Radical Atheist

Did we need religion to get to where we are today? Was religious belief a primary factor in humanity being what it is today, the world being in the condition it’s in today? Wouldn’t humanity have been worse off without religion?

Humans have evolved a brain that is capable of abstract thought. Being thinking animals, we ask questions that often have no absolute answer in nature. We also evolved a need to be sure of things. We dislike uncertainty. When we have a question for which there appears to be no explanation we impatiently invent one.

Thousands of years ago people questioned their existence. They invented answers to their questions that both satisfied their curiosity and managed to avoid debunking by being posed as outside our everyday reality. In the years since the industrial revolution we’ve had more and more “free time” during which to ponder our existence. We still don’t have any absolutely sure answers for some of our thorniest questions, so there’s still room for fantastic thinking. Some people become so comfortable with their superstitious beliefs they’ll hold onto them even after a reasonably natural explanation can be provided for some “miraculous” or “foreseen” event. Hope and wishful thinking are more comforting than a seemingly sterile, materialistic, atheistic view of life.

I consider religious belief to be a form of superstition. I see no practical, core difference between believing in a god, believing a rabbit’s foot can bring luck, lucky numbers or crystal power. They are just a few of the personally significant superstitions that are accepted as valid and real despite having no credible evidence of their efficacy. We employ them to explain the unexplained. We use them as filler for the gaps in our understanding. They have, no doubt, contributed to our success as a species in some manner. But we shouldn’t get too egotistical about our place in the history of the planet. Our species hasn’t even been around as long as the dinosaurs were. Still, we can relieve our feelings of insignificance by inventing gods and fates that favor us, guide us, even love us.

I suspect it’s our ability to construct superstitions, being abstract thinkers, to explain the mysteries we encounter that has an evolutionary advantage. We aren’t stressed out by doubt. Superstitions gave us a way to avoid asking questions for which we knew there were no answers. Unfortunately it turned out that superstitious people were easy to manipulate. Many priests and con-men have lived lives of luxury and influence thanks to the human propensity to need an absolute answer for every question, the human willingness to suspend all skepticism and incredulity in the quest for assurance and certainty.

Atheists truly are ignorant. We are willing to admit that to many of the really big questions in life we have no answers. We are too young a species, we have only had the tools to examine reality at ever smaller and smaller scales for the last hundred years or so. We are at the point where most of what we’re discovering is showing us how poorly we understand reality at its core, how much there is yet to learn. We accept our ignorance, it’s what motivates us to always be pushing the limits of knowledge and always willing to learn. As we learn more and understand better, we incorporate new knowledge into our world view. Nothing is certain, nothing can yet be said to be absolutely this or that. There’s too much we just don’t know yet.

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The outcome is no surprise to rationalists and atheists.

On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment. After all his chanting of mantra (magic words) and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV. Sanal Edamaruku agreed and sat in the altar of the black magic ritual. India TV observed skyrocketing viewership rates.

Millions of people must have uttered a sigh of relief in front their TVs. Sanal was very much alive. Tantra power had miserably failed. Tantriks are creating such a scaring atmosphere that even people, who know that black magic has no base, can just break down out of fear, commented a scientist during the program. It needs enormous courage and confidence to challenge them by actually putting one’s life at risk, he said. By doing so, Sanal Edamaruku has broken the spell, and has taken away much of the fear of those who witnessed his triumph.

In this night, one of the most dangerous and wide spread superstitions in India suffered a severe blow.

Read the full story and watch the videos here.

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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.

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