God is Truly an Illusion
In my last post I mentioned how I am reading the book, When Things Fall Apart, and how I am keeping a skeptical outlook as I read it. Well, I just got to a part of the book where I found a passage that makes me feel much more accepting about what the author has to say. Here is the passage that really grabbed me:
The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there’s some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there’s always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.
The idea that theism is a crutch that we feel we need is a beautifully simple way to explain why I am not a theist. It is totally senseable and practical. In her view of non-theism there is no need for a deity because the concept of a diety is an illusion created by our need to not want to feel alone. Even more importantly, this idea of non-theism requires the rejection of even the need for a diety because it shows that this need is purely psychological and emotional and has no connection with the real world we live in.
I am sure I will have more to say on this subject once I am done reading the book and have given it substantial thought.
Meditation In a Starbucks
I’m writing this as I sit in a Starbucks on my lunch break. I was racking my brain trying to think of something to write about when after a few moments of staring at nothing out the window the music and conversations seemed to blend into one low hum. I suddenly realized that I had just spent several moments with no thoughts in my mind. It was very calming and helped me to feel centered.
This immediately made me think about the book I am reading, When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron. It was recommended by my therapist who said I might find some useful coping strategies in it. Being a Buddhist, she writes a lot about meditation and how to teach yourself to keep your mind clear. The idea isn’t to lose yourself or escape from the world, but to center yourself and accept where you currently are in the world.
I was, and still am, skeptical while reading the book. She hasn’t gotten into any kind of spiritual ideas or concepts, outside of some very vague mentions of energy. I can see the value in centering yourself and accepting where and what you are at that moment. I just don’t want to see if devolve into talk of spiritual mumbo jumbo and “life” energy. I suppose we will see. I’ll be sure to let you know.
Skepticon 3 Videos Are Now on Youtube
Finally it seems that most of the speeches and panel discussions from Skepticon 3, which I attended last November, are available on Youtube. You can find them all here in my playlist.
I’m going back to watch them all soon and write up critiques. There are also the ones from Friday morning that I missed because I wan en-route to the conference, in particular Amanda Marcotte’s speech.
Enjoy!
Humbled and Flattered
A regular commenter on this blog has started his own blog, Fribnit’s World. While this is exciting on its own, what really blew me away was one of the reasons why he started it.
In my post, I Seem to Have Hit a Nerve, I quoted his comment to an earlier post because I thought it was such an outstanding piece of writing on the topic. What does this have to do with why I’m blown away? Because of this comment he left me on that post:
thank you for the positive reaction to my comments. because of those positive reactions I started a blog (we will see how it goes) fribnitsworld.worldpress.com
I remember what it was like when I started blogging and the people who inspired me, so to be told that I’ve actually inspired someone else to start blogging is just so wonderful and amazing. As the title here says, I am humbled and flattered.
I hope you will all go to his blog and read what he has to say, and please, wether you like it or not, wether you agree with it on not, leave a comment. I have gotten so much inspiration from the comments that I’ve received here, pro and con, and it has made me a better writer and a better person. So please go and give him so support.
Have I Read The Bible, Hell Yes! That’s Why I’m an Atheist!
A childhood friend on FB responded to my post, The Bible is the Literal Word of God; Except When Its Not. Here is what he said:
“have you read the Bible? or are you simply regurgitating ignorance from others? I have offered answers, yet I have not been taken up on this. Again, it is very irresponsible to propagate unsubstantiated opinions. Why this venom towards Christians and the Bible? If you wish to be an athiest be one, that is your right. Why the all out war on the belief of others. What is freethinking? Oh just freedom to think apart from responsibility and accountablity? Freedom from any form of religious thinking? Maybe free thinking should be folks who examine an issue and think for themselves. Not simply robots who cannot originate a though for themselves. Freethinking is a misnomer”
Yes, I’ve read the bible, cover to cover, at least twice, and many parts of it, the New Testament especially, many, many times over the years. It was this almost continual reading of the bible that made me see more and more contradictions that I just couldn’t rationalize away. Then I studied the history of the writing of the New Testament, how there were originally hundreds of gospels and competing camps of bishops supporting one version of the theology against the others. I learned about the political machinations that took place to arrive at the New Testament we have now. It was, totally and completely, cover to cover, created to fulfill political agendas of the most powerful bishops and the rulers who backed them.
