Here’s the deal, we all know that the Bible says some really ridiculous things. There are actually restrictions on how long you can grow your hair, what kind of clothing you can wear, and what you should do with your… excrement. So I thought it might be fun to make up your own wacky Bible verse and try to pass it on as real.
I bet it will be really easy. All you have to do is throw in a “thou” and a “thy” here and there and slap on a Bible book name and numbers. Using the Old Testament is probably easier than the New Testament, but really either could work.
For example, did you know that the Bible supports masturbation except after midnight? It’s true, “and verily I say to you, thou shall spill thy seed upon the firmament unless thy moon has moved upon thy following day.” Numbers 35:18
Create your verse and pass it alone through your social networks, friends, and family and see how many people believe it and how many people call you out. I bet even some really religious people will buy it, but will dismiss it as metaphorical or as out of context. Let me know your verse and your results. Have fun!
I once heard it said that being an atheist in a theist world is like being the only sober person at a party. I think this is pretty accurate sometimes. I also think that it seems like I’m one of the few sane people in a world gone mad.
The way I see it, religion really does warp people’s thinking. For example, if someone is starving would it me moral for an alcohol company to offer to give them some food and a bottle of scotch plus an hour long lecture on why drinking can help you forget about your problems? Of course not! No one would say, well at least the starving person is getting the food they need. In my recent article about how religious groups often use tragedies like the earthquake in Japan to push their product, I have gotten tons of Christians and even a few atheists defending the absurdly immoral activities of Christian groups pushing Bibles and sermons with their “relief.”
It seems strange to me that so many people go out of their way to defend insanely immoral activities done by religious people. Yesterday, I saw a clip from Chris Matthews’s show Hardball in which he was talking to the Philadelphia district attorney about the massive pedophile priest scandal that took place here recently. Both Matthews and the DA are both Catholic. They talked about how wrong it was that these priests did what they did, but not once did they talk about the systematic way that the Church attempted to cover up these crimes. The obvious question is, why do these pedophile scandals always seem to involve Catholic priests and not Buddhist monks?
The point here is that for some bizarre reason, religion gets a pass for their insane behavior because we live in a mostly theistic world. Even among many atheists, religion gets a pass for their insanity. When we talk about faith and science, it should be obvious which one is more accurate. Yet whenever they are in conflict (which is all the time) almost all theists and even some atheists will defend faith over reason.
It is time to stop giving the religious a pass on their insanity. If we are ever going to live in a sane world, we need to call theists out on their bullshit. I will end with some words from my esteemed colleague from the Cult of Dusty, Dusty Smith:
I find that after I write an article of blog entry, Christians tend to be the first to misrepresent something I said and assume the worst. When I read a theist article (even one which I know I will comment on critically or write an entire response to), I tend to read carefully the parts that I plan to comment on. I want to make sure that I am not creating a straw man argument. I want to make sure that I am assuming the best in what the theist is saying.
In my view, their best usually paints them in a bad light so I have no problem doing it. I think that the Abrahamic position is ridiculous, so I am willing to give theists the rope they need, so to speak. When they say, “Atheists believe X” or “atheists do X” my first assumption is that they mean “many atheists” or “atheists in general” and not “all atheists.” Sometimes they do mean “all atheists,” but I would want them to clarify that point. But when I say “many Christians” or “some Jews,” they frequently respond by claiming that I am making a sweeping generalizations and lumping “all” together.
It sometimes amazes me at how quickly a theist will misrepresent what I write in such obvious ways that it seems like they are often projecting what they would do on me. I really go out of my way to try to understand where the theist writer is coming from, but I rarely get that type of response from theists when it comes to my writing. It’s frustrating sometimes.
Yesterday, a Christian on Twitter called me “ignorant” because he didn’t like the title of my article which he did not bother to read. I tried to explain to him that ignorance is of a particular nature that it can be cured through education. In his case, he could read the article he commented on so that he could point out my ignorance so that I too can educate myself and rid myself of this ignorance.
Ignorance is not an insult. I am ignorant of a lot of things as is everyone else. But I try to educate myself as much as I can. Willful ignorance however is insulting. When someone can educate themselves, but chooses to remain in a state of ignorance on a particular subject while he or she continues to speak on that subject as if they were educated about it. This is willful ignorance and it should be insulting.
Saying something that some people might find offensive is not the same thing as saying something out of willful ignorance or even just ignorance. Someone can be very well educated on a subject and people can still be offended and insulted by educated statements.
Ignorance can be cured through education, but you can’t cure stupid.
