Something fun for you (I sincerely hope) and challenging for me is coming to Radical Atheist this August.
Stay tuned for further details.
Teaser
Jul 2
Religious Delusion
Jul 1
- Image via Wikipedia
At some point in the (near, I hope) future the psychiatric community is going to have to admit that religious belief is a potentially harmful delusion.
Religious belief has caused parents to turn against children and children against their parents. Differing religious beliefs have caused some of the most violent and deadly wars humanity has suffered. Religious belief has produced as much or more damage to humanity as it has good deeds.
Too often we try to soft peddle our attitude toward religious belief, we don’t want to offend. We’ve had too many people blaming their religious beliefs for their inhumanity recently. It’s unacceptable. We shouldn’t accept religious belief as an excuse for inhumane acts.
The church can judge its own by its own standards, I don’t care. But its affect on people is a contributing factor of the crime, not an excuse for it.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Are you a believer? (gittegorzelak.blogspot.com)
- How to decide what to believe (museditions.wordpress.com)
- This Week in God (washingtonmonthly.com)
- Religion in the Brain (delanydean.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b413cd2c-d86d-40a0-b1a6-08ea36f5e4ed)
I spend quite a bit of time in forums. I can attest to the reality of the following video. I have seen these same comments, most likely copy/pasted from some religious site, being posted as either evidence for the Christian god or as a challenge to atheists.
They really write this shit. Now here’s what this inanity sounds like when spoken by young, white, apparently sane young men:
Related articles by Zemanta
- Mississippi Woman Diverts Tornado Through Prayer (msatheists.org)
- If Atheists Ruled the World (inquisitr.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2d4040d1-ee20-4779-b8ce-df0e5f991fed)
Let some mentally challenged homeless guy mumble a drunken threat against the president and he’ll be swarmed by agents in dark glasses and locked away for a while. But let a religious believer use the excuse of his personal delusions to call for the president’s death and what you want to bet nothing will happen to him. Talk about a double-standard.
A former Southern Baptist Convention officer who on June 2 called the death of abortion provider George Tiller an answer to prayer said later in the day he is also praying “imprecatory prayer” against President Obama.
Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and former running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate Alan Keyes, said June 2 on Fox News Radio he didn’t understand why people were upset with his comments quoted by Associated Baptist Press from a webcast of his daily radio talk show.
Wiley Drake, domestic terrorist
“Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don’t like that, they need to talk to God,” Drake told syndicated talk-show host Alan Colmes. “God said it, I didn’t. I was just agreeing with God.”
Asked if there are others for whom Drake is praying “imprecatory prayer,” Drake hesitated before answering that there are several. “The usurper that is in the White House is one, B. Hussein Obama,” he said.
Later in the interview, Colmes returned to Drake’s answer to make sure he heard him right.
“Are you praying for his death?” Colmes asked.
“Yes,” Drake replied.
“So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?”
“Yes.”
Colmes asked Drake if he was concerned that by saying that he might be placed on a Secret Service or FBI watch list, and if he believed it appropriate to talk or pray that way.
“I think it’s appropriate to pray the Word of God,” Drake said. “I’m not saying anything. What I am doing is repeating what God is saying, and if that puts me on somebody’s list, then I’ll just have to be on their list.”
“You would like for the president of the United States to die?” Colmes asked once more.
“If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.”
Here’s a fun thing to do; read the following quote from Wiley then lean your head back, close your eyes and picture in your mind that drunken, mental homeless guy and put these words in his mouth. Not hard to believe, is it?
Asked if he claimed to know God’s will, Drake replied: “In some cases I do. Not in all cases. I know this, that if I do die right now, I’ll go to heaven when I die because I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s why I’ll go to heaven and not to hell. And the reason George Tiller went to hell when he died was not because he killed babies, as terrible as that was. If he went to hell, and I think he did — that’s God’s judgment and not mine — but if he did go to hell it’s because he did not accept Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.”
Drake said he did not believe Tiller’s accused killer is a pro-life Christian.
“I’m of the opinion — and now everybody’s going to say ‘There goes Wiley down the conspiracy-theory road,’ I’m of the opinion that somebody in the Obama camp had this guy killed.”
“Who benefits the most from this man killing a doctor?” Drake asked. “We certainly don’t. Pro-life people certainly don’t. It hurts us. It damages us, but Obama will indeed advance it. This will be one of those crises to take advantage of, and he’s already done that.”
Drake said he had no evidence and admitted his opinion for now is “pure speculation.”