Why do I have such venom toward the bible and the people who misuse it (I refuse to lump all Christians into one group as this would be irresponsible)? Ask Madeline Neumann, a 12-year-old girl whose parents, based on their religion, allowed her to die of diabetic ketoacidosis rather than save her life by allowing physicians to administer insulin and fluids. They thought prayer would save her. It didn’t. Ask the thousands of people who have been killed over the last 2000 years for their refusal to follow the prevailing version of Christianity. Ask the irresponsible ministers and political leaders who wish to brand homosexuals as immoral, second-class citizens. Ask the 156,000,000 women who’s reproductive organs are held hostage by a religiously motivated white, male, privileged class of cretins.
I wage an all out war on anything that conspires to take rights away from people. That includes holier-than-thou Christians, militant, closed minded Muslims, Zionistic Jews willing to steal and kill to get their land, white supremacists who wish to overthrow the U.S Government, wide-eyed, white, privileged Greenpeace and PETA people who would rater see millions starve and die of disease than allow GM foods and medicines tested on animals be developed that could save countless lives.
Christianity is my main focus because, almost without exception, all of the people in this country right now who would seek to take rights away from others self-identify as Christians and claim that their sense of morality comes from their religion. If things change and the largest group of privileged people in power become Muslims or Hindus or Wiccans, I’ll fight them just as loudly and forcefully.
I don’t claim to be able to tell people how to live their lives. As long as no one is being harmed, taken advantage of, or being forced either by law or by custom to kowtow to some group’s beliefs, then I say let people believe whatever they like. You can believe in God and Jesus, you can believe that Homosexuals will go to hell, but keep that belief within your churches and homes, don’t force it on others.
I don’t go door to door trying to get people not to believe in God. I don’t support any law that would outlaw any kind of religion or religious belief. I don’t lobby for my personal beliefs to be the law of the land, but don’t try to tell me that Christians aren’t doing that every day, in every town and state in the country. When the Christian majority (and yes, you are well over a 70% majority) tries to tell the rest of us what we can do and say and believe and think, then yes, I will fight for my rights and the rights of everyone else who are forced to listen to people tell us we are less American and less patriotic than they are because we don’t believe in their god. This country was founded on religious freedom (freedom for and from religion) and freedom of conscience, not on Christianity or any other religion. Yes, I will fight for that kicking and screaming, every fucking step of the way.
The Bible is the Literal Word of God; Except When Its Not
Atheist Revolution has a nice entry about how the bible condemns public prayer. I’m waiting to see what kind of spin the Christian apologists will put on that one. I have talked about this whole, the-bible-is-literal-except-for-the-parts-I-don’t-like phenomenon before here. There is a technical name for this, coined by Penn & Teller; it’s called BULLSHIT.
I want to quote from that piece of mine that I mentioned above and elaborate a bit on it:
Jay Walker: So how do you decide what parts of the “Old Testament” to believe and which parts not to? I thought the whole bible was the word of god? I’m not asking to be sarcastic, I’m honestly curious.
Bob Santaniello: It isn’t a decision; I believe as you said, all of the Old and New Testaments is the true word of God as given to men by the Holy Spirit. The deciding part is to hermeneutically figure out to whom the different parts were written, why things were written, the cultural surroundings in which they were written, the style of writing – poetry, symbolism, narrative, prophetic – most all can be found in them. The more I study God’s word, the better I come to understanding Him and in building a relationship with Him – and how to live according to His word. 1 Corinthians 2:14 tells how Bible truth is revealed to mankind.
So the bible is literally true, except when it is poetic, symbolic, or whatever else the apologist decides best fits his current bullshit explanation of the “word of God”. For some reason, the all-powerful, all-knowing god, although he writes quite persuasively, can’t seem to write very clearly. You would think that a deity the likes of which Christians describe would be able to get his message across clearly and succinctly. I’ve known 9th graders who were able to write much more lucidly and get their point across with infinitely more clarity that this all knowing, all add-your-grandiose-trait here, ne plus ultra deity (I used to teach high school English so I’ve seen plenty of 9th grade writings so I know that of which I speak.)