This really gets old, but once again religious groups are putting lots of money toward using the earthquakes in Japan as a public relations stunt. Sure, there are helping the people there too, but they are doing it mainly out of a need to promote their ridiculous beliefs.
I remember seeing the commercials on television for Philip Morris. Because I didn’t smoke, I had no idea what they did. So when I saw their commercials, I thought they were a humanitarian group. They always showed someone doing some good deed. I remember seeing a female oil rig worker saying something like, “Philip Morris helps people” and/or “Thank you Philip Morris,” in one of the commercials. The commercial had nothing to do with smoking at all.
Religion is a little like that except that when they go to help people they also push their product, in this case religion. Could you imagine if Phillip Morris came to help those hurt in Japan and then took the opportunity to shoot a commercial and to really rub it in, they then handed out free cigarettes to those in need? That is what religion does.
I am happy they are there to help, but leave the PR machine, the free Bibles, and the Jesus talk at home. If they are there to help, they should just help instead of using tragedy as an opportunity for converts. It is immoral and unconscionable that religious people can’t understand that people who need help don’t want to be used as propaganda and don’t want to be marks for religious con-artists.
One of the things I notice a lot when discussing religion with theists is that they tend to be quick to start with the name calling. When this happens, I like to call attention to it and then move on with the discussion. I don’t think it is productive to name call back but they should be aware that they started down that road.
This generally happens after I have criticized and maybe even mocked a particular religious doctrine or belief. The key difference is that I focus on the beliefs while theists like to call the atheist names. They often don’t understand this difference and so it is important to point it out to them.
The way I think about it is that name calling is the last refuge for those who have lost the argument on its merits and if you disagree, you must be a poopy-head!
Once again we come to the conversation about how critical atheists should be when criticizing religion with the religious. It seems that some atheists think I should be more respectful of the religious and realize that they sometimes feel personally attacked when their beliefs are criticized. I realize this, but that doesn’t mean that I have to accept it and wear my religious kid gloves when talking to them.
Religious people aren’t children. They are adults with all the reasoning potential as non-theists. So why should we treat them like children and handhold them through discussions. I am sorry they feel personally attacked by any criticism of their religious beliefs, but that isn’t going to stop me from criticizing their religious beliefs. They are just going to have to grow up and act like the adults they are.
Religious people have to stop whining line children whenever their religious beliefs get criticized. I’m an adult so when I discuss religion with another adult, I expect to have an adult conversation. Having the conversation any other way should quite honestly be insulting to the religious person. They should be happy that we are treating them like rational adults rather than the emotionally stunted children they often act like when they whine about being personally insulted by harsh criticisms of their ridiculous religious beliefs.
Last night I was pretty surprised to get an e-mail from the executives at Examiner.com. I write for Examiner as the Philly Atheist Examiner to help fund Dangerous Talk. Apparently, they received a complaint about one of my articles and determined that a statement I made might be libelous.
The article was the one I did about the Raelian atheist billboard. The statement was that I called Rael (the leader of the Raelians) a fraud. I guess if I can’t call him a fraud that might mean that he really did met with aliens from some galactic federation.
In any case, out of fear of receiving the “Scientology” treatment of getting sued, Examiner instructed me to make it clear that Rael being a fraud is just my opinion. So fine, it is my opinion that Rael is a fraud. It is also my opinion that Scientology is a fraud and that most religious leaders are frauds too.
The thing is that I don’t like this attitude that many religious people from Raelian to Scientologist and even to those of the Abrhamic religions have. It’s an attitude that if you criticize them and call them out as frauds, they will sue you. Everyone knows that some religion (other than their religion of course) is ridiculously fake, but if you say it out loud, you might get sued.
I can’t tell you have many times some Christian has told me that they think Scientology is a ridiculous religion focused on swindling money from its members. I agree with this, but usually point out that Christianity is no different. The fact is that almost all religions are frauds (Legal Disclaimer: in my opinion).
Often times I use emotion and passion in my arguments. I find that when dealing with theists, this generally works best. But I think it is important to remain unemotional while doing it. To put it another way, one can argue with emotion while remaining unemotional.
People (especially religious people) tend to be swayed by emotion and passion, but the problem is that emotions can cloud rationality. This is why I think it is important to remain unemotional while arguing. I think it is important to not take anything personally and to remain calm and rational as long as it is done passionately.
Using passion and emotion in arguments is generally a good way to start the discussion because it gets attention and focus, but then it is important to transition that passion into rational discourse.
It is also important to monitor the level of emotion in the other party so that they are just passionate enough to keep focus, but don’t get so overly emotional that they can no longer think rationally. This can be tricky and different people have different thresholds.
