Why there is no Faith in Science

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that misunderstood concepts are expressed quite a lot in social media. The other day I saw a post of a witty cartoon showing how philosophy is still relevant to science. The cartoon, shown here, can be found at Completely serious Comics.

One commentator said the following, "We ALL do. It's just that those who hide behind science think they don't- i.e. that they are all reason, no faith. It reminds me of the know-it-all kid in class who says "well, Teacher agrees with ME!" lol"

Another commentator replied, and I'll paraphrase, that faith is unnecessary in science. In fact, faith is the opposite of science. To which, of course, the first commentator replied the following:

"You do have a faith, you just pretend to be above it all and made of pure reason. Put away your childishness and perhaps we could have a conversation on such an important topic. But I don't joust with snobs..."

Naturally, I had to chime in. My reply is below.

Philosophy =/= faith. the philosophical ground work of science relies in observation and logic grounded in some assumptions.
The assumptions are that there IS a physical universe, that we can learn things about the universe and finally, that explanations that predicts future observations are superior to explanations that do not.

Now, saying all of that, science is a method of decreasing uncertainty, not a method for "absolute" truth. After all, "absolute" truth is still an unanswered philosophical question. The great thing about science is that it is not a belief system. It is a way to explain the physical universe. that distinction is important because explanations can be abandoned if needed for better ones (see last assumption above).

A case in point is gravity. Various cultures had various myths as to why things fell to Earth. Sometimes fairies were involved, at other times it was a deity of some sort. Along comes Sir Isaac Newton. He develops a theory that gravity is a force of attraction between two objects. His theory predicted that a body moving at a certain velocity can balance with the force of gravity creating an orbit. However, his equations showed that the orbits would be unstable and thus it must be the hand of God that corrected the minor discrepancies.

A few decades later, a French mathematician named Pierre Laplace refined the equations and showed how the Solar system is stable all by itself. When asked by Napoleon as to why there is no mention of a creator in his model, Laplace answered, "I had no need of that hypothesis." In other words, deities and fairies were not necessary, the natural forces did it all by themselves.

And here's the kicker: They were BOTH wrong. Gravity is not a force (at least not in the conventional sense), it is a curve in the space-time continuum. Imagine a bowling ball on a foam mattress. That is a good visualization of gravity. This theory of gravity is Einsteins. Why is it better? First let me back up just a little. Einstein's theory of gravity is incredibly complex from a mathematical point of view. In fact, if his theory were developed first, the work of Newton and Laplace would probably be replicated as just a short cut because their equations are much simpler for everyday mathematics! So why are they still "wrong"? Einstein's theory predicts more phenomena. One such phenomenon is that gravity will bend light. This has been observed during solar eclipses. But perhaps some day Einstein's theory will lose out to an even more precise and predictive model. or maybe not. But how exciting will it be if it is so!

As you can see, faith isn't necessary. Now, no one pointed this out, but one could counter that holding the assumptions are done in faith. No. They are assumptions, not beliefs. The assumptions I pointed out are made for the sole purpose of just getting on with it. If better assumptions come along that improve the scientific process, then the old ones will be thrown out and the new ones accepted. We make those assumptions because they are useful, and keep them only as long as they are useful. A faith-based belief is something often adhered to in spite of contrary evidence. Often the belief is handed down by authorities that cannot be questioned, not experts who gained that title through being rigorously questioned.

A Rebuttal to "Is Jesus a Myth" from gotquestions.org

This article was sent to me and I will respond to it as I have other articles.  The original will be in plain type, and my comments will be in red.

The original article can be found at: 

http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-myth.html#.VIZYf0d_zGg.facebook

I last accessed it on 12 December 2014

Question: "Is Jesus a myth? Is Jesus just a copy of the pagan gods of other ancient religions?"

Answer: There are a number of people claiming that the accounts of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament are simply myths borrowed from pagan folklore, such as the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, and Mithras. The claim is that these myths are essentially the same story as the New Testament’s narrative of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. As Dan Brown claims in The Da Vinci Code, “Nothing in Christianity is original.”