The bible is ragtag collection of manmade texts with no self-consistency of facts, theology or history, if anything, the contradictions within them are glaring and numerous. There are numerous sources that I could cite, two excellent ones are Biblical Nonsense: A Review Of The Bible For Doubting Christians, by Jason Long and Self-Contradictions of the Bible, by William Henry Burr. You can also google “bible contradictions” and that will turn up hundreds of sites with thousands of examples.
Christians would have you believe that the bible is akin to a sports or game rulebook for living life.
Here is an exercise that you yourself can do to approximate the clarity and explanatory power of the bible:
- Acquire rulebooks for baseball, basketball, polo, monopoly, chess, poker and horseshoes.
- Carefully tear each page out of each rulebook.
- Throw all the pages up in the air. (It would help if there was a fairly stiff breeze).
- Collect them all up and throw them into one big pile.
- Organize them into a stack so that all pages are orientated the same way.
- Staple, tape, or bind them all together in a binder.
- Now, on the outside of the binder write, “The Bible”.
Viola! Your very own rule book that makes just as much sense and was organized in much the same way the book Christians call their bible. You and your friends will have just as much trouble figuring your book out as Christians do theirs.
If you do decide to try this experiment, please, for the love of all that is good, burn your book as soon as you are done leafing through it so that some nut doesn’t find it and start preaching that he’s found the true way to play the game of life.
Comments on Atheism and Gender Equality
Here is an illuminating comment on my earlier post from a reader, Sas, and my reply:
- Thanks for this . I have been appalled by some men’s attitudes – I left Christianity hoping for an equal world and was horrified to see the same old crap in the atheist camp. ” girls are naturally less intelligent that’s why they go to church ” No you twat, church has free childcare and you don’t get touched up.
Treat women right and they’ll join you.
Also try to understand that liking men and sex doesn’t mean they will sleep with any man – ESP not the older ones who think we are gagging for a father figure…
Comment by Sas | February 8, 2011 | Edit | Reply
- Ps lots of men don’t like sex and will make you feel bad for asking for it. Strangely they lie about that to their male friends.
Comment by Sas | February 8, 2011 | Edit | Reply
- Sas, I agree with you completely. Men need to understand that just because a woman is sexually liberated doesn’t mean she will sleep with everyone, especially them. Yes, biology is powerful. Yes, males evolved to try to have sex with as many females as possible in order to pass on their genes. But to use this as an excuse to treat women solely as sexual objects is disingenuous and wrong. This only supports the theists’ contention that atheists are all amoral darwinists. We are moral creatures who have the benefit of intelligence and rational thought to rise above our evolutionary imperatives, especially when they interfere with our ability to responsibly interact with each other.
Comment by Jay Walker | February 8, 2011 | Edit | Reply
Atheism and Gender Equality (or lack thereof)
I read a guest blog post at Blag Hag by Sharon Moss, President of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio with Lyz Liddell, Director of Campus Organizing at the Secular Student Alliance, about their experience at the American Atheists’ Southeast Regional Atheist Meet in Huntsville, Alabama. In it, they explain the sexism they encounter while there.
What is ironic is that the sexist attitudes were most evident at a panel about how atheist organizations can attract more women. I’ll let them explain in their own words:
A panel of five guys and one woman discussed what an atheist group should do to attract more women. The all-too-common problem came up of a woman showing up to a meeting and every dude there hitting on her. First, the panelists grabbed a theme that had been floating around all weekend: that men hitting on women is just biological (therefore excusable), making it sound like a woman in that kind of situation should just STFU and get over it.
Then the moderator asked the women in the audience, as if it were a rewording of the same question, whether they would feel harassed or flattered if they showed up to an event and a few guys started flirting with them. We women in the audience, pressured to respond to the question at hand but feeling duped because we knew it wasn’t the same thing, gave an honest response. Sure, a few guys flirting with us is sexy. BUT!!! (we all screamed in our heads, even though the panel never let us say it out loud) 20 guys our father’s age blatantly staring at and talking to our cleavage is a totally different situation! It’s not sexy, it’s gross and creepy.
It was extremely frustrating. So I wasn’t surprised when the young woman who finally stood up and started challenging the panel snapped. First, despite her having her hand raised for most of the discussion, the panel never even acknowledged her or invited her opinion (despite soliciting the opinion of several guys both on and off the panel. Finally, she just stood up and started shouting to make her voice heard. Her question focused on the language the panel had been using – “female” instead of “woman,” and pointed out that it made us sound like livestock rather than people.