When we lose out cool, then we have lost the argument. Theists often count on this and that is why many times they intentionally try to provoke anger and frustration in atheists. I will admit that in a recent argument in the comments of multiple Examiner articles, a particular Christian did get me frustrated to the point where I could no longer argue effectively. So it does happen but we have to try to be as patient as we can.
Luke: “But how am I to know the good side from the bad?”
Yoda: “You will know… when you are calm, at peace, passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.”
It seems that theists aren’t always the ones who lack reason. Many times even normally reasonable atheists fall into the trap of using anecdotal evidence to justify an irrational belief. The old, “it works for me” claim is not actually evidence!
I usually hear religious people and new age people make the claim that something ridiculous works for them despite all the evidence to the contrary. But we also see this type of thinking in relation to homeopathy and this is where atheists occasionally get dragged into this logical problem.
Not long ago, I got into a discussion about Alcoholics Anonymous, which has a 5% success rate. I was surprised that normally reasonable atheists would make the claim that it works because they have some relative or friend who was saved. This anecdotal evidence is supposed to convince me in the face of the actual numbers?
Anecdotal evidence is not sufficient except if it confirms or highlights what other forms of evidence suggest. But just because my grandfather smoked a pipe until he was 93 years old doesn’t mean that smoking a pipe I not harmful to one’s health.
I occurred to me that when atheists message our billboard campaigns and other messaging, we always criticize things that religious people consider to be positive. For example, “Religion is a MYTH.” Many of our twitter messaging is the similar. We talk about how God is imaginary, the Bible is fiction, etc. There is nothing wrong with this approach. I use it all the time. However we have other Good News to deliver too.
I think we should also focus our messaging on things that even religious people have to admit are negative about their own belief system. The Good News is that Hell is Imaginary too. The Devil is a MYTH. And all the wars in the Old Testament where God ordered and protected the Hebrews as they committed mass rape and genocide never actually happened. It’s all fiction.
Who would wish Hell to be real? What Christian would want to defend Satan? Who wouldn’t be relieved to hear that all those people didn’t really die in the Old Testament? It just seems that this type of messaging might cut down a bit on the resistance to our Good News.
We should of course continue with our more common messaging too. This is not a replacement in messaging, but rather an additional type of messaging we should be exploring.
Did you hear the Good News? Hell is Imaginary too! #Tweet it out!
Right wing Christians love to talk about people should take personal responsibility for themselves. This usually is in reference to when minority is being persecuted. Whenever I heard this type of thing from them, I can’t help but laugh.
Of all the people in the entire world the one group that is God bent on not taking personal responsibility for themselves has got to be Christians. If something good happens due to their hard work, “Thank God.” If something bad happens because of some poor choices, “God has a plan.” Sometimes the really fundamentalists will blame the Devil for the bad things. Rarely however do Christians praise or blame themselves.
When it comes to taking personal responsibility, Christians rank pretty low on the list. While not everything in life is in our personal control, for Christians to whine about personal responsibility is laughable. In life, sometimes something happens that we consider good and sometimes something happens that we consider bad. Sometimes we have some measure of control and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes shit both good and bad, happen.
Sometimes we are correct in thanking others and ourselves for the good things in our lives and sometimes we are correct in blaming others and ourselves for the bad things in our lives. But the most important thing is that when be have bad things happen, we have to take the personal responsibility to try to make it better. We can’t sit around praying to some magical deity to fix things. Fuck those “prayer requests” and actually ask for some human help if you need it.
The other day, I got an e-mail from an anonymous Christians which was short and to the point. The two word e-mail said, “Jesus Rules.” I was not really in the mood for debate, so I thought I would have some fun with the guy instead. I was surprised that I actually changed the conversation (if you could call it that) completely and had some fun.
Sometimes a Christian doesn’t even take the time to actually write out an argument that I heard a million times before as if he or she just invested it, but rather they just write some short taunt that takes even less thought than the old tired arguments. When this happens I have to respond in kind. So I jokingly responded to the “Jesus Rules” e-mail, by switching the point of reference.
The great comedian Louis C.K. once said that if you have to get into an argument, you shouldn’t get into their argument, but instead make up a new argument. In his stand up, he was caught in traffic and a guy kept honking at him to move. The guy even got out of his car and knocked on his window. He had to get into an argument. He could have tried to rationally explain that there are cars in front of him and if he started driving he would collide, but that wasn’t going to settle this. So he rolled down his window and demanded that the guy return his grandmother’s sweater. The guy had no idea what was going on, so he just walked away and got back in his car.
