Out of God's Closet

Does God Exist?

Believers need no proof of God's existence. However, they do offer a lot of emotion based "proofs" that fail to survive close analysis. The strongest and most lasting proof of God's existence is/was the causality proof offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. It turns out that this "proof" that the Catholic Church taught for centuries is based squarely on a gratuitous assumption by St. Thomas. In law as in logic, what is gratuitously assumed can be gratuitously denied.

[Length 18:14 mins. | File Size = 16.7 MB]

Read the Bible The Bible's Book of Genesis states very simply that "In the beginning God created..." Without any to-do God is just presumed, and that's that. Backing up centuries, now join the tired middle eastern camel drivers around the campfire. Trabadours of the various intersecting traveling groups compete to entertain, educate, and boast that 'our heroes and our gods are greater than yours.' Over time, by way of syncretism or a natural synthesis of belief systems, the Jews came to believe that they had only one god and he was the greatest.

[Length 16: 01 mins. | File Size = 14.7 MB]

Is Religion harmful to society?

Charles Dickens wrote that missionaries are nuisances that leave places worse than they found them. Mother Theresa seemed to serve the overcrowded slums of Calcutta while forbidding the use of condoms that could have brought real relief. Presidents and dictators abuse their power when they represent their gods. Multitudes of sects, cults, religions brainwash the young and create hateful and murderous divisions in society. Insofar as religion is anti-scientific, it tends to allow mental laziness.

[Length 18: 01 mins. | File Size = 17 MB]

Historic God of wars and divisions

Joshua, King David, Constantine, Mohammad, the Popes of the Crusades, Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Bush and many more got greatly increased killing power by calling on their God. Jihads continue in America as the Eric Rudolphs and the Army of God kill adults and destroy abortion clinics. Some of the thousands of religions split and multiply even further as one side accepts homosexuals and the other insists those disagreeing believers should go to hell. Other old customs hang on and need re-evaluated.

[Length 21:04 mins. | File Size = 19.4 MB]

Modern young minds polluted by religion

Good teachers instill curiosity about facts; religion teachers demand rote memorization of past beliefs, manipulative catch phrases. The Rosary remains a very powerful tool for the new evangelization of the Catholic Church, so Dr. Uhl gives full details of how to pray the Rosary. The official Roman Ritual makes clear that the Church still believes the devil can take possession of a human being. A more modern young minister teaches youngsters there are dogs in heaven, no toilets though, and 'maybe God has a beard.'

[Length 18 mins. | File Size = 16.5 MB]

Credulity impedes creative research

Believers who abhor stem cell research and therapeutic cloning insist that a zygote of two or four cells is a human being. This dogmatic stance currently impedes proper funding of researchers who leave U.S. to get foreign funding for their important work. Currently the obstructive conservative stance reflects majority opinion. Galileo, Copernicus and Newton were in small minorities and paid dearly for it. Domestic terror in modern U.S. still obstructs science and human happiness in the name of God.

[Length 20:22 mins. | File Size = 18 MB]

Chapter five: Guilt and responsibility

Religious guilt and a sense of personal lowliness (without god's grace) undermine self-esteem. A sense of dependency, then, weakens a person's conviction that he is responsible for all of his deliberate actions. Though preachers claim that self-responsibility is a high virtue, they teach that lowly sinners are saved through free grace from God rather than good works. Such a silly stance readily produces the attitude that God will provide for my lowliness and bail me out of my tough spots.

[Length 20:29 mins. | File Size = 19 MB]

How to protect the children

Parents are powerful in forming youngsters' prejudices (pre-rational judgments). A lie, a piece of misinformation, a superstition, an unreasonable religious mystery, even an outdated family custom planted in the defenseless child's mind as factual is abusive. If every single family tradition is passed on as culture, unimproved, to the children, they will be just as prejudiced and handicapped as the older generation. The most important of the big ten commandments for parents is "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

[Length mins. 20:27 | File Size = 19 MB]

Chapter six: Faith Can lead to Extremes

St. Paul said faith exceeds all understanding. A half century ago the faith of McCarthyism concluded that "extremism in the defense of virtue is no vice." When such a faith quickly led to the obvious destruction of human rights, people lost their faith in Joe McCarthy's unreason. Religion's much longer traditions cannot be so easily cleansed from society. Watch the articulate Franklin Graham continue the influential messages of his political genius father, Billy Graham. Religion will remain an opiate for many.

[Length 16:33 mins. | File Size = 15 MB]

Repeated fallacies become believable

You can fool some of the people all of the time, so myths that are repeated often enough can become culturally acceptable. This helps explain how bumper sticker "truths," like "In God We Trust" and "One Nation Under God" tend to supernaturalize patriotism. Politicians, following the crowd, appear to accept the popular myths. This often leads to unconstitutional extremes that threaten the Jeffersonian wall of separation of Church and State.

[Length 13:24 mins. | File Size = 12 MB]