But did the panel address the question, perhaps looking for the point at which the discussion took on the word “female” so universally? Did they take the opportunity to discuss how things like language can make a group uncomfortable for women, and what we could do to make it better? No! The woman asking the question was viciously torn apart and ridiculed for even bringing it up. First, a combination of panelists and audience members tried to defend themselves by saying that feminists won’t let men use the word “women” off-limits because it has “men” in it. Then a commotion of everyone talking at once, which was cut off by one panelist’s definitive comment: “What do you want us to say, ‘the weaker sex?”
She got upset (and who wouldn’t be?) and left the room. I – a member of the audience, not one of the event organizers – went after her. While there were a few odd calls from the audience for the panelist to apologize, the moderator sort of awkwardly pushed the discussion on to a new topic, with an embarrassed air of “Sorry for the disturbance.” No apology, no discussing a better way it could have been handled. Not even a joking “This is how *not* to be welcoming” comment. Just “nothing to see here, move along.”
…From there, the conversation wandered into a weird discussion about how men’s biology drives them to frequently (if not constantly) pursue sex, and since it’s biology, no one should get upset at, judge, or think less of men for any skirt-chasing they might engage in. (Because we never intellectually overcome our animal instincts in other areas of our biology, right?) The attitude in the room shifted: suddenly women were the bad guys for saying no to men’s propositions because it denies the men’s innate biology. Most of the guys in the room loved it, but as a woman in the audience – it was really uncomfortable. It was demeaning, frustrating, and not what you want to say to attract more women into this movement. And the attitude stuck around.All these people got presented with a totally skewed perspective on our movement’s views on gender equality and sexuality. The message was loud and clear: it’s totally ok for guys to be assholes. Women should just STFU when men treat them like sex objects. The appropriate way to solve the problem of gender imbalance is to ask a bunch of guys about it (oh, and the entire problem is just because women won’t let men have sex with them whenever they want to). The way to handle women’s input is to ridicule them.
This whole experience would be laughable, like something from a bad Saturday Night Live skit, if it weren’t for the fact that it really happened, and happened in the context of a discussion of how to attract more women to the atheist movement.
This sort of thing makes me ashamed to be a man, not to mention a white, middle-aged, male atheist, and rightly so. The insufferable sense of male privilege permeates the description of the conference and I can only imagine what it must have been like to be a woman in attendance. I can tell you that had I been there I certainly would have, for one, apologized for my insensitive and idiotic fellow white males, and then I would have ripped them a new one for being to fatuously insensitive to 30% of the audience present.
I believe that if atheist organizations want to make their organizations more open and welcoming to women, they need to, first and foremost, actively seek out women to be, not just members, but organizers. I know, that is putting the cart before then horse, but they must at lease try to truly understand the discrimination and sexism that woman face in our society. They need to educate themselves on this subject and take what they learn to heart.
There is no excuse for these kinds of sexist attitudes or behavior at an atheist conference, unless these are some kind of male only atheist organizations, in which case, who needs them?
Religion Kills Another Child
In Bangladesh, a religious cleric ordered a 14 year old girl to be given 100 lashes with a bamboo pole for supposedly having an illicit relationship with a married cousin. The man’s wife said that she saw the girl speaking to her husband near their home and notified the village cleric who order the husband and the girl to undergo the punishment of 100 lashes. The girl collapsed half way through the beating and was taken to hospital where she died a week later.
If this weren’t horrifying enough, the wife tried to claim that her husband was raping the girl and upon hearing the girl’s cries, the wife ran in and began beating the girl. Let me repeat that. Upon supposedly hearing a 14 year old girl being raped by her husband, the wife said that she ran in and beat the girl! The police aren’t buying that story, but what does it say about these people that she would think that beating the girl who was being raped was actually justification for her death?
This incident speaks volumes about the almost non-human status of woman in many religions and cultures. While it may be true that some of the attitude toward women is cultural, it is almost always supported by religious writings and teachings.
Wether the girl was just talking to her cousin, who is a male relative after all, or if there was an illicit relationship ilvolved, murder is not an appropriate punishment, especially for a young, impressionable 14 year old child.
