Radical Atheist

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)

Print Friendly

Calling any politician a liar is only stating the obvious. But let’s be honest. Almost everyone is a liar, at some time and about some things. Lying is human nature. A good politician is one who lies less than most and is more transparent and obvious about it. Parents lie to their kids (Santa?). Spouses lie to their significant other. Theists see that as a negative. Realists accept that it’s an undeniable aspect of being human, one that can be employed for good ends as well as bad. We believe the context dictates the nature of a lie.

Print Friendly

I was contemplating this last night watching Battle Star Gallactica.

<Spoiler Alert for my TiVo friends>
The merry little band of explorers and killer robots unite to find Earth.

They find Earth! Yay! Many, many minutes of hugging and high-5s (both traditions apparently alive and well centuries from now…like the way we still curtsy). “It’s Earth, it’s Earth”, we’re all saved. Our religion has been fulfilled as was predicted. Yeah, Earth.”

Then they fly down (no beaming?) and find out Earth was destroyed a couple of thousand years earlier due to nuclear warfare. The whole planet is a radioactive landfill. Crap! Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. People try to kill themselves, people kill themselves, and the rest just go nuts. Their hope is gone. The ugly, undeniable truth of the matter is that their quest is finished and has been shown to be a farce.

Worse, their religion has been totally and irrefutably shown to be a sham. They have to face a reality that disproves their previous belief system completely and finally. Which is where I started thinking about what real people in our real world would do if something happened that once and for all ended all speculation that gods could exist. What if some natural artifact was discovered that undeniably discredits theism worldwide? That’s what the folks on Battle Star Gallactica had to deal with. The president even burns the little Bible-like book they had for their religion.

Another thought: what if god did appear one day in the sky, visible from any place on Earth, unexplainable by any natural means, and it turned out this god was completely different than any human has been able to imagine? How deep would be the shock to their system (and let’s admit it, many of ours as well). Many would become suicidal and homicidal, not because that’s a typical atheistic reaction, but because these people believe that non-believers are free to do anything and they don’t have any morals other than those they endured by force of their former belief. I think atheists underestimate the number of truly nasty people out there we’ve been spared from seeing due solely to their belief in a punishing god. Once that limiting force is removed they’ll act out all their repressions.

For once, thought-provoking television. And they said it could never happen.

Print Friendly

No wonder it’s so hard to be a prophet these days.  Reality just refuses to play along.

Print Friendly

{originally posted as a reply to a comment left on another blog of mine}

First, thank you for reading my post and at least giving it serious consideration despite your disagreement with my position.

I’ll attempt to clarify the point you question.

When I said, “The evidence or argument that will sway an open minded person has to meet certain qualifications, though. It obviously needs to be convincing and irrefutable. It needs to be logical and consistent with the reality we know. It must be practical, sensible, possible and rational” I was referring to the characteristics of a convincing argument. All of us have a criteria for what we’ll consider as a real possibility and what we’ll dismiss as nonsense unless we can be persuaded otherwise. And what is required to persuade us? Well, for me, it’s the characteristics I mentioned.

I know of no sane person who believes it’s perfectly fine to believe everything that gains their attention. We practice discernment, we weed out the nonsensical and wonder at the reasonable. Just before the above I wrote, “Being open minded does not require us to automatically accept every thought that enters our head, believe every notion floated by anyone, accept the possibility of even the most outlandish idea.

To be open minded is to be willing to be convinced. It’s to be willing to set aside preconceived notions in the face of factual evidence to the contrary. Being open minded means that a person is willing to change their mind when presented with an adequate reason to do so.”

If I find your argument persuasive, within the criteria that describes a convincing argument, I will willingly adjust my view of reality to allow for this idea. I’m in my mid-50s and have had my view of reality adjusted many times. I was a theist from high school to the Army. Then I went through a period of being an Alan Watt’s buddhist. Reading Douglas Hofstadter has radically altered my view of reality. One reason I have no interest in being a theist; natural reality is so mind-blowing, so bizarre, that religion pales in comparison. Nontheless, I welcome anything convincing theism wishes to present. I will determine just how convincing based on my standards, not theirs. Do they use my standards to weight the validity of my claims?