To discover the truth about the claim that the Gospel writers borrowed from mythology, it is important to (1) unearth the history behind the assertions, (2) examine the actual portrayals of the false gods being compared to Christ, (3) expose any logical fallacies being made, and (4) look at why the New Testament Gospels are trustworthy depictions of the true and historical Jesus Christ.

The claim that Jesus was a myth or an exaggeration originated in the writings of liberal German theologians in the nineteenth century. To be fair, this ONLY applies to Christians.  Congregants of other religions already held Jesus to be a myth or at least claims of his divinity as such. They essentially said that Jesus was nothing more than a copy of popular dying-and-rising fertility gods in various places—Tammuz in Mesopotamia, Adonis in Syria, Attis in Asia Minor, and Horus in Egypt. Of note is the fact that none of the books containing these theories were taken seriously by the academics of the day. The assertion that Jesus was a recycled Tammuz, for example, was investigated by contemporary scholars and determined to be completely baseless. It has only been recently that these assertions have been resurrected, primarily due to the rise of the Internet and the mass distribution of information from unaccountable sources.

This leads us to the next area of investigation—do the mythological gods of antiquity really mirror the person of Jesus Christ? As an example, the Zeitgeist movie makes these claims about the Egyptian god Horus:

• He was born on December 25 of a virgin: Isis Mary
• A star in the East proclaimed his arrival
• Three kings came to adore the newborn “savior”
• He became a child prodigy teacher at age 12
• At age 30 he was “baptized” and began a “ministry”
• Horus had twelve “disciples”
• Horus was betrayed
• He was crucified
• He was buried for three days
• He was resurrected after three days

However, when the actual writings about Horus are competently examined, this is what we find:

• Horus was born to Isis; there is no mention in history of her being called “Mary.” Moreover, “Mary” is our Anglicized form of her real name, Miryam or Miriam. “Mary” was not even used in the original texts of Scripture.
• Isis was not a virgin; she was the widow of Osiris and conceived Horus with Osiris.
• Horus was born during month of Khoiak (Oct/Nov), not December 25. Further, there is no mention in the Bible as to Christ’s actual birth date.
• There is no record of three kings visiting Horus at his birth. The Bible never states the actual number of magi that came to see Christ.
• Horus is not a “savior” in any way; he did not die for anyone.
• There are no accounts of Horus being a teacher at the age of 12.
• Horus was not “baptized.” The only account of Horus that involves water is one story where Horus is torn to pieces, with Isis requesting the crocodile god to fish him out of the water.
• Horus did not have a “ministry.”
• Horus did not have 12 disciples. According to the Horus accounts, Horus had four demigods that followed him, and there are some indications of 16 human followers and an unknown number of blacksmiths that went into battle with him.
• There is no account of Horus being betrayed by a friend.
• Horus did not die by crucifixion. There are various accounts of Horus’ death, but none of them involve crucifixion.
• There is no account of Horus being buried for three days.
• Horus was not resurrected. There is no account of Horus coming out of the grave with the body he went in with. Some accounts have Horus/Osiris being brought back to life by Isis and then becoming the lord of the underworld.

When compared side by side, Jesus and Horus bear little, if any, resemblance to one another.

Jesus is also compared to Mithras by those claiming that Jesus Christ is a myth. All the above descriptions of Horus are applied to Mithras (e.g., born of a virgin, being crucified, rising in three days, etc.). But what does the Mithras myth actually say?

• He was born out of a solid rock, not from any woman.
• He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithras killed the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.
• Mithras’s birth was celebrated on December 25, along with winter solstice.
• There is no mention of his being a great teacher.
• There is no mention of Mithras having 12 disciples. The idea that Mithras had 12 disciples may have come from a mural in which Mithras is surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac.
• Mithras had no bodily resurrection. Rather, when Mithras completed his earthly mission, he was taken to paradise in a chariot, alive and well. The early Christian writer Tertullian did write about Mithraic cultists re-enacting resurrection scenes, but this occurred well after New Testament times, so if any copycatting was done, it was Mithraism copying Christianity.

