We Are Not Broken
I read a lovely blog post. It is about people with disabilities. Please read it.
My comment on this:
I grew up with a learning disability. I was teased, bullied. But I’ve succeeded beyond what any of those people who made fun of me, or even most of the teachers and guidance counselors could. My son has autism spectrum disorder. Family, friends, strangers in the supermarket, all would try to tell me how to handle him, how to raise him, how to “fix” him. He is not “broken”. He never was. He is his own person. He is my son.
Be Good For Goodness’ Sake
Telling someone that they shouldn’t steal or murder or rape because if they get caught they will go to prison is not teaching morality. Similarly, telling someone that they shouldn’t engage in these same types of behaviors because the will got to hell is not teaching morality either. What it is doing is teaching that these behaviors are bad, not because the are intrinsically immoral, but because there is the risk of negative consequences.
This type of thinking ignores the real effect of immoral actions: that they harm others. That crime, deceit, and violence robs a person of a part of their humanity. It attacks one of the greatest truths ever put forth by the human mind: that we all are created equal, that we “are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (1)
True morals should be based on this principle. They should also be based on empathy and love for our fellow Homo sapiens who we share out planet with. By holding up threats of punishment, either in this life or a mythical one beyond it, we dehumanize each other and desensitize ourselves to the humanity within others.
This mindset can lead to disdain of those who are seen as violating some peoples’ personal or religious morals, many of which are inhumane, insensitive, and inhumane.
The same holds for being moral and doing good deeds for others because we empathize with their plight. We should do kind things not expecting anything in return, but because it is intrinsically the right thing to do. To only do good, be it giving to charity, doing a favor for a friend, or giving a blanket to a cold homeless person just because we expect a reward in heaven or to boost our status within our social circles reeks of callousness. These types of people do good not because it is the right thing to do, but because they are greedy for reward. When they give to charity, help at soup kitchens, they are often thinking not of those who benefit from their deeds, but of the benefit to their social status and/or their eternal reward.
Santa Clause, that fictional character of Christmas cheer, summed up the true basis of morality: be good for goodness’ sake.
(1) The Declaration of Independence
are created equal, that they are endowed
Atheism+. Why I Am More Resolved Than Before To Support It
Jen McCreight quit blogging yesterday. This from Almost Diamonds who wrote a post explaining some of the reason why.
I’m angry that Jen has been pushed to the point where she has to stop blogging. She’s done so much, especially with the SSA, to help advance atheism. The detractors say that those who support Atheism+ are trying to take over the atheist movement, that we are being hateful and divisive, that we are not thinking critically and are letting our emotions cloud our judgement.
Of course it is emotional. We are enraged and appalled at the misogyny that has become so apparent in the past year. We aren’t automatons, but human. Using our anger at the misogynists and others like them in the atheists movement to try to build something better is good, as Greta Christian says in her book.
Anger can motivate people to right wrongs and gain rights and recognition in society. We want to be seen as atheists who do more than just attack religion. We want to take this movement to the masses, as it were, beyond the atheist community, by working openly, and publicly on important social issues that, until now, religion or other organizations have owned. At least, that’s what I would like to see. I think many who support Atheism+ feel this way too.
The people who drove Jen away want to attack anyone who doesn’t agree with them. It can’t, and won’t, stand. But, I’m not going to attack those people, I’m going to ignore them. They aren’t worth my time. Instead, I’m going to do something positive and try to make Atheism+ a thing that will unite all those atheists who want to focus on social issues instead of just bashing religion and slapping ourselves on the backs for how much more clever we are than theists.
The Tea Party – American Taliban
The Tea Party is the most dangerous threat to the American way of life and to American liberty its self than anything we’ve seen since the era of McCarthyism over 50 years ago. I’d say that they are an even greater threat. At least during McCarthyism we still held education, science, and technology in high esteem. In fact, it was science and technology that was going to save us from the communist threat. McCarthyism was a political motivated by a real fear of communist expansion (but that still didn’t justify the restriction of rights that occurred).
Fortunately, the majority of Americans do seem to believe in working together for a common goal and the common good. Unfortunately, most of them believe that we can accommodate the Tea Party and their ilk. The reason for this, I believe, is that most of these “other” American are Christian and this makes them reluctant to criticize other Christians. They buy into the anti-islamic, anti-atheist, anti-secular rhetoric of the Tea Party because they either don’t see the real threat or they are afraid to speak out. This is the same thing we saw in the Islamic world after the 9/11 attacks: the vast majority of Muslims abhorred there radicals who perpetrate acts to terror in the name of Islam, but they were afraid to speak out for fear of being branded an infidel or of breaking islamic unity.
