Intellectual Fulfillment

Most people know Dawkins' famous quote where he says, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Most don't know the full quote, however.

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

There's a very important point in there that often gets overlooked, and that is that "god isn't a good explanation." Yet, this is not what most people claim. The claim that one runs into more often than not is that before Darwin (and even after Darwin) religion has had a good answer to such "why" questions as, "Why are we here?" Religion also supposedly helps us to answer questions about our origins. Rubbish.

In fact, I don't think Dawkins goes far enough here, implying that "goddidit" was an answer before Hume showed how inadequate it was. "goddidit" has never been an answer for anything. In response to how we got here (origins) claiming that some magic entity simply did it is no response at all. It's a guess, and a bad one. Similarly, answering the why are we here question with "Because god made it so," is no better than simply saying, "Because." The only purpose of such "answers" is to placate people who are not inquisitive enough to insist that magic is not a sufficient answer.

So, this leaves me wondering, when will theists have a chance to be intellectually fulfilled?

Who Is god?

So, who is god? I think I've figured it out.

god is omnipresent. This means that he comes from no country, and therefore is international by definition - much to the chagrin of some fundies who think god is 'Merican.

The Bible tells us that god is a "he." So, god is a man.

We also know from the Bible that god is mysterious. Don't try to understand him, you can't hope to.

So, to sum up, god is an international man of mystery.

Austin Powers is the international man of mystery. Therefore, god is Austin Powers.

Obey Jesus

In the OT, god makes a lot of hay about how the number one rule, as far as god is concerned, is not to be a good person or do good things, not to treat your fellow human well, not to be moral, but to obey god. It is the first commandment given of the 10 commandments, and the one that goes into the most detail. god even goes so far as to emphasize that 'obeying other gods is wrong, even looking at other gods is wrong - you must obey me, me, me!'

So, has that changed? At the very end of the book of Matthew (Matt. 28:19-20), are we left with a commandment to love one another? No. Are we left with a commandment to be good or moral or perform moral acts? No. We are told to proselytize and make sure that everyone obeys god. god is reminding all that the number one priority is to obey him.

Well, we can see the obvious problems with this. When someone claims that god is telling them to drown their children or push them into traffic (both have happened) the "rational" response for a Xian that believes that god is to be obeyed above all is to go ahead and do it. What a monstrous theology.


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Note to all apologists that will claim that god would never order such a thing:
1. You can't provide evidence that your conception of a god that could not do such things is correct.
2. Your god has ordered the killings of children before, including ordering fathers to slay/sacrifice their children, so we have a past history of this.

Why "A-theism?"

So, some theists think they are really clever when they use the following argument:

"Atheism is stupid/weird/wrong/etc. because you're only defining yourself by what you aren't, and you wouldn't have to do that if there weren't a god."

Or, some variant on that. So, let me say right now, it's not clever nor is it witty or original.

Let's look at a different example, shall we? Books that are written about real subjects or real events (books that describe reality, like science texts, etc.) are called "non-fiction." Why would we define books about reality by what they aren't, books that are made up? You wouldn't have to do that if those made up books weren't really about real stuff, would you?

The sad fact is that theism is a real phenomena, there are people who believe in gods and the supernatural. It's a quirk of our culture and our language that we identify those that don't hold such superstitions to be a-theistic, just as we hold that books that aren't made up are non-fictional. The terms and usage only show that theists exist, not that god exists.

goddidit Morality

One of the most repeated mantras in the apologist's arsenal* is that atheism can not explain morality. This is, of course, not true, as we can point to the behavior of other animals, reason, etc. But, for this post, I wanted to turn the question around and point out the "goddidit" doesn't really explain morality either. How does one explain morality from the theist's perspective?

We often take it for granted that religion is an explanation for things like morality, but we end up really explaining nothing. One issue that we find is Euthyphro's dilemma which is still a thorny issue for theists. But, that still doesn't explain morality.

Did god simply put morality into us? Is that why most of us seemingly have innate moral feelings and do not murder? This, of course, for the Xian contradicts not only free will, but the idea that we are sinners.