More examples can be given of Krishna, Attis, Dionysus, and other mythological gods, but the result is the same. In the end, the historical Jesus portrayed in the Bible is unique. The alleged similarities of Jesus’ story to pagan myths are greatly exaggerated. Further, while tales of Horus, Mithras, and others pre-date Christianity, there is very little historical record of the pre-Christian beliefs of those religions. The vast majority of the earliest writings of these religions date from the third and fourth centuries A.D. To assume that the pre-Christian beliefs of these religions (of which there is no record) were identical to their post-Christian beliefs is naive. It is more logical to attribute any similarities between these religions and Christianity to the religions’ copying Christian teaching about Jesus.

While the Jesus myth is not exactly like any other tradition, they often share similarities in certain aspects.  The above shows that this essay is written for an audience of believers and not for skeptics.  A skeptic will read this and ask, "what is more likely, that there is this Demigod named Jesus who share some similarities to various other deity-figures as a matter of coincidence, or is it that the tradition of the Jesus myth is a conglomeration of other myths mixed into some original ideas?" 

This leads us to the next area to examine: the logical fallacies committed by those claiming that Christianity borrowed from pagan mystery religions. We’ll consider two fallacies in particular: the fallacy of the false cause and the terminological fallacy.

If one thing precedes another, some conclude that the first thing must have caused the second. This is the fallacy of the false cause. A rooster may crow before the sunrise every morning, but that does not mean the rooster causes the sun to rise. Even if pre-Christian accounts of mythological gods closely resembled Christ (and they do not), it does not mean they caused the Gospel writers to invent a false Jesus. Making such a claim is akin to saying the TV series Star Trek caused the NASA Space Shuttle program.

The terminological fallacy occurs when words are redefined to prove a point. There is no such thing as a terminological fallacy.  The only references to it are found in other christian blogs.  The proper fallacy is the definitional fallacy and that fallacy covers any misuse of definition, including tailoring a definition to fit a particular stance. The author does just this when he begins talking about ministries.   For example, the Zeitgeist movie says that Horus “began his ministry,” but the word ministry is being redefined. Horus had no actual “ministry”—nothing like that of Christ’s ministry. Those claiming a link between Mithras and Jesus talk about the “baptism” that initiated prospects into the Mithras cult, but what was it actually? Mithraic priests would place initiates into a pit, suspend a bull over the pit, and slit the bull’s stomach, covering the initiates in blood and gore. Such a practice bears no resemblance whatsoever to Christian baptism—a person going under water (symbolizing the death of Christ) and then coming back out of the water (symbolizing Christ’s resurrection). But advocates of a mythological Jesus deceptively use the same term, “baptism,” to describe both rites in hopes of linking the two.  And the author commits his own "terminological fallacy" by defining baptism to mean a very specific (and Christian) meaning.  Baptism is the Christian name for a sacred washing of the body, which is a religious rite that is shared by other religions.  They just have different names for it. In the English language, baptism can mean more than just a Christian rite.