With this in mind, instead of the Biblical Jesus I decided to talk about a different Jesus. I responded, “Then why do Republicans want to stop him from doing their landscaping?” Part of me thought this would end the “debate” but I was humorously surprised that he responded with, “Because he was not born in the USA.” He actually took the bait and now we have changed the conversation from religion to immigration.
Now comes the tricky part. Now I have to convince him to educate himself and think critically while talking about immigration rather than religion. I think that can be done and I can make my point without him having to fight against his religious indoctrination/brain washing. This is kinda fun and liberating at the same time. So next time a Christian sends you an even less thoughtful message than the usual thoughtless drivel, turn it into a joke instead. Just don’t forget to make your points while having fun.
What do Christians hope to accomplish when they start an argument with an atheist? Do they think they are going to convince us with no evidence that some ridiculous ancient story is obviously true? They know that we know a lot about religion and we have probably heard all their arguments before they even come out of their mouth. So, what is their point?
My guess is that they don’t really have a point. They probably haven’t thought this through at all. They are probably just hoping that they can rattle off a bunch of arguments and maybe one of them will stick. But the fact is that we have heard all their poorly thought out arguments before.
They gotta know that the only thing that will convince us is actual evidence and that is the very thing that they don’t actually have. We have to make them realize just how ridiculous their religion really is. We need to get them to step back and look at their religion as an outsider would.
If they truly believe that their beliefs are not ridiculous, they have nothing to lose by going on the internet and researching possible atheist responses. Let them do the work. Let them educate themselves and put them in our shoes. Maybe they will start to think critically about the world around them for a change.
The other day I was having a discussion with a Christian and I cited a scientific study. In return, the Christian cited an opinion poll. Then she said that since we both have resources that support our point of view, it must be a wash. It seems to me that many Christians don’t understand the difference between a scientific study and an opinion poll.
Scientific studies are done under control conditions and take statistical random sampling into account. They try to eliminate biases and have an open methodology so that the study can be replicated by others.
An opinion poll generally just invites people to state their opinion. No control conditions, no random sampling, no methodology, etc. For example, if the poll is on a website it is only representative of those who visit the website. A CNN poll will be biased toward CNN viewers. A Fox poll will be biased toward Fox viewers, and an MSNBC poll will be biased toward MSNBC viewers.
When I point this out, sometimes the religious person will bring in anecdotal evidence to counter the scientific study. This too is laughably poor. Just because something seemed to work for one person doesn’t mean that it actually worked for that one person. There was no control involved and so we don’t really know if what seemed to work was actually the thing that did work.
Scientific studies are designed to take these things into account but they are not perfect and so sometimes we find out later that there is a flaw in a study and so someone makes a new study to factor the previously discovered flaw into account. As time goes on, studies are perfected and become more accurate. So even if two studies show conflicting results, that doesn’t make it a wash. We can look at the methodology of the studies and see which one has the better methodology and might yield more accurate results.
I have been writing the Dangerous Talk daily blog almost every weekday for two years. Before that, I wrote the daily blog on MySpace for about another two years. That’s a lot of blogs. Within the past few days, I have been reminded about some of my older blog entries that I really love. So I thought today, I would talk about some of those blog entries.
Before I get started, I wanted to say that one of the reasons why I started blogging was so I wouldn’t have to keep addressing the same topics over and over again. I could simply use Dangerous Talk as a resource and point people to blog entries I wrote on the topic already.
A few days ago, a fellow atheist started to tell me about how a small group of wealthy families have been trying to take over the world and create a “New World Order.” I immediately referred him to a blog entry I wrote awhile back. I thought about writing a new entry about it, but after re-reading what I had previously wrote, I didn’t think I could top it or add anything new to it. So I want to share that blog entry: The New World Order is Coming for You!
During my Examiner exchange with Stephen Drain, he imagined that I said that all Christians were stupid. I told him repeatedly that not only did I not say that, don’t think that is true, and that I actually wrote a blog entry about it. So I want to share that today also: Are Religious Believers Stupid?
Over the weekend, I got into a debate with a friend on facebook about Alcoholics Anonymous. The debate largely took place on my brother’s facebook page and he turned it into a pretty good Examiner article. But this debate reminded me of two blog entries I had written… neither of which is about alcoholism directly. I hope you will check them out: Lead us not in Temptation & Devil’s Due.
The last blog entry I want to share today is a little bit more on the humorous side: Water into Wine? Please!