“Everybody said [Lee Harvey] Oswald was a lone gunman, et cetera, et cetera, too,” he said. “But I think we’re going to find there was somebody else involved.” (emphasis mine)
Now you might suspect that a story about this bat-shit crazy religious extremeist who has threatened the life of the president has to come from The Onion (”Abortion Doctor’s Murder Sparks Waves Of Calm, Rational Discussion“) or maybe The Landover Baptist Church (”guaranteeing salvation since 1620″). Nope. This exposé appeared on the Associated Baptist Press website. Lends a certain credibility to the tale.
So, Secret Service, does this person openly threatening the life of the POTUS qualify for the same treatment we see you hand out to other terrorists who threaten our president in the name of their god, Allah?
Related articles by Zemanta
- Antiabortion efforts move to state level (msnbc.msn.com)
- Recruiting moderates leaves losers in charge of Republican Party (dvorak.org)
- Limbaugh’s Latest Outrage: Obama Is Doing A Better Job of Destroying America Than Al Qaeda (crooksandliars.com)
- Alan Keyes’ Running Mate: “I Am Glad George Tiller Is Dead” (alan.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=07493b72-578c-43d6-863f-33d92caef83c)
Making atheism acceptable
May 25
After years of extensive research and absurd experiments involving cheap hookers and blow, I’ve finally come upon the simple solution for making atheism acceptable to the majority of humans on this planet. It doesn’t involve asking atheists to change any of their current opinions, even so-called hard “there absolutely is no god” atheists can can do this. It’s so easy an agnostic can do it. Nor does it require theists to change their attitude toward non-believers.
Because from now on there are no non-believers. We’re all believers.
Atheism is now theism, atheists are theists. Everybody believes in whatever god you believe in.
Now it’s quite obvious that theists differ dramatically in how they interpret their scriptures and dogma. They even differ in their passion for their beliefs. At one end of the scale are those who thank Jesus or Allah after every other sentence while at the other end is the Jew who eats a ham sandwich but believes he’s wrong to do so (not that the thought of that stops him). Theists are all over the place.
So what place in the broad spectrum of religious belief exists for ex-atheists?
The Unitarians are notorious for their nearly-non-theistic theology. So we former-atheists are just a bit more secular than the UU. We accept that gods are possible. It’s just that we believe the probability that gods exist is extremely low, so low that it becomes nearly impossible.
See what a simple and elegant solution this is? Theists can no longer dismiss us from the tent; we’re now a part of the theistic clan, one big happy family. We might be the weird, possibly retarded cousin 6-times removed who grew up in a cave with wombats who insists on attending every family reunion, but we’re still family.
We humanists had it all wrong. We were trying to convince theists that we are all humans, we all belong to the human family.We should have been turning that around and stating that all humans are theists, just to varying degrees. After all, the vast majority of people believe that you cannot say with absolute certainty that gods do not exist. Conversely it must then be true that you cannot say with absolute certainty that gods do exist. So absolute (100%) belief and disbelief are positions one cannot reasonably hold. You can approach within the smallest increment to 100 and 0%.
Thus those who were once called atheists and humanists are actually just the least convinced theists you can find. I’ll let the other theists fight among themselves for the position of closest to 100% convinced.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Are you a believer? (gittegorzelak.blogspot.com)
- At Peace With Agnosticism (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- First were the buses. Now atheists get a student society (guardian.co.uk)
- Atheist Revolution (rwandanatheist.blogspot.com)
- This Week in God (washingtonmonthly.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=df530946-ff46-48b5-9c44-f75e75f02fc8)
- Image via Wikipedia
To accept any brand of theism entails accepting certain assumptions as established fact. All religious belief systems have a creation story. It may be interpreted literally or figuratively, but the underlying assumption that the universe was created by a particular god must be accepted as literal truth and fact to be a member of any particular sect of religious belief.
In rejecting religious belief, atheists also dismiss the presumption that any god created the universe.
However, beyond implying the rejection of religious creation stories, atheism does not provide further guidance as to what to think about the manner in which the universe came in to being. Unlike the vast majority of religions, atheism isn’t a belief system. Atheism is a single point of disagreement with other people over the idea that it’s plausible that any particular god exists. There are many things that atheists believe and disbelieve. The fact we’re atheists only pertains to a single one of the disbeliefs.
Some atheists just don’t give a damn about philosophy or science. They could care less how we got here. They have lives to lead and no time for foolish speculation about things we can’t possibly know at this point in time. We tend to call folks like this practical and level headed.