The majority of Christian in this country are accomidationis. They believe that radical Christians can be reasoned with; can be accommodated; that compromises can be reached. Nothing can be further from the truth. Radical Christians, along with all religious radicals, can not be reasoned with or accommodated because for them this is a holy war, a fight against good and evil. As long as they believe that they are doing God’s work, nothing can make them compromise in the slightest thing.
Today, however, science and technology are viewed with great suspicion, even outright hostility by the religious right. This time, in contract to McCarthyism, the perceived enemy of the Tea Party crowd isn’t a foreign threat, it is other Americans. And unlike most of those within the secular movements, they have no room for compromise. You are either with them or against them. You can’t debate or argue them into changing their positions. Like most everyone who’s world view relies on blind faith and religious righteousness, they will never yield and never give up.
This is why I constantly speak out against religion being forced on us. This is why I continue to highlight the dangers and evils of religious thought and religious dogma that are passed off as patriotism. This is why I always try to highlight the delusion that is theism and supernaturalism, or magical thinking.
People use religion to foster hate and division. Those who are ardent believers can rationalize away any evil up to and including murder. If they are allowed to have their way, which they are getting more and more often, they would have this country become a Christian theocracy. Anything that goes against their religious laws will be punished, those of other religions will be discriminated against. Don’t believe it? Just google “christian theocracy in america”.
It is sad that the Tea Partiers had to take the Tea Party as their name. It is an insult to all those who took part in the actual, historical tea party. Those patriots fought for freedom from tyranny, not for the tyranny of a theocracy. They should have rightly called themselves the American Taliban, because they are no different in their aims of creating a Christian nation than the Taliban in Afghanistan are in creating an Islamic nation there.
Atheism+: Doing Good Without God.
It’s been said that getting atheists to agree on something is like herding cats. I’d say it’s more like trying to herd cats into a tub of water. Atheists tend to be an inquisitive bunch; an intellectually bunch. We reject dogma and the authority that goes along with it, hence we are loathed to being told what to do and what to think. You could say we are fiercely independent (at least I say that we are).
Given all that, you can see why trying to get a consensus about where to go for breakfast might be hard enough, never mind were we should all stand on a particular social issue. And that’s the real issue in getting us all to band together for a common cause: we don’t like to be told what we should think or feel.
Still, being openminded and skeptical (yes, they do go hand in hand) we are able to listen to each other and really consider what each one of us has to say. This attitude tends to lead to civilized debates, respect for each other’s rights to express ideas, and compromise, or at least it should. I believe that it can and that it does.
The atheist/humanist/secular/(add your own label here) movements have much more in common than they do differences. Most of us in these movements (and most of us identify with more than one) understand this and this has allowed us to begin to come together in the past few years in greater numbers and with great effect in support of issues that we all feel that we have a stake in.
Still, there is an ugly side to us as well. Anti-feminism has shown its self to be much more prevalent that most of us imagined it was. This is both bad and good. It is bad, for the obvious reason that it shows that we all are not as enlightened as we’d like to be. It is bad because it distracts us from working together to achieve our common goals.
It is good, however, that this is now out in the open. You can’t tackle a problem until you can first acknowledge it. Also, it is an opportunity to clean house, as it were. By exposing the misogynists in our midst ( actually they tend to expose themselves) we can shame them into recognizing their misplace sense of privilege or shun them from our ranks. It is vital that we do so because we have the fight of our lives with the religious and social conservitives on our hands.
This is where Atheism+ comes in. The new movement is not an attempt to establish an atheist dogma, as some try to claim. Atheism+ is an attempt to bring together atheists who believe that we have a responsibility to go beyond fighting against superstition or fighting for the separation of church and state. We strongly believe that we have a responsibility as atheists to fight for social justice for everyone, theist and non-theist, the superstitious and the skeptical, the religious and the non-believers.
Feminism, gay rights, separation of church and state are just a few of the issues that most of us feel are important and that we are doing a good job of brining to the forefront of the social and political forums.
We have already begun to raise our profile in the general public’s minds. Just this year we had the Reason Rally, which made the national news. We also have many good organizations supporting critical thinking and humanist issues such as the Secular Student Alliance, CFI, FFRF, American Atheists, the JREF, and American Humanists.
Except for American Atheists and the Secular Student Alliance, most of these, while they might have many atheists as members, are not atheistic groups. What Atheism+ is, or can be, is a way for those of us who self-identify as atheists to get out and fight for social issues in public where we can meet “average” people and have them get to know us. It will allow us to be seen as people who care for others, who do good things. This is vitally important if atheists hope to ever become accepted by a society that currently sees us a amoral, selfish, heartless.
I urge those of you want to fight for social justice for everyone, who want to fight against misogyny, racism, bigotry, homophobia, poverty, and ignorance to consider joining the Atheist+ movement. Talk about it with your friends and family (if they are still talking to you, that is), write about it, blog about it, tweet about it, set your Facebook profile picture to the Atheists+ symbol (see below), join the Atheist+ forum.