This is the first time I am doing this type of “best of” and I would be interested to hear if people liked this type of thing every now and then or not. So please share your thoughts in the comment section. Also, if you really like my blogs please consider sharing the links on your social networks and perhaps even… dare I say it… donate:
For the last few weeks, there have been some pretty big protests going on in the Middle East. Governments have fallen as a result. Twitter and Facebook were key weapons for the rebel groups. I think it is type that some kind of protest starts here in America. I think it is time we demand secular!
America is already a secular nation… technically. However, in many European nations candidates for public office and public officials would not dare speak about religion out of fear of seeming presumptuous and disingenuous.
In America however, one must be religious in order to convince people they are moral. The more religious one pretends to be the greater their chance of winning an election. This is why former President George W. Bush said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus, John Kerry cared a Bible, and Mitt Romney talks about God a lot, but tried to play down his Mormonism. This is also why people like Sarah Palin. Mike Huckabee, and Michele Bachmann are even on the political map.
It is time we demand secular! I don’t know how this type of revolution is to take place, be I know we need one. I know we need to use Twitter and Facebook and Demand Secular! Let’s show American politicians that Americans voters will no longer tolerate the “God” card in politics.
Liberal Christians can join this fight with us. The Separation of Church and State protects them too. We need to get people thinking differently and this type of twitter revolution may be the best way to do it. Spread the word, we’re coming! #DemandSecular
I was recently reading a section of Sam Harris’s book, The Moral Landscape. In one part of the book, Harris talks about how our brain is wired. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it seems that religious believers tend to be more fearful, paranoid, and value authority more than secular people. I also remember reading something similar to this when reading one of George Lakoff’s books about Democrats and Republicans. I am starting to think that maybe atheism is evolutionary.
In the past, there might have been an evolutionary reason for people to be religious. For example, religion creates a strong community. The down side to this is that this strong community also fosters a strong tribe mentality. As the world has become more interconnected, we are losing the need for tribes and are moving toward the view that we are all part of the same tribe.
As this now becomes more conducive to human survival, perhaps this view is becoming more prevalent on the biological level of the brain. Since atheists tend to value reason over faith, this could also be a biological adaptation. We no longer need to rely upon paranoia to protect us from harmful plants and animals, now we have science and reason to help us.
The only real problem with this theory that atheism is the next stage in human evolution is that atheists tend to have much less children than religious people. The whole Quiverfull movement kind of destroys my theory.
On the other hand, Socrates once viewed the mind/body problem from the other end. Perhaps, our biology can change by our behavior and attitudes. Maybe, we can re-write the wiring of our brains by thinking differently about the world around us. In this sense, evolution is less about biology and more about the propagation of new ideas. So all those people born out of the Quiverfull movement may become atheists and that new wiring might then continue to be propagated by education and genetics. I don’t really know if this makes much sense, but it is just a thought I was having. What do you think?
Religious believers often tell me that science can prove God exists. It is at this point that I start laughing in their face. But still they insist on continuing this line of evangelism.
Next the theist will use the argument by design, the first cause argument, the fine tuning argument, and a handful of other failed arguments to prove their point. I always find it funny that they seem to think I have never heard these arguments before and that they have just invented something new or were imparting some kind of grant revelation to me. But that is really beside the point. The point is that none of their arguments are scientific.
In order to be classified as science in any sense at all, the proposition must be falsifiable. To the religious believe, God is a non-falsifiable proposition. To prove this point, I often ask the believer what evidence would be required to prove their proposition false. For this they often don’t have an answer. If they are one of the few who has thought about this, then they have already taken their first steps down the road of doubt. All we have to do from here is encourage them to continue to thinking critically.
Is atheism falsifiable? Hell yeah. Sorry about that, I couldn’t resist the joke. Seriously though, all God has to do to disprove an atheists lack of belief is to provide one hundred percent absolute proof of his existence. In fact, as I pointed out in my recent video, The Ontological Argument for Disproving God, the mere fact that there are atheists actually falsifies and disproves the existence of God.
Sometimes Christians really do amaze me with their ridiculous claims. But it is when they may ridiculous claims about other Christians that I have to laugh the most. There is an old expression, “Is the Pope Catholic?” The expression is meant to show that the answer to a question is obviously yes. But if you ask many fundamentalist Christians if the Pope is Christian, you might be surprise at their answer.
Catholics and Protestants are still fighting their Christian civil war. But now instead of violence they use rhetoric. When they aren’t attacking atheists, it can be pretty fun to watch them attack each other.