Does god create the moral laws that we follow? Some might argue that god gives us our moral laws, and therefore morality is explained, but it really doesn't explain morality. The other issue with that is that god has given us faulty laws if one reads the Bible. Why would a perfect being with perfect morals intentionally give us less than perfect guidelines for moral behavior? Wouldn't that be immoral and thus self-refuting?

In summary, I find no reason to simply accept "goddidit" as a sufficient accounting of morals and moral behavior. It has to be fleshed out more and the inherent contradictions need to be explained and accounted for.


*"Arsenal" is a rather weird word to use for such an impotent set of arguments, but I could not think of a better word...

Greetings From the Afterlife

So, some of you may have noticed that I haven't blogged in a while. That's because I died. Well, that and it took a while for the paperwork to go through in my new afterlife residence in order to secure my internet connection and get me an incorporeal computer to use. But, that's all been squared away, and I'm able to post again.

So, you must want to know what the afterlife is all about, right? I was rather surprised that there was one at all. When I met people here I asked if it was heaven. They told me, "Believe what you want, we don't care." They also have very Nordic accents for the most part. Weird.

Is there a god? Actually, I think there's several, although Odin mumbles every day about how he can't believe that people think some feller named Yahweh is god instead of him. Loki finds it to be uproariously funny though and boasts about his trick every day. I think he does it just to set Odin off.

Anyway, what other questions do you have? I'll try to answer them as best I can.

god Tingles

The ulnar nerve is the nerve that runs from your elbow to your hand. If you hold your arm out so that your thumb is pointing up, it runs from just behind your elbow to your pinkie and ring finger, along the bottom of your arm. If you bruise this nerve, you can cause some very weird sensations. I know, because I recently did just that. It causes your hand to tingle (mostly located in the pinkie and ring finer and the part of the palm just underneath those fingers). Even though the damage has occurred to my elbow, my brain interprets it as if it were coming from my hand. Pushing on the nerve can have the same effect.

This got me to thinking, that if I were a superstitious person, could I be convinced that I'm feeling some sort of presence from god? Could I think that god is somehow touching me? I've done no damage to my hand, yet I feel this tingle that won't subside. What if it happened to a different nerve and I felt the tingle elsewhere?

If I had knowledge of these nerve points, could I induce these feelings in other people and tell them that it is the hand of god touching them? Yes, I bet I could, and I bet that some people already do this, whether they are aware of the biological explanation or not. This is most likely part of the arsenal of some faith healers out there or others who claim to be able to bring god into your body (or whatever else they claim). And, this succeeds because gullible people are too uninformed about the processes of the body and all too willing to believe that god really is touching them. It's rather sad, actually, that with just a little bit of education, we could shield these gullible people from the charlatans that would take advantage of their beliefs for a quick buck or to push their agenda.

Puddles

Isn't it amazing how god made the planet just so, so that we can exist on it? I mean, look at how well the environment is suited to us. We happen to see colors, breathe air, eat food, etc. How could this not be god at work?

How many times have you seen the above argument? I happen to see it quite often, and the many variations on it. I think my favorite response is what Douglas Adams said. He likened this line of thought to a puddle looking at the hole that it is in and claiming that it so perfectly fit the shape of the hole that the hole must have been made to fit the puddle perfectly.

We know, of course, that due to the properties of water that it fits into the hole, and not the other way around. If we were to take that water and place it into a different hole, it would happen to fit that hole as well, regardless of the differences in shape between the holes.

The same can be said of animals on this planet, including humans. The reason that we can see color, breathe air, gain sustenance from food is not because the environment was crafted for us, but because we evolved to survive in the environment in which we live. When oxygen was in short supply in the atmosphere, lifeforms on this planet did not use it. It was a waste product. As oxygen levels built up, mass extinctions happened because the organisms living were literally choking to death on it. As variation and natural selection lead to organisms that could use this oxygen, a balance was established that has persisted to this day (after quite a few imbalanced mass extinction events). We breathe oxygen because our ancestors evolved the ability to do so. There's no reason to posit a god that came down and put oxygen in the atmosphere in order for us to breathe, and in fact, that's contrary to the evidence that we do have.