This brings us to the subject of the truthfulness of the New Testament. No other work of antiquity has more evidence to its historical veracity than the New Testament. This is also not true.  The lost city of Troy was found by Heinrich Schielmann when he followed the clues in the Illiad.  Also, the writings of Heroditus, while biased, are mostly based in fact. The writings of Plato, more specifically the trial of Socrates, has been covered by other authors contemporary to Socrates, thus giving credence to his existence. These are just two instances that I could recall off of the top of my head.  A google search, or better yet, a google:scholar search will turn up many more historical writings that predate the bible, and even more that predate the new testament.    The New Testament has more writers (nine), better writers, and earlier writers than any other document from that era.  I think students of philosophy, and literature would disagree with this statement.  Some of the most influential Roman philosophers were from this period.  Lucretius, Seneca the Younger, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius are still studied in philosophy classes today.  In literature, there is Julius Caesar, Seneca the Elder, Philo, Pliny, Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Pliny the Younger. No serious literati would regard the works in the bible more elegant than the literary authors listed above.  No philosopher would consider biblical works of a greater philosophical value than the philosophers listed above. Further, history testifies that these writers went to their deaths claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead. While some may die for a lie they think is true, no person dies for a lie he knows to be false. Think about it—if someone was about to crucify you upside down, as happened to the apostle Peter, and all you had to do to save your life was renounce a lie you had knowingly told, what would you do? This presupposes that those in question knew it was a lie.  The terrorists of the Twin Towers knew that Alah would reward them.  The followers of Jim Jones knew they would die with the kool aid.  So, yes, people die and kill each other because of belief all the time.  This is the reason that militant atheists are against religion in general: If you can convince people that they are inherently evil and only your invisible friend has the cure for that, you can convince them of almost anything.  Islam, Christianity, even Buddhism does this.  The main difference between the three is that Islam and Christianity are founded on the belief in an omnibenevolent god that has the temperament of a spoiled, bloodthirsty sociopath, and in Buddhism there is no god save for a cosmic Karma that metes out rewards and punishment through reincarnation.

In addition, history has shown that it takes at least two generations to pass before myth can enter a historical account. That’s because, as long as there are eyewitnesses to an event, errors can be refuted and mythical embellishments can be exposed. All the Gospels of the New Testament were written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, with some of Paul’s Epistles being written as early as A.D. 50. Paul directly appeals to contemporary eyewitnesses to verify his testimony (1 Corinthians 15:6).

Eyewitnesses to what?  All of the books in the New Testament were written well after the supposed death of Jesus.  What the author ignores is that for one, eyewitness accounts are very unreliable immediately after an event, let alone years after the fact. Also, the author is pulling a little dishonest trickery here.  The bible verse he quotes is indeed from Paul, but it is Paul quoting from some earlier "scriptures" that Jesus appeared before 500 people. The truth is that there are several differing accounts as to whom and how many Jesus exposed himself to after his three-day nap.

The New Testament attests to the fact that, in the first century, Jesus was not mistaken for any other god. When Paul preached in Athens, the elite thinkers of that city said, “‘He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,’—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean’” (Acts 17:18–20, NASB). Clearly, if Paul were simply rehashing stories of other gods, the Athenians would not have referred to his doctrine as a “new” and “strange” teaching. If dying-and-rising gods were plentiful in the first century, why, when the apostle Paul preached Jesus rising from the dead, did the Epicureans and Stoics not remark, “Ah, just like Horus and Mithras”?

In conclusion, the claim that Jesus is a copy of mythological gods originated with authors whose works have been discounted by academia, contain logical fallacies, and cannot compare to the New Testament Gospels, which have withstood nearly 2,000 years of intense scrutiny. The alleged parallels between Jesus and other gods disappear when the original myths are examined. The Jesus-is-a-myth theory relies on selective descriptions, redefined words, and false assumptions.

Jesus Christ is unique in history, with His voice rising above all false gods’ as He asks the question that ultimately determines a person’s eternal destiny: “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15).

There are scholarly works that counter many of the claims throughout this paper, and scholarly works that agree with the claims throughout this essay.  But, that is theology, which presupposes that there is a deity, or deities, of some kind    In order for theology to have any meaning, the supernatural, anything supernatural, must first be demonstrated. 

To argue that the new testament is true because it isn't exactly like other mythologies is a mistake in reasoning.  By showing that the new testament is different than other mythologies shows only that the new testament is different from those myths.  One cannot point to the new testament, or any bible, or religious work and say "see it is true because it says it is true!"  This is the very definition of circular reasoning.

This whole essay is written for a theistic argument, by the fact that a godhead is presupposed.  In  the philosophy of religion such a presupposition is laughable as it is unsupportable since it is based in a fallacy.  If this essay was written with the skeptic in mind, a more logical approach would have been taken. 