The Catholic Church brags that they are the original church set up by Paul and they have an unbroken doctrinal chain to support that they are the one true church. Just ask Catholic fundamentalist wacko Michael Voris. The Pope even claims that all none Catholic Christians (and non-Christians) are going to be tortured for all eternity in Hell.
The Protestants often claim that the Catholic Church is polytheism because they promote the worship of saints. Oddly enough, those Protestants don’t consider worship of the trinity to be polytheism. In any case, Protestants also complain about other aspects of the Catholic Church (no, not pedophilia), the communion. They claim that they are the true Christians and that the Catholics have it all wrong.
Then we can throw in the Mormons and watch the real fireworks begin. The Catholics and the Protestants suddenly start asking the Mormons all the questions non-Christians ask all three groups. Each group claims to be the True Scotsman and it is just fun to watch.
Over the weekend, I had a little problem with a particular Christian. A few weeks ago, a Christian e-mailed me asking for a collaborative project where we each ask each other 5 questions on our Examiner pages and then we each answer them. The way it was pitched to me, we would refrain from personal attacks and just concentrate on the topic.
What tends to happen a lot with Christians is that as soon as someone criticizes their religious beliefs (the whole point of the collaboration) they take it as a personal attack and then they feel that the gloves are off and they can personally attack back. This was the case this weekend.
I admit that I viciously attacked Christianity as a belief system but I made sure to not only refrain from personal attacks, but I also told my readers to do the same. The Christian Examiner in question, responded by writing an entire article ignoring the questions I asked and focusing on me personally. One of his popular techniques was to make up whole conversations and attack my name to them. When I called him out on it, he changed the article slightly but the substance did not change.
Instead of saying that I said things that I didn’t say, he said that he imaged that I would say things that I would never say and then criticized me for saying them (which I didn’t actually say). He didn’t understand why I would be pissed that wrote a whole article which just attacked me personally rather than address the actual issues. He didn’t understand that making up conversations and attacking my name to them is not a friendly way to debate an issue. He didn’t understand the difference between viciously criticizing a belief and viciously attacking a person.
The thing is that he started this whole collaboration in a friendly, passive manner and then turned around and wrote a not so friendly, aggressive, personal attack. When I called him out on it, he fell back on his false piety. I wish I could say that this was the first time I had a collaboration with a Christian that went this way, but it isn’t. It seems that this type of thing happens a lot and not just to me. I wonder if it is something they teach in Sunday School.
The other day I had a profound thought. I was coming out of the shower and thought to myself, “maybe Christianity is true.” Then I started laughing out loud. My profound thought was that I am moving beyond atheism. It isn’t just that I lack the belief in a god, now I lack the ability to take such a ridiculous concept seriously at all.
To me, Christianity is no more plausible than any other fanciful work of fiction written by people who don’t understand the world. I find myself no longer able to take Christian arguments seriously and the more they try to suck me into their world, the more I find myself taking a step back and laughing.
How can I argue, debate, or discuss anything with someone who believes that an ancient fictional book series is real. It is like arguing with someone who takes the Greek myths to be true. I can no longer see the difference between a Jesus believer and a Hercules believer except that at least the stories of Hercules were far more entertaining.
But there isn’t a word to describe this view. Even anti-theist seems poor and inadequate. Maybe it is time for a new word. How about ridicutheist? Someone who holds that theism is completely ridiculous. I don’t know if I like that term or not. Any suggestions?
I want to make it clear that God is a character in a series of books known as the Bible. He is a fictional character. With that in mind, Christians often fall back to the view that we can’t know the mind of God and that God works in mysterious ways. But this really isn’t the case no matter how we look at it.
For starters, we need to realize that we are talking about two possible characters both called, “God.” The first is the character as he is literally described in the actual Bible. This is a literary character that is described quite vividly in the book series. He is wrath, vengeance, love, hate, the creator of good and evil, etc. He says many things in the book series and does a great deal too. We can understand this character by what he says and does. In this way we can know his mind in the same way we can know the mind of Darth Vader or Voldemort.
The second character of God is for those who don’t take the Bible all that seriously. God is seen as a vague higher power entity. We can’t really use the Bible as a description for this God because those who hold to it barely reference the Bible at all. The Bible is seen as a poor attempt to describe the character in the context of the time. Still, we can understand this more vague character by analyzing that character’s characteristic.
For example, this God is described as all-powerful, all-knowledge, omnipresent, and in most cases all-loving. Given these characteristics, we can understand the mind of this character. Unfortunately for those who believe in this character, reality kind of disproves such a being’s existence. This is by the Problem of Evil continues to haunt Christians 2500 years later. But I digress.