If only theists would put their energy into trying to find convincing evidence to support their beliefs than wasting their time trying to discredit those of us who fail to be convinced. It’s like a store blaming the customers for its lack of popularity.

I’m very open to the possibility that theism is valid. But I want to be convinced by my own standards. I will not “accept it on faith”, as I do not consider that a reasonable demand.

I try to be as philosophically consistent as possible. I apply the same standards of critical skepticism in any situation in which I’m being asked to accept a belief that might have a profound influence on my perception of reality. If I’m skeptical of a guy who wants to sell me a car, shouldn’t I be far more critical of a person who wants to sell my their view of reality? I don’t give science a free pass to my brain and I don’t see why religion thinks it deserves a free pass as well.

To a non-believer who used to be a believer, religion is simply another way of looking at reality that was examined and found inadequate to explain reality. One of several in my life. If it has any more to offer than I’ve already been exposed to, it ought to mention it. Otherwise I’ll consider religion as having taken its best shot and missed the target.

Reality is important to me. I don’t want my view clouded by preconceptions unless they’ve passed the credibility test. I know we view life through filters. I want to be aware of mine and ensure they’re either beneficial or benign. Religion asks me to qualify people as friend-or-foe, us-or-them, to divorce myself from common humanity. Humanism tells me that all humans are one species, all the same, highly evolved animals but most importantly, all equal.

I weigh those two viewpoints and find humanism morally superior to religion when I look at the results of each belief system. It’s not that humanism is perfect, just that I agree intellectually and morally with their way of looking at reality and the results they produce. It’s the filter that seems to filter out less reality than most others.

Am I babbling at this point or still making sense?

Print Friendly

Hell is the theological equivalent of, “Boy are you gonna get it when your dad gets home!”

Print Friendly

“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician (1874 – 1965)

Print Friendly

A cosmetics line that extolled the virtues of “Lookin’ Good for Jesus” has been pulled from stores in Singapore after a number of complaints from shoppers, according to media reports Tuesday.

Promising to “Redeem your reputation and more,” the product line included a “virtuous vanilla”-flavored lip balm and a “Get Tight with Christ” hand and body cream, The Straits Times said.

Wing Tai Retail, which manages the British retailer Topshop, removed the line late last month after receiving complaints.

“These products trivialize Jesus Christ and Christianity,” it quoted Nick Chui, 27, one of the complainants, as saying. “There are also sexual innuendoes in the messages and the way Jesus is portrayed in these products.”

One product has packaging with the image of Jesus wearing a bright white robe as he looks toward the heavens, while a heavily made-up blonde woman with an arm draped across his shoulder gazes dreamily at his face.

“Why would anyone use religious figures to promote vanity products? It’s very disrespectful and distasteful,” the report quoted 24-year-old accountant Grace Ong as saying.  (Source)

What accounts for the recent increase in incidents of religious whining about respect?  Muslims get offended by cartoons while Christians take offense at a line of tacky cosmetics.

Read the Koran or Bible and highlight all the humorous passages, all the scriptures that indicate the gods or their followers have a sense of humor or even a healthy self-image.  You’ll be reading a lot and highlighting nothing.  Believers may have the light of fanaticism in their eyes but you’ll be hard pressed to find one with a twinkle of wit.  Considering how comical religious beliefs are, it’s too bad the religious lack the ability to appreciate that.

Print Friendly

Why do we only require disproof of an unproven hypothesis when it comes to religion?

If I claimed I had built a machine that generated energy out of thin air and ran forever, is anyone obliged to spend time disproving that claim? Wouldn’t any rational, sane person simply say, “Let me know when you have proof of that” and dismiss such nonsense out-of-hand? Is there even a need to be agnostic about such a claim? Of course not. Not even the PC crowd would insist we respect this claim as possible. It’s nonsensical, and anyone who paid attention in school after the third grade would know that.

That’s why we debate religion. It’s been given a free pass for too long. It’s time those of us who remain unconvinced by theistic claims that defy reason and nature explain and defend our reasons for not buying this silliness.

Gods, magic, superstition, all are relics of our ignorant past. We come not to praise religion, but to bury it.

Print Friendly

The fear of the number 666 is known as hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.

I knew you’d want to know that.

Print Friendly