Others of us are fascinated with understanding how everything works and what it all means. There are many names for us, one or two are complimentary. We follow the findings of scientists, philosophers and thinkers who enlighten us and increase our knowledge, which we expect to result in wisdom.
Accepting scientific explanations about life and the universe and philosophical musings on our place in nature are not obligatory. No atheist is obligated to agree with science. It’s an option, one of many that don’t entail believing in gods.
Scientific explanations of reality are incomplete and never absolute. Some people can’t tolerate a lack of absolutes, so they invent them then proclaim their inventions to be absolute. “It is because we say it is.” Not a convincing argument. My standards for belief and agreement are too high to be satisfied by religious belief. I was a theist, I’ve been there, I’ve walked that road in total sincerity and with unbridled passion for many years. Theism in general and Christianity in particular are not unknown to me. I’ve made their arguments and fought for their validity. I’m completely comfortable with dismissing them as irrelevant in the quest to understand nature on their own merits. Having scientific and philosophical explanations that hold together better and explain nature in terms that don’t require a suspension of good sense and skepticism is an added bonus. It’s nice to have but isn’t the reason for my rejection of belief in gods.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Berlinski on Atheism’s “Scientific Pretensions” (schansblog.blogspot.com)
- Shut Up, That’s Why (tuibguy.com)
- Atheist Revolution (rwandanatheist.blogspot.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=bffe704d-8e76-4845-be06-d67d79a636af)
Which gods and in what way?
One consistent characteristic of the vast majority of gods that humans have worshiped throughout history is that they are not us, they are portrayed as having attributes we humans can only dream about (which is precisely why we project them onto gods and comic book heroes, and other fictional characters).
Humans can’t become gods, we create the gods. Our belief is the only thing that keeps them alive in the collective imagination. To become a god would be a step down for a human. And the gods can’t become human because we won’t let them. They can’t perform the functions we created them to perform as humans. To be gods they must be better than us, more powerful than we can ever hope to be, not be subject to our common dependencies, our weaknesses and mistakes. They are the “us” we want to be but can’t because those expectations are unrealistic. Perfection is a fantastical state, a never-fulfilled aspiration.
Notice the gods never have attributes, abilities or super powers beyond what we can imagine. That’s not because we have a limited imagination but because gods only exist in our imaginations. They cannot extend beyond the boundaries our imaginations place on their existence. They exist in a subset of the superset humans. We are in turn a subset of the universe.
The only way humans are becoming like gods is that we are starting to understand things about reality that our ancient religious beliefs reserve for the gods. When we discovered the mechanics of lightning, belief in Jupiter was pretty much finished. We can create lightning. Have we become like Jupiter? No, Jupiter is simply no longer relevant. We’ve evolved beyond needing a placeholder for our lack of understanding about lightning.
Related articles by Zemanta
- God made the curvy lines. (msatheists.org)
- The Resurrection and Theological Sleight of Hand (gkupsidedown.blogspot.com)
- Of gods and goddesses, pigeons and hens (spicycauldron.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=33877549-fceb-4ecb-9d00-1be1c2af73f8)
We’ve Only Just Begun…
Apr 15
- Image via Wikipedia
People contend that science and religion can coexist. Science itself is not anti-religion but much of what we’ve learned about reality from science exposes the errors in theology.
The Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon were written by people of a certain time and a particular social setting. Holy books reflect the society that gave birth to them. None of them clearly and without requiring convoluted interpretation state anything that was not already known in that time and part of the world.
Why wouldn’t the gods mention something in their books (using “their” loosely, as we know that the books were written by human scribes who only claimed to be inspired by the subject of the book) that was going to be common knowledge only much later. Think of the stunning effect that would have on future generations. A specific and detailed prediction of the internet, for instance. Something that would have made no sense at all to the scribes but would only be understood 1000 years later. The gods in the holy books give no indication of knowing anything about the rest of the world, present or future, that isn’t also common knowledge of the time and people from whence it comes. I’ve heard tons of excuses for that but no rational example of any god showing an awareness of something completely unknown and foreign to the authors of those books.
The Bible, because it’s the one I’m most familiar with, clearly indicates “truths” that are not correct according to the current evidence. For example, the Earth did not come into being in seven days or seven thousand years (There are two places in scripture that say a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, which either means that his time scale is different than ours or that he’s a really boring person) but over millions of years. Science is clearly at odds with the Biblical creation story. Conclusions drawn from available evidence also lend no validity to American Indian creation stories, Egyptian creation stories or any of the thousands of other fantastic and supernatural creation stories.
