus, board a plane, buy a house, switch on a computer, television or oven, use a phone, listen to music, admire art and marvel at architecture. None of this is God-given, it is all human, and believers, whatever else they may claim, are all humanists at heart, having far more faith in the human than the divine.