To me, the whole issue of the bible being close to other mythologies or not is an intellectual curiosity at best, and a waste of time at worst.  In a debate on the existence of a godhead, the mythological argument is a red herring.  It adds no evidence to the possibility of a god or not.

Faith in God IS a Crutch

This article was sent to me after I said that faith, at best is a crutch.  The original article can be found at gotquestions.org.  In the usual fashion, I will put the article here as it appeared on 01 January 2015, and my comments will be in red ink.

Question: "Is faith in God a crutch?"

Answer:Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, once said, “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.” Agreeing with him is pornographer Larry Flynt, who commented, “There's nothing good I can say about it [religion]. People use it as a crutch.” Ted Turner once simply said, "Christianity is a religion for losers!" Ventura, Flynt, Turner, and others who think like them view Christians as being emotionally feeble and in need of imaginary support to get through life. Their insinuation is that they themselves are strong and in no need of a supposed God to help them with their lives.

Such statements bring a number of questions: Where did such thinking start? Is there any truth to it? And how does the Bible respond to such assertions?  Again here is the common tactic of using the bible to refute an argument.  Where this becomes a problem, is that to the theist, their sacred texts are unquestionable, and infallible.  To the non-believer, they are just fiction.  What this means is that if a theist wants to put forth an argument it must not be scripture based, as the scriptures have no rational authority.  The scriptures only have authority for the congregation, not those outside of it.

Is faith in God a crutch? - The Impact of Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist who founded the practice of psychoanalysis, a system espousing the theory that unconscious motives dictate much of human behavior. Though championing atheism, Freud admitted that the truth of religion could not be disproved and that religious faith has provided comfort for untold numbers of people through history. However, Freud thought the concept of God was illusionary. In one of his religious works,The Future of an Illusion, he wrote, “They [believers] give the name of ‘God’ to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves.”

As to the motivation for creating such illusions, Freud believed two basic things: (1) people of faith create a god because they have strong wishes and hopes within them that act as comfort against the harshness of life; (2) The idea of God comes from the need for an idyllic father figure that eclipses either a non-existent or imperfect real father in the life of a religiously-minded person. Speaking of the supposed wish-fulfillment factor in religion, Freud wrote, “They [religious beliefs] are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind. We call belief an illusion when a wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation and in doing so we disregard its relation to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification.”

For Freud, God was nothing more than a psychological projection that served to shield an individual from a reality he does not want to face and cannot cope with on his own. After Freud came other scientists and philosophers who asserted the same thing and said that religion is just an illusion/delusion of the mind. Robert Pirsig, an American writer and philosopher who typifies Freud’s followers, has said, “When one person suffers from a delusion, it's called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it's called religion.”
What we have here is the build up of a classic straw man.  Freud new little if nothing of archaeology or anthropology as they were primarily new fields of study in Freud's lifetime.  Thus, Freud based his views on his own flawed research into psychoanalysis.  Freud is often attacked for the God is a crutch argument, because his is the easiest to build an argument against.  This is so, because Freud's argument is that the Christi-Muslim concept of an all powerful God is a fairly recent development in human history.

The history of religion begins with mythological explanations for natural occurrences.  Along the way, the idea of a spirit comes into play.  This is due to how human conscience works.  We are able to not only distinguish ourselves from, say, a lamp but our sense of spacial separation (or self) is so great that it is flawed.  It is flawed in that we can separate "our self" from our body.  It doesn't take a great imaginary leap to conclude that animals, rocks, trees and the sky have these "souls" or "spirits" too.  

I'm actually surprised that the author didn't include Karl Marx's claim that religion is the opiate of the masses.  Instead, he quotes Robert Pirsig, a practicing Buddhist author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Where the author gets that Pirsig was a "follower" of Freud, I don't know. I can't find any information on that.

Below is a simple illustration as to how religions can evolve over time.