How Jesus Works Out

"Lord’s Gym, a 10,000 square foot fitness center . . . meshes prayer and push-ups. The gym offers classes including “Yogod,” its take on yoga. . . . Spaghetti-strap tank tops and short shorts are not allowed. . . . Per Heistad, who travels often for business and is a self-described gym rat, said he did not feel entirely comfortable in other gyms anymore. “I don’t need anything to lead me into temptation,” Mr. Heistad said. “I can get there on my own.” Merri Bush, 42, who is a member with her daughter, Christyna Askey, 21, said [that] . . . the two of them walk on the treadmill each morning while they read and discuss the Bible. Ms. Askey said, “It’s cool to be able to do that and not have people say, ‘What are you doing?’ ” —The Times."

Grace or Works?

OK, maybe someone can clear this up for me. Some Xians claim that one is saved by grace alone. That god has to come down and decide to impart his grace upon us in order for us to be saved.

So, it seems that no matter what we do, god will simply choose which people are saved, and which aren't. Where is the morality in that, and why would I wish to act in a moral way if it doesn't even matter?

Ah, but Xians have an answer for that, in that we have to repent and ask for forgiveness in order to receive god's grace. But, that's not salvation by grace alone, it's salvation by works and grace - the work being repentance and asking for forgiveness. So, which is it? Is salvation attained by grace alone or through works in conjunction with grace? If by grace alone, how does that make sense? If works are involved, then why claim that they aren't?

(Note: I have problems with the idea of works in conjunction with grace, but I'm not going into that in this particular post.)

Divine Tyranny

A very common thought amongst Xians is that god blesses those who more closely follow god's wishes. The more you chose to do what god wants, the better he makes your life. Whether it be through making you happier and more content or monetarily, god demands obedience (for our own good of course - or so they say) and rewards those who follow his wishes. Conversely, we can see that those who do not toe the line have calamity befall them until they ultimately meet eternal torture.

So, how is this different from what most tyrants do? Take someone like Saddam Hussein. Did he not reward his loyal friends (key word being loyal) with riches, while those that opposed him were tortured. I don't see how we can separate the actions of god from those of others that have abused power in the past.

This sort of alleged behavior by god really just re-enforces the idea that god is simply a human construct, that god was modeled after the ideas of people. There's no reason for an all-powerful god to resort to such heavy-handed tactics, but it's what we might expect if this god were completely fabricated by people that saw the world work in this way.

Awesome Videos

Check out these two videos! They are hilarious and well worth the time!

What Would Jesus Not Do

Book of Job

Absolute Morality

Does absolute morality exist?

I don't know. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. What I do know is that many religious claim that it does and claim that it comes from god. But, is that the case?

Most Xians claim that god gives us our morality and that he has set up absolute morals for us to follow. god is further the absolute arbiter and perfectly moral. An easy rebuttal to this is Euthyphro's Dilemma, which points out that if morality is absolute, then why do we need god? And, if morality comes from god, then god could order that rape and torture are moral and we would have to abide. To bring this back to the idea of absolute morality, the first version would hold to it, while the second would not. Holding to absolute morality would mean that we can discern what it is independently of god, since it is an absolute that is outside of god.

For the Xian, however, this simply will not do. How can our morals not come from god? One potential answer has been given to Euthyphro's Dilemma in that morality is not from outside of god, but simply a part of his nature. This really only moves the question back one level and doesn't really answer the question, but let's explore one way in which it ultimately fails. Let's actually look at god's nature.

Is it really the case that god's nature conforms to an absolute morality? The answer is plainly no. Apologists try endlessly to come up with ways to apologize for god's evil deeds (genocide, ordering genocide, ordering rape, etc.) as us not having all the information, but we don't need all the information if morality is absolute. Further, after god wipes out almost all life on the planet in the Noachian flood, he basically says, "My bad." If he has not done anything morally wrong, then why does he feel repentant?

This is a serious blow to the apologists assertions to having an answer to Euthyphro and the existence of absolute morality given by god. If god can not even follow his own moral rules, then god can not be absolutely moral, and the only choice we have left is that absolute morality may exist, but it exists independently of god.