I am reminded of a quote by Nobel laureate and physicist Steven Weinberg:
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil – but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.”
Why The Climate Change Debate Is A Good Example For Separation Of Church And State
Phil Plait has a great post about climate change on his Bad Astronomy blog. Climate change is disputed by the majority of Republicans mainly due to their conservative religious beliefs. They dispute climate change even in the face of overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus.
I am not going to get into the actual evidence for climate change; there are plenty of books and websites out there that present the clear and overwhelming evidence in support of anthropogenic global warming . I am going to simply insist, based on this evidence, climate change is a fact. This is real and there is copious evidence to support this view.
What I want to talk about is how religious beliefs have been allowed to influence government policy and public perceptions of this issues in particular and science in general.
During the administration of George W. Bush, we had the closet thing to a theocracy that we have yet seen in the country. During the eight years of Bush, science took huge hits in funding and support in critical areas of research such as stem cell and climate research.
At the start of the Bush administration, the U.S. was one of the leaders in embryonic stem cell research. This research has the potential to lead to treatments for everything from Parkinson’s disease to Alzheimer’s, diabetes to the repair of spinal cord injuries and more. Yet this funding was severely limited by the Republican congress’ and the Bush administration’s refusal to fund embryonic stem cell research. As a result, embryonic stem cell research was taken up overseas where it has flourished, leaving the U.S. a decade behind in research and development in this promising and critical area.
Why is the religious right against embryonic stem cell research? Because they believe that life begins at conception based on their religious teachings, even though the Bible has nothing to say about when life actually begins. Their belief is not based on anything real, but is based on their interpretation of texts written thousands of years ago by people who believe that the world was going to end in their lifetimes. They believe that supporting embryonic stem cell research would lead to the harvesting of stem cells from aborted fetuses. This is patently false. According to the National Institutes of Health:
Embryonic stem cells, as their name suggests, are derived from embryos. Most embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized and then donated for research purposes with informed consent of the donors. They are derived from eggs fertilized in a woman’s body.
The stem cells are not collected from fetuses at all, but from fertilized eggs in a laboratory. They never come close to reaching the point of being a fetus, but merely a collection of embryonic cells in a nutrient rich medium.
This is a classic example of the right ignoring, if not misrepresenting, the facts to suit their religiously motivate ideology.
The religious right’s opposition to climate change is similar, although there is an economic and political side to their arguments as well as a religious one. They argue that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will hurt American businesses. All you have to do is look across the ocean to Europe where business there are thriving despite heavy government regulations to see that this argument is spurious. What they really mean when they say that it will be bad for American business is that it will be bad for their vested interests; those energy and oil companies that supply so much of their campaign cash and in which many of them have significant investments.
But there is also a religious reason why they oppose efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. They cite the Bible verse of Genesis:
1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
They use this verse to justify using (or misusing) the earth for whatever purposed we wish. But with dominion doesn’t there come responsibility? If I am running a company, doesn’t it make sense to run it responsibly so that I get the maximum use for the maximum amount of time from it rather than running it into the ground in the quest for short term profits? Once again, their reasoning is flawed. Sure, we can do whatever we want with the earth, there is nothing to stop us from doing that, but the real question is should we do this? Is heating the planet up and changing entire ecosystems in the long term the right thing to do. I suppose it is if you only care about the here and now, and not future generations.
And that leads us to a really frightening aspect of the religious right’s theology: the idea that we are living in the end times. When you look at climate change from this point of view, then sucking every last resource, damn the consequences, actually makes some sort of twisted sense. Why bother cutting greenhouse gases if we (“we” being good Christians) are going to be raptured into heaven soon anyway?
This is where the irrationality of this kind of warped theological thinking become horrifyingly apparent. There are many people in our government who honestly believe that we are the last generation on earth and that because of this we can throw caution to the wind and ignore climate change, start a war with Iran that will start a world war that will usher in the Apocalypse and bring on the second coming of Christ. Very scary. Of course, the one question they can not, or will not, answer is, “What if you are wrong?”.
This is why religion must be separate from government. Government must rule for all people, not just the ones who believe in end of the world prophecies. We must base our policies on the best that science, not superstition, has to offer or else there will be hell to pay here on earth, but it will be a hell of our own making.
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