Let’s show the world that we are not only good without God, but we do good without God.
Use me as your profile picture on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or any other site of your choice.
The Horrors Of Salvation – Part 2
Yesterday I talked about the horror behind the story of Noah. I had considered expanding on the concept horror embodied in the idea of sacrifice found in the Bible by also talking about the who Jesus story, but decided to just keep it simple and stick to Noah. I saw a comment on the Noah post that made me wish I had talked about Jesus.
It’s sad to hear that this is what the message of Christianity is becoming about. Dead religion will tell you one of two things about God…(1) He’s schizophrenic (He loves you but He hates you) or (2) He’s mysterious (nobody can figure Him out). But here is Jesus, who arrives later on as the Messiah. It is in Christ where God’s nature is revealed, and He is a God of Love.
Things may still be unclear about the Bible and there seems to be a lot of contradictions on God’s nature. But, the Cross made a significance, a proof, to how much God loves us (John 3:16). Hope that helps!
Comment by tacticianjenro | September 2, 2012 | Reply
His argument is one made by many Christians to negate the nastiness of the Old Testament: that God suddenly became a merciful and loving god once he sent Jesus (or became Jesus, the Bible is a bit confusing on that point) to save us all.
Even if you grant that this argument is valid, the whole idea of sacrificing someone, someone who is supposedly innocent, is just as horrible and depraved as anything in the Old Testament. Sure, it’s just one guy, not every person on earth, but the number of those sacrificed isn’t the issue. The issue is the need for a blood sacrifice at all.
I was raised Catholic. I could never understand why God required a sacrifice to free us from sin. If he is all powerful, why not just forgive our sins and be done with it? The priests explained to me about Original Sin. That didn’t make any sense to me either. Why would God punish every human who ever lived just because the first two people sinned? Why not just forgive Adam and Eve their sins? Or if He couldn’t find it in his all loving heart to do that, why not just strike them both dead and be done with it? He’s God. He could just make more.
The idea that Jesus, the only son of God, the innocent lamb, had to die just because the rest of us were sinning bastards is insane. That isn’t love, it is sadistic and cruel. Worse, it is pointless. If God is all powerful, then either forgive each of us our sins or smote us, don’t go killing your only son, especially when he doesn’t deserve it.
The idea that the god of the New Testament is now a loving, merciful god as opposed to the angry, vengful god of the Old Testament; that he is somehow a new and improved god, is absurd. The sacrifice of Jesus is no different than asking Abraham to kill his son, or the killing of all the first born of Egypt. It is just as cruel, just as horrible and depraved.
The fact is, God, both the old and new versions, is a dick, pure and simple.
The Horror Of Salvation
I saw this drawing on DeviantArt today.
While it is outwardly whimsical, at second glance it is full of horror.
The Story of Noah’s ark is often told as a story of salvation. God has saved Noah, his family, and two of every creature from a world wide flood. He sets them down in a new world with the sun shining and a rainbow in the sky. It is given to us as a story hope and a lesson in God’s unending love for us.
In this story, God decided to destroy his creation. It is claimed that he did the because humans had almost all become sinners, loving nothing but sin and debauchery. So he decided to destroy them all, all except Noah and his family, who loved him and we good and decent people.
What is overlooked in this story is the complete horror and incomprehensible death and destruction that was perpetrated by a vengeful, capricious god who thought nothing about wiping out almost every living thing on earth. Even if you accept that everyone but Noah and his family were sinners, were they all so completely evil that they all deserved death? Even if you accept this, what about the animals? Were they all sinners as well?
What this artwork shows is a glimpse of the horror of the wonton death and destruction that this “loving” God visited upon his creatures. What about all of the people? Can you imagine seeing millions of bodies floating in the ocean, stretching from horizon to horizon? What this reveals is utter destruction and death on a scale unimaginable perpetrated by a vengful and evil god, one who’s anger is far greater than his love, and who requires destruction and death in return for salvation.
This is the unacknowledged and overlooked horror of religion. That message is that God will save us. What is unspoken is that he is saving us from himself.
Another Church Experience
I went to my Son’s church today to hear him sing in the choir. They were really quite good. The music was a mix of gospel and soul with some latin rhythms thrown in. Of course, the lyrics were all “praise the Lord”, and “Jesus” repeated ad nauseum.
I could see that people were moved by the music; many singing and swaying to the beat. It was inspiring. Not inspiring in a spiritual way, but in a “isn’t this great that we can all enjoy this together” kind of way. I can understand why people would be moved to feel as if some kind of spirt was among them.