WTF?

Watch this...

Seriously, WTF?

Religion is Useless

I've talked about this before, but some things need to be repeated until they sink...

I keep hearing about how science is one way of knowing about the world, while religion is another way of knowing about the world. That's a load of BS. Religion is a way of making stuff up and guessing one knows about the world, while pretending to have knowledge that one does not possess. Point of fact: we, as humans, have never learned one fact about the world through religion/prayer/revelation/etc. Not one.

Now, I'm not saying that theologians have not learned things. Sure, some theologians have learned about human behavior. But, they did not do these things by engaging in religion, but instead by engaging in scientific principles of observation and testing! We learn by doing science, not by praying, revelation, and any by making up some religious tenet (which is how they are all made anyway).

Theists, prove me wrong. Name one verifiable thing that we learned through religion. I've asked this countless times of various theists and have never gotten an answer, yet those theists always maintain that religion is a way of knowing about the world. So, my counter-question is why would anyone make that claim if they can't even give one example of something that we have learned from religion or something that we know from religion?

Un-baptize Yourself

If you live in England and you have been baptized, you can now un-baptize yourself.

Given that children are baptized against their will and made to be Xian (this isn't limited to Xianity either) this is something that is long overdue. OTOH, you don't really need a certificate to reject religion. In some countries, however, it appears that you really should make it known to the church. As the article points out:

According to Argentine campaigner Ariel Bellino, a former Catholic: "The church counts all those who've been baptized as Catholic and lobbies for legislation based on that number, so we're trying to convey the importance of people expressing they no longer belong to the church." Campaigners say that's particularly important in Argentina, where liberal social values frequently clash with Roman Catholic doctrine related to issues such as birth control, abstinence before marriage and homosexuality; in 2003, Buenos Aries became the first city in South America to legalize gay civil unions.

Back in Britain, Michael Evans, an atheist and former journalist who downloaded the de-baptism certificate in March, believes the Church of England claims more members than it actually has in order to shore up its influence in the secular world. "It claims to speak for the majority of people in Britain," he says.

In countries where this practice happens, it is important to make your rejection of religion known so that the church can not use your name as a number to gain influence that it does not deserve. (Let's be frank here, churches don't deserve any political influence, nor should they have any by default.)

Is it Laziness or Lies?

Try something for me. Visit a Xian blog and ask for evidence that Jesus existed that is contemporary to his life. You won't get it, but you will get a whole bunch of references to the gospels being eye witness testimonies, references to Josephus, etc. It seems that most Xians you find are blissfully unaware of the problems that abound with these sources (i.e. that the gospels were written well after the fact and not by eye witnesses, or that the writings of Josephus were later fabrications by Xians desperate to support their mythology).

This bothers me. Why is it that Xians can't be bothered to find out the facts?

Well, as it turns out, not all Xians are too lazy to look things up. Some are, and they rightly deserve to be called out on it, but some actually do look these things up. The problem is that the experts of the religion (popular apologists like Lee Strobel or William Lane Craig) uncritically assert this baloney and dupe innocent others into unwillingly passing on falsehoods. Now, either these Xian "scholars" are themselves duped or they are intentionally passing on lies.

Maybe they are themselves duped. This has become a cottage industry, the passing on of Xian lore, the upkeep of the religion. The old "scholarship" of Xian "scholars" that declared these things doesn't get purged because people simply want it to be true. So, even the modern "scholars" have been duped and brought in, and they can't be bothered to look outside of their own interests to find out what the reality is.

Or, maybe they simply like their position of power or their ability to sell books to an ever-eager audience that so desperately wants Xianity to be true and to be historically supported. There's lots of reasons why they would intentionally seek to mislead the masses.

That the options come down to deceit or simply incompetence or laziness does not speak well of the Xian "scholarly" community.