Why does it rain?  

The sky-god sweats.  

Why isn't it raining now?  

We must have pissed off the sky-god.  

What does he want?  

A new bride!  

Ok, let's sacrifice a virgin to send her spirit to the sky-god.  

There are no virgins, except for small children.  

Then let's make some rules that girls cannot have sex until they take a husband.  

They'll never go for that.  

Then tell them that the sky-god commands it!  They will be rewarded by the sky-god if they stay a virgin until marriage, and punished if they do not.  

But if they have premarital sex and are not punished, won't that give up the game? 

Hmmm.  I know! We'll tell them that the rewards and punishment are for their soul and come after they die.  

Brilliant!

What about the above charges? Is there any truth to the assertions made by Freud and others?

Examining the Claims of the “Crutch Crowd”
When making an honest examination of these claims, the first thing to recognize is what those making the assertions are claiming about themselves. Deriders of religion are saying that Christians are prone to psychological and wish-fulfillment factors that they, the skeptics, are not. Not at all.  Any person is prone to flights of fancy, and wishful thinking.  A skeptic is one how uses the tools of reason, science and logic, to keep their own flights of fancy in check.  Occasionally, Skeptics have to keep an eye out for those who wish to force their flights of fancy on others: such a priests, ideologues, quacks, and other con-men. But how do they know that? For example, Freud saw the need for a Father God as an outworking of emotionally needy people desiring a father figure, but could it be that Freud himself had an emotional need for no father figure to exist? And perhaps Freud had an outworking of wish-fulfillment that manifested in not wanting a Holy God and judgment in the afterlife to exist, a wish for hell not to be real. Demonstrating the plausibility of such thinking is the writing of Freud himself who once said, “The bad part of it, especially for me, lies in the fact that science of all things seems to demand the existence of a God.” Again, more build up of a straw man.  Freud was a shrink, and a bad one at that.  He wasn't a philosopher and really didn't follow the scientific method.  Consider that he is the one who turned everything cylindrical into a phallic symbol, yet said that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Freud is easily picked on because he has no credible defenders.  

It would seem reasonable to conclude, as Freud and his followers have argued in their position, that the only way a person could overcome “demanding” black-and-white evidence of something is by creating an illusionary hope that overpowers the verifications of God’s existence, and yet they do not consider this a possibility for them. Some atheists, however, have honestly and openly admitted this likelihood. Serving as one example, atheist Professor/Philosopher Thomas Nagel once said, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and naturally hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope that there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.”
Most Atheists who hope there is no God are referring specifically to the God of Abraham.  The God depicted in the Torah (that's Old Testament to you gentiles), is a horrible god.  He is a boastfully jealous, petty, misogynistic, genocidal bully that has a fascination with genitals.  On the other hand, the Hindu Brahman, or even Spinoza's God do not scare the Atheist, and if such a being were real, an Atheist would want to know about it!
Another consideration to keep in mind is that not all aspects of Christianity are comforting. For example, the doctrine of hell, the recognition of humankind as sinners who are unable to please God on their own, and other similar teachings are not of the warm-and-fuzzy kind. How does Freud explain the creation of these doctrines?
Ah, the doctrine of Hell, and sin.  The original Hell can be found in Zoroastrian writings, as they have a version of it.  The same is true of Hades's realm, some parts of it can be considered a hell.  As far as sin, what is considered sin is a crime against God.  If you do not do what he says then you sin.  Judeo-Christi-Muslim religions aren't the first to conceive of a hell, or even sin.  But I think they may be the first to ABUSE their children by telling their kids that they are evil.