Creation stories persist because humans have only recently begun to have the means to examine nature on the scale we can today. We’ve been ignorantly superstitious for thousands of years. We’ve only been able to look at the universe the way we can today in the last hundred. There’s a lot of ingrained ignorance, yes, in even the most brilliant mind, to eradicate. We really only just begun.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Creationism is bad religion (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
- Don’t Creationist deny the laws of nature? Part I (codybateman.org)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=9fad6830-f9e8-4b9c-906c-d2ebf2874213)
What good is god?
Apr 14
- Image via Wikipedia
What good does believing there’s a perfect god somewhere do? It doesn’t seem to make us any better people than we could be without belief? What benefit has believing that there’s a supreme being out there somewhere watching every little thing you do and condemning you for much of it? “Supreme” can be understood as both absolute and above all others. The problem with that is no religion can prove beyond doubt that their particular god and way of believing in that god are the only possible right and true belief and way of believing. Reality shows us that theists cannot agree sufficiently about the characteristics and behaviors of their particular vision of god among themselves, which pretty much dooms any attempt to devise a supreme guide.
We don’t need gods. We don’t need to feel guilt and shame over many of the things religious belief has managed to persuade us we must. Belief systems from 2000 years and more in the past are routinely ignored in practically every other field of human inquiry except religious belief. That makes no sense. We do need to face our problems, acknowledge that we created them and we have to correct them ourselves without waiting around for divine intervention. We do need to acknowledge our limitations and strive to do the best we can with our abilities. We do need to grasp the fact that it’s up to us to figure out if we are harming this planet and figure out how to fix it if we are. We need to face the reality of life, and too many religious dogmas aren’t helping. They’re hindering our attempts to understand and learn.
Related articles by Zemanta
- More Spaghetti (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- Evolving Beliefs (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- Mark Joseph: Losing My Religion & The Last TV Evangelist (huffingtonpost.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=94395d35-c883-480e-8478-0c77a24bd260)
Can science kill god?
Apr 9
- Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr
All across the world wide web are comments from theists of every stripe denouncing science as an attempt by the ungodly to disprove their god or gods. In their never-quenched thirst to be seen as persecuted victims of a world-gone-wild (without taking any responsibility for it, even though they brag about the universality of their beliefs), they try to convince the uncritical and uncertain that science is determined to prove gods do not exist. They make it sound like a holy quest, though we know only believers can enjoy those. Religious believers refuse to acknowledge that the best evidence against the possible existence of any particular god is the gross lack of any evidence for one. We have yet to discover any credible, physical evidence that can only be explained by the existence of a certain god and that god’s intervention in our natural world. Science isn’t trying to disprove god, science simply hasn’t found any evidence that irrefutably proves there is one.
Even if we could somehow learn to a 99% certainty that the universe began this way or that, that knowledge will not kill off the idea of god.
Science will never make an absolute declaration that it knows how the universe came into being. Definitive, absolute proof doesn’t exist. Science is not religion. It can only draw tentative conclusions from what evidence we can collect. Scientific conclusions are only as valid as the data. As we come across more information, science has to adjust its conclusions. Religions pretend to know absolute truths, yet they require us to accept these truths on faith.
If science were to state that all the evidence leads us to believe that the universe started in this or that manner, there will always be room to squeeze in religious belief. We’ve already seen in history how religions adapt to current reality in an effort to stay relevant and retain their power over people. In all probability science can’t and won’t put an end to superstitious belief. With our complex brains otherwise intelligent people believe in luck and fate. Beliefs can exist beside knowledge without being eradicated by that knowledge. No matter how smart we become about reality, superstition will survive. There are many theories as to why humans develop and believe in superstitions, but history leads me to accept that every human has them. Religious belief will no doubt change subtlety, as it has before, to accommodate secular knowledge, but it will unfortunately be with us for a long time yet. It is, after all, just another superstitious belief.
Already there are Christian groups that have managed to incorporate scientific conclusions into their dogma. They accept the Big Bang as the best explanation for the beginning of the universe that can currently be drawn from available evidence and still credit their god with having set it all in motion. They give reverence to the Bible, but as an allegorical work rather than literal truth. Scientology is another example of a religion that has incorporated some science into their otherwise wildly fantastical belief system.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Evolving Beliefs (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- Religion in the Brain (delanydean.com)
- Religion: Biological Accident, Adaptation — or Both (wired.com)
- Reclaiming the Irrational from the Religious (3quarksdaily.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a297b5f7-9e3f-48ea-af61-144693b415dc)