I felt that too, but it wasn’t a spirit of gods or angels or anything like that. It was a spirit of belonging and sharing. I’ve also felt the exact same feeling at rock and pop concerts. When I saw Elton John, the crowd sang and swayed to the soulful lyrics of “Rocket Man” or “Candle in the Wind”. When I saw Simon and Garfunkel, it was “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovey)”. When I saw Paul Simon solo, it was “You Can Call Me Al”; Barry Manilow, “I Write the Songs”; Chicago, ”Saturday in the Park”.
These musical experiences were all moving and inspiring because it allowed us, as an audience, as humans, to share common emotions of love, joy, tenderness, and excitement. It is the spirit of togetherness and sharing of emotions that is at play here, not the spirit of the lord or any other supernatural entity. Music unites us and allows us to share our humanness.
The pastor (this was a Protestant service, in contrast to my last church experience) gave a sermon titles “The Dangerous People”. According to him, the people who are truly dangerous, “to themselves and others”, are those who “think they know, but don’t know” (his exact words, not mine). He said that we need to be willing to accept council and instruction from others. He couched this in knowledge of the Bible, using Apollos and Paul from the New Testament as examples.
He said that Apollos was a great preacher and very knowledgeble in the scriptures, but that he only knew of John the Baptist, and since he didn’t know of Jesus, he was somehow dangerous to himself and to others. How Apollos was dangerous he didn’t say. What he did say was that once he was told of the true way of Jesus, he learned from that and started preaching the gospel of Jesus. That, somehow, was supposed to show us how we must listen to wise council and not assume that we know everything.
He never said how we can differentiate good council from bad, truth from falsehood, only that we must be willing to admit that we don’t know everything and to listen to those who know more. He also didn’t tell us who “those” are. I found the message pretty muddled. I suppose that you could take from this that we must be humble and open to new ideas, but I didn’t get the feeling that this was what he really meant. To me, he seemed to emphasize the idea of “dangerous people”, but without ever letting us know how to tell “truth” from falsehood.
One other thing that he said really struck me, because it was so self-contradicting. He said that we have the liberty of praising and doing the will of God. How can you do the will of an all powerful god and still have liberty? This is subjugation disguised as liberty. It is the same as saying that Americans value liberty, but then say that we are not real Americans if we don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance, completely missing the fact that by pledging allegiance to anything, be it God or country, we are trading our liberty for servitude to some higher master.
I’ve been learning quite a bit from my forays to church. I’ve learned that there are some wonderful ideas out there about how we can be better people, but they always get watered down by the trappings of religion. Instead of using the example of how we should be humble and admit that we don’t have all the answers in order to think for ourselves so that we can learn and grow, it comes down to just having faith. Well, you can’t have faith and truly think for yourself, because to really think for yourself means to question everything, which faith can not allow.
I find it almost sad to see such potential for real understanding of the human condition and the world we live in lost in a morass of faith, platitudes, and servitude to a “higher power”. This makes us compliant and docile, just like the sheep that the shepherd figure of Jesus requires us to be.
Dehumanizing Atheists
This vile piece of hate came to my attention the other day:
Atheists are not technically human beings (they have no soul) therefore they are not protected by our nations laws and bill of rights.
Now, based on his other tweets, TeaPartyTony is nothing but a hate spewing, racist, misogynistic jerk. I try to avoid these types, but what made this stand out for me was the part about Atheists having no souls.
Given some of Tony’s other tweets, he expects to see atheists burn in hell, but here he says we have no souls, so I guess we can’t go to hell. I doubt Tony sees the conflict between his two statements, but then again, I’m guessing that he probably doesn’t care. In either case, he is putting atheists in a class of people who he considers to be subhuman.
This tactic of declaring those who you dislike as less than human goes back into antiquity. We like to think of ourselves as good people, or at least as adhering to some kind of moral code. To hurt or kill another human goes against most peoples’ moral code, so when they find themselves in conflict with others outside their group they have to find a way to rationalize the hate they feel. They need to make their opponents less than human, less like them. This allows them to resolve the cognitive dissidence that they have to grapple with by treating another person badly.
Religion has a very effective way to dehumanize people. It can claim that the hated group either have no souls, or more commonly, have souls that will be tormented in hell forever. In this way, they become not so much less human, but less worthy of being treated like humans. Using religion to dehumanize someone is even more effective than the usual method of just calling someone inhuman. By claiming that their god has decreed that the hated person(s) are damned, all responsibility for hating, persecuting, hurting, and killing another human begin falls on the god, not his/her/its followers.
It is a very insidious, and very effective, way to justify treating others as less that deserving of the same rights that you have.
Atheists are not technically human beings (they have no soul) therefore they are not protected by our nations laws and bill of rights.
Trying Hard, But Failing
I’m trying really hard to write a blog post. The words are down on the page, the ideas are there, they sentences are coherent, but as they are now, they suck. So until I can get past this stupid writer’s block, here’s a dinosaur.
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