GOD LOVES ZAMBIA Ill be travelling to Zambia in a couple of weeks, so I thought I would do some research before I go. According to the respected Pew Research Center, in Zambia 92% of people believe God exists and have no doubts. The same figure in Japan is 4.3% and in Sweden is 10.2% and in Norway is 14.8%. So, as a nation, Zambia spends much, much more time (and money) worshipping God than these other nations. If God is real, we should expect to see Zambians achieve some benefits from all this prayer and worship and we should expect to see the countries that have turned their back on God suffer the consequences. Life expectancy in Zambia is 42.4 years. In Norway it is 80.2 years; in Sweden it is 80.9 years and in Japan it is 82.7 years. (Figures from United Nations; males and female, 2005-2010.) In fact, if we look at a range of well-being data from infant mortality to maternal mortality, to road deaths, even to crime rates, these non-religious countries do much, much better than Zambians. For example, in Zambia there are 1,422 road deaths annually per 100,000 motor vehicles; in Japan the figure is 6.8! (Data from World heath Organisation). All across Africa, the story is the same; extremely high rates of god belief correlate to desperately poor well-being figures. The data is screaming at us--there is no god or Zambians are worshipping the wrong god or God chooses not answer their prayers. One of those options has to be true. Here are some more facts. 1) Humans invent gods--theyve invented around 10,000 gods that we know of. 2) Humans tend to believe the god they were raised with is real and all the others are fake. 3) There is not a single piece of evidence that ANY of these gods are real. 4) The evidence shows that praying to gods does not help. So why do people believe? I have never found a good reason to believe. Every argument I have ever heard to justify believing in a god is logically flawed (and I have heard a lot of arguments). People believe because they are raised to believe and they find belief comforting and they know that disbelief would cause others to disapprove of them--most of us like to fit in. We are social and emotional animals and many of our beliefs are held for social and emotional reasons. But that can lead to us believing things that are not true and even to believing things that are harmful. It is time to move on.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 08:35:32 +0000
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