Abraham, Father of Nations

I seem to remember that was the title of the article about Abraham that National Geographic ran some time ago. They said Abraham was a central character in Middle East folklore long before the Bible or the Koran was written, and that lots of different tribes claimed to be his descendants. They also said that he was probably a composite character because nobody could have done everything that he was supposed to have done in his lifetime, even if he lived more than a century as the Bible claims. It's possible that Abraham represents a whole tribe or clan that left Mesopotamia and struck out on its own.

I guess I got the idea of "organized Atheism" from all the lawsuits that have been filed over the years about keeping religion out of the government and the schools. I figured there must be something like the ACLU that was behind it all. I guess you're right, though, there isn't one big Atheist Church, just there isn't one big Deist Church. I usually call myself a "self styled Deist" just in case there really is a Deist Church somewhere that I wouldn't want to join. That's one thing I find attractive about Deism, you get to believe in God, but you don't have attend church, give them your money, or sing in the choir. By the way, you frequently refer to "the church", like there was only one. I know that the Catholics do that, but Protestants don't usually. Of course there's lots of churches in the world, and everybody who has similar beliefs to one or more them isn't necessarily a card carrying member. Some of them don't even keep track of their membership, the Muslims for one.

Unlike the members of some other religions, Deists do not claim to know exactly what God wants. Its all based on logical speculation. We start out with the "given" that God is the creator and supreme intelligent being of the universe. We then postulate that God can do anything He wants, so it is logical that everything He has made is what He wanted to make. Since everything changes over time, either spontaneously or in response to external influence, we surmise that must be what God wants it to do. Since humans have the ability to change things more than any other species, we figure that God must want us to do a lot of the changing. Of course, any god in his right mind would want us to change things for the better, not for the worse. Since God doesn't tell us what's better and what's worse, we suppose that He wants us to figure it for ourselves. The fact that people disagree about stuff like that is a problem. Thomas Paine, one of our Founding Fathers, believed that the best way to settle our differences was majority rule. That might have been true in 1776, but it doesn't work anymore because nowadays the majority is stupid. Of course, the minority is stupid too, so minority rule won't work either. So you see, we certainly don't claim to know all the answers, but we're working on it.