The idea of inventing an illness that only you have a cure for is an old con.  This is precisely what snake-oil salesmen do.  Have a bloated tummy?  It's too much gluten, by my over priced bread to ease your weight!  Have subluxations?  I'm the only one who can even see them, and with a quick snapping of your neck I can cure them!  Have sin?  Then do everything I say and they'll go away after you die, and it is all for the low low price of 10% of your income!
An additional thought that springs from the above question is why, if humankind merely invents the concept of God to make itself feel better, would people fabricate a God who is holy?  Social control. Refer to my example above.  It is a fictitious illustration, but one that took little imagination on my part.  It is hard for a ruler to justify sending young men into combat to be killed for royal glory and the ruler's personal gain.  However, if the ruler can convince his subjects that God commanded them to do so, then they will much more easily.  Why so many regulations?  Some are to keep communal order, some are to make a sense of tribalistic community (like rules on how long to grow your beard) and others are to keep control of family planning in the hands of those who are in control in the social hierarchy. Such a God would seem to be at odds with people’s natural desires and practices. In fact, such a God would seem to be the last type of god they would come up with. Instead, one would expect people to create a god who agrees with the things they naturally want to do instead of opposing the practices that they themselves (for some reason yet to be explained) label as “sinful.” What the author is trying to do is confuse the reader.  Here the "they" is supposed to be ALL of the followers who crafted the religion.  However, in reality, the "they" were the few in power.  And let's not forget that those in power mostly did not follow their own rules.  In biblical times, most kings were either held as gods, (like the Pharaoh, or Caesar), or were seen as direct voices of the gods.  Thus they got to make their own rules, and were not typically forced to keep them.

One last question is how do the “crutch” claims explain people who initially were hostile to religion and did not want to believe? Such people seemingly had no wish or desire for Christianity to be true, yet after an honest examination of the evidence and an acknowledgement of its “realness,” they became believers. What is meant by "realness"?  I have to say, that I find it amusing that the author had to put "realness" in quotes.  English scholar C. S. Lewis is one such person. Lewis is famous for saying there was no more reluctant convert in all of England than himself, that he was literally dragged kicking and screaming into the faith, which is hardly a statement that one would expect from a person engaged in a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
The crutch outlook has nothing to do with whether there is or is not a god.  
These issues and questions seem to be at odds with the claims of the “crutch” crowd and are conveniently ignored by them. But what does the Bible have to say about their claims? How does it answer their charges?

I've omitted the biblical section, which would go here as it is not necessary for the rest of this post.  Again the author tries to use the bible to prove god.  Again, the bible would only have authority of god exists, so using the bible to prove god is a circular argument.  One quickly tires of spinning of biblical proportions.

Is faith in God a crutch? - Conclusion
Jesse Ventura was wrong when he said that religion is nothing more than a crutch. Such a statement speaks to the prideful nature of man and epitomizes the type of people rebuked by Jesus in the book of Revelation: “You say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17).

The wish-fulfillment claims of Freud, Ventura, and others only act as an indictment against themselves and showcase their desire to reject God and His claim to their lives, which is exactly what the Bible says fallen humankind does. But to these same people, God asks that they recognize their true desires and offers Himself in the place of the false hope of humanism that they cling to.

The Bible’s statements regarding the fact and evidence of Christ’s resurrection bring comfort and real hope—hope that does not disappoint—and instruct us to walk in a way that trusts God and recognizes our true “weak” position before Him. Once that is done, we become strong, just as Paul said, “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Read more:http://www.gotquestions.org/faith-God-crutch.html#ixzz3Nb3ezcoE

I have stated that this article is a straw man argument because the author is trying to refute the claim that since religion is a crutch, god does not exist.  That is not the claim at all.  To say that religion is a crutch is not to imply that those who are religious are weak and stupid.  At least not always.  Picture this, you see a man with no legs in a wheel chair.  Do you consider the man weak and stupid?  Of course not.  What about a girl with a leg cast, moving about on a crutch?  Nope, neither stupid nor weak, just hurt.  And that is how religion is a crutch.  There are times we need someone to lean on, and at times, a group to lean on.  Those you lean on act as a crutch to keep you from falling... to keep you on your own two feet.  And this is what is meant by religion is a crutch.  It is also what Karl Marx meant by religion being the "opiate of the masses".