The Passion

Most people, I think, are aware that this weekend represents Easter, the time when Jesus is said to have been crucified and then rose up 3 (really 2) days later. (Brains...brains...) The whole idea is that god sacrificed his son in order to allow us to be saved. So, let's look at this idea for a minute here. (I won't get into the patent absurdity that god demands a sacrifice of his own son in order to convince himself to allow himself to forgive us for sins that he placed upon us...at least not in this post.)

In the OT, when people needed atonement from god, they would sacrifice an animal. The idea was that one's sins could be transferred to the animal and then burned away through the act of offering a gift to the god. By the time of the early Xians, this practice apparently wasn't enough. The story of Jesus represents what is essentially a human/god sacrifice. Although Jesus is said to have risen again, the whole point of the story is that Jesus had to endure pain and suffering and death - all on our behalf. This is nothing more than the old idea of transferring one's sins to another vessel as atonement through sacrifice writ large.

Bottom line: Xianity is built on a human sacrifice. Now, why would we believe that such barbarism is worthy of our worship or that an all-loving god would require such barbaric acts?

Focus on the Good

Most Xians, when confronted with the evil of god, have some sort of defense mechanism that kicks in and allows them to overlook all of god's evil deeds. One of those mechanisms is to counter that atheists only focus on the evil deeds of god and unfairly forget about the good that is in the world. Does this argument have any merit?

Not really. It's actually quite simple. If god is omni-benevolent, as Xians contend, then the existence of evil is a huge problem for them. Hey, maybe god does do some good things sometimes, even maybe lots of times, but that's not what the issue is. To focus solely on the good and claim that it shows that god is good is to count the hits and ignore the misses or paint the bulls-eye around the target. If I argue against god being omni-benevolent, I don't have to show that god never performs any good act, I simply have to show that god performs evil acts. Only the most twisted mind could argue that god does not commit evil (genocide, world-wide floods, etc) so it's rather silly for apologists to cling to this idea of omni-benevolence and even sillier to complain about the atheist focusing on evil too much.

Impervious to Reason

Go to just about any blog that deal with religion vs. non-religion or theism vs. atheism, and you are bound to see debate among the participants. Often we see claims that defy rationality, are suspect logically, etc, and they tend to come mostly from one side of the debate - the theistic side. Take the comments that many theists make that are critical of evolution (or "evilution" if you will) or comments where they claim to have secret knowledge of the wants and attributes of god, as if they have a secret connection to god who is telling them how much he really does hate "fags" and Muslims (in the case of some Xians at least...YMMV).

Why is this? I have an idea that it may be because many theists are taught at a young age to accept certain beliefs as true. This creates an impression that is hard to shake (as evidenced by at least one person who comments on this very site, who believes in god and Jesus, but think that they are completely vile and evil). Once one accepts that something is true, no matter what, then one can and will shape all things to fit that preconception, thus blocking out facts and evidence that does not accord with what the person already claims to know.

Should we be teaching our children these things? Famously, Richard Dawkins has taken a stand against it, saying that we should not label our children as religious or force-feed them into a specific religion, but should instead teach them about many religious and irreligious ideas and allow them to make up their own minds. He's not the only one who has advocated this, but as one of the religious right's favorite targets, he's been roundly criticized for this notion (usually by taking his argument out of context and claiming that he's advocating that which he is not).

For my part, I believe that the childhood indoctrination (and that's exactly what it is) that occurs is wrong. I believe that children have rights, and have the right to not be lied to by being told that one is privy to knowledge that one simply does not have. Children have a right not to be forced into a religion that is chosen for them simply by virtue of being born to a certain set of parents, and I believe that the numbers bear this out. The amount of people who reject evolution is staggeringly high in this country, while we see much lower totals in Europe - a region that is much more secular, and much more open about religious diversity. This is disturbing in that the indoctrinating that is happening is hampering our populace and our children and negatively impacting our country. As we fall behind other countries in scientific literacy, our place among the leaders of the world is sure to become more and more tenuous. This is a very real problem, and its effects are already being felt.


(Note: I am not saying that atheists never made illogical or bad arguments, only that they do it with a much lower frequency and that atheist arguments are more likely to be reality and/or factually based - or at least in accordance with reality and fact. Again, the evolution example speaks to this.)