He point is that we can know the mind of God. We are rational beings with an imagination. We can put ourselves in God’s shoes so to speak and we could have a pretty good idea how such a character would act. When religious believes say that we can’t know the mind of God, they are just being unimaginative. This seems particularly odd to me since they did after all imagine their entire religion. This crap that we can’t understand the mind of God is just an excuse for ignorance. It is a different type of God of the Gaps.
A Christian asked me if I believe in aliens. I told him that I think alien life is probable, but that I am not invested in my belief. In other words, I believe there is probably some form of life somewhere in the vastness of the universe. My evidence is only based on statistics, so it is possible that I am wrong and neither my belief nor disbelief affects my life much if at all.
While it is true that I demand strong evidence for a god and only statistical data for the existence of aliens, that is because god belief expects a greater investment from me… especially Christian God-belief. I am just not willing to become a jerk overnight based on no evidence at all. But I am willing to entertain myself with thoughts of aliens based off of statistical data alone.
I should also point out that a claim of human-like life somewhere in the vast universe is a more believable claim than that of an all-powerful deity the likes of which have never been experience and are largely contradictory to itself and to what we know of the world.
I am tired of being intellectually honest when religious apologists don’t even bother. Recently, I read an article by a theist which was quite frankly, extremely intellectually dishonest. Should we play that game too?
The article started out being friendly and the author made a point to say that he had many atheist friends and that he has read atheist books and then he got unfriendly and made statements that were so absurd that it seemed like he never stepped out of the comfort of his fellow believers, researched anything at all, and just didn’t think. Unless he got into a horrible car accident and lost all memory of everything he read in those atheist books, I have a hard time believing that he was attempting to be intellectually honest.
Religious apologists do this all the time. They make up a bunch of ridiculous stuff (aside from their religion) and they keep repeating it over and over again. For example, when they say that Hitler was an atheist, it takes more faith to be an atheist, that atheists have no morals, we eat babies, etc., etc.
Why is it that I am always the one who researches my answers to these ridiculous questions? I am the one who finds scientific studies and data to post in response to some of this stuff when all the theist does is repeat ridiculous talking points over and over again.
Maybe we should make up a bunch of stuff too. The problem is that I don’t even know how to be intellectually dishonest if I tried. Ever time I think of a ridiculous question to ask, it seems less ridiculous than the religion it is mocking. Not long ago, I jokingly asked if God was a vampire. At first I was just being silly, but as it turns out it seems like a pretty valid question given the ridiculousness of the religion. Oh well, I guess you can’t be intellectually dishonest when arguing against something so ridiculous.
Sometime last year I promised a friend that this Valentines Day I would tell the tale of the Braveheart Question. This could be a tale of romance or it could be the tale of a demented psycho stalker. That, my friends, is the question.
The film Braveheart is now considered pretty old by some standards, so some of my younger readers might not have seen this film. But back in the day, before Mel Gibson went all psycho religious, anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist, and sexist, he was considered a very attractive actor and lots of women were way into him.
The film Braveheart is one of the finest films of that time and while I can no longer watch it due to Mel Gibson coming out of the closet as the before mentioned wacko, it really was a great film.
There is a scene early in the film where a young girl gives a flower to a young William Wallis (the character Mel Gibson plays as an adult) just after the funeral of his family. This event causes young Wallis to live with his uncle in a far away land.
Fast forward the film a bit and about 15 to 20 years later, William Wallis (now played by Mel Gibson) returns. He attends a dance and meets a girl. They have a good time and he asks her out on a date. After their first date, he hands her a white handkerchief and rides off on his horse. She opens up the handkerchief and surprise, surprise; it is THE flower SHE gave to him after the death of his family years earlier.
Here is the question, is this romantic or is it creepy?
I’m not going to comment any further on the real world applications of this question, but I found it to be an interesting issue when I was younger and have always wondered about the line between romantic and creepy. As a result, I asked many friends (both male and female) about this situation which has now been dubbed, “The Braveheart Question.”
I often hear the argument from Christians that because I spend so much time thinking about and arguing against their imaginary deity, I must secretly believe. One Christian even told me yesterday, that I haven’t sufficiently convinced him that I was an atheist (as if I had to convince him I don’t believe). So it occurred to me that Christians haven’t actually convinced me that they really do believe.
For example, Christians don’t live as if they actually believe. When it comes to death, they don’t seem to want to die any more than atheists do. One would think that if they really believed that they would go to Heaven and be in bliss with God for all eternity, that they would do everything short of suicide to get there. Instead, they lock their doors at night and even take more medical procedures to prolong their lives than atheist do.
Christians believe that their God is all-powerful, but they act like he needs their help to do everything. Why do Christians bother to proselytize at all? If they really believed, they would leave it up to God to convince people that he is real.
Also, aside from a few Christians who rely on prayer alone to heal the sick (to their obvious detriment) most Christians don’t seem to have much faith in God’s divine plan for them. Instead, they go to the doctor like everyone else as an attempt to change God’s divine plan for them. Obviously they don’t really believe.
Back in the day, people swore on the Bible because they really feared lying before God. This would damn them to Hell to be tortured for all eternity, but today Christians lie just as often (if not more often) than atheists without fear of eternal damnation. I don’t think Christians have really convinced me they believe this crap which has more plot holes than a Michael Bay movie.
Part two of the interview I did with Bob Enyart is now online. I want to discuss a few of the techniques that I noticed Bob used in this episode. You can listen to the hour plus interview at the end of this post. Note that Bob cut off the books I was recommending at the end.
I want to call out his use of language as a red herring as part of his authoritative thinking. When he talks about evolution (which I specifically told him I didn’t want to discuss but knew he would), he discusses it as “Darwinism.” In the first part of the interview I called him out on that and attempted to do so again here. This is a way to shift the authority from the scientific method to a single person, in this case Charles Darwin. Then he uses Darwin as the authority and attempts to undermine that authority as a way of undermining evolution. He links Darwin to “Social Darwinism” and he accuses Darwin of being a racist. In this way he links evolution to racism, eugenics, and Hitler.
But the fact is that Darwin isn’t the authority on evolution. The scientific method is the authority on evolution. That is the real difference between religion and science. The Gospel accounts are authoritative. If those who wrote it were not actually there (and we know they were not) or if their character was in disrepute, then the testimony would be invalid. The Origin of Species, while it was Darwin’s observations, is not authoritative. If Darwin didn’t observe what he claimed or lied about his observations, it makes no difference because science can and has made similar observations and then some. Evolution is not contingent on Darwin’s testimony.
Enyart’s continued use of the terms “Darwinism,” “Hitler,” “The Nazis,” and even “Socialism” is a red herring.
Recent, a Christian informed me that he has evidence that God exists. Part of me expected him to take the Bill O’Reilly route of “the tides go in and the tides go out.” But he didn’t take that route. He didn’t even go with the Argument by Design or the First Cause argument. Instead, he went with the Argument by Popularity.
Apparently there are six and a half billion people on Earth and between Christians and Muslims the vast majority believes in some kind of deity. I am not entirely sure this is the case since many Christians and Muslims may not actually believe but claim to out of fear. Plus, many Buddhists don’t believe in a deity per se and they make up a significant portion of the population. Needless to say however, the argument is that because so many people believe in a deity, doesn’t that prove that some kind of deity exists?
Um, no! Just because a belief is popular doesn’t make it true. This is just a ridiculous argument and I really don’t think there is much to say about it. It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of evidence for God’s existence. It doesn’t even rise to the level of evidence for gods’ existence. We really need to start teaching critical thinking skills in schools.
While a lot of atheists run from anything that is even remotely reminiscent of religion, many others still go to church. Usually, if an atheist goes to church it is a Quaker or Unitarian Church.
There is nothing wrong with avoiding religious trappings. Many atheists have had extremely bad experiences with churches and other religious trappings. Many atheists just don’t need them. Growing up, my parents only attended religious services on holidays, so I never was raise to go to a “House of God” every week. Now that I am an atheist, there is nothing for me to miss.
There is also nothing wrong with an atheist choosing to go to some sort of service every week. Churches can offer some very important services. They offer community, some sort of social activism, emotional guidance and counseling, and often time’s even genuine compassion.
Atheist and humanist groups just aren’t filling that need. We tend to meet once a month rather than once a week, and we focus on intellectual issues rather than emotional issues. We often go to meetings outside our local community so those who come out aren’t generally our neighbors. And let’s face it; these meetings generally aren’t kid friendly, either.
There are some godless houses of thought that do meet every week and do fill the function of churches. For example, in Philadelphia there is an Ethical Humanist Society. But unless you live in the city, it just isn’t convenient and you probably aren’t likely to meet your neighbors there.
What we need is to start having these types of Ethical Humanist Societies in every town. There are many people out there who don’t believe in a god, but don’t want to be an activist for atheism either. They just want to find a community. For now, Unitarians and Quakers are the closest thing to a secular church they have. We really need to change that. That is part of the reason why I just added links to PhillyCoR and UnitedCoR on the sidebar.
