In Focus: The Bible

A lot of the time Christians will point to the Bible and say, “look, Jesus said if we believe in Him, and accept the rest of the stuff regarding how we live our lives etc… we’ll be rewarded with eternal life at His side.”

If I took you aside and said, “Look, I have this magic door, okay? Now, imagine the most utopian situation you can. Naked, buxom women everywhere, money, fame, whatever you like. Right, now if you just believe in me, when you walk through that door, it will all be waiting for you there.”  You get that look on your face like it’s all far too good to be true, but your reticence is tempered by your imagination and desire. You hum and haw and you spend a few minutes trying to peek behind, around and even through the magic door but all to no avail and so then you cunningly ask me what the catch is. To which I smilingly respond, “Well, if you don’t believe in me and you walk through that door, you’ll find eternal pain, torment, damnation and suffering with no hope of any form of reprieve. Ever.”

This is Christianity’s offer. Would you seriously consider it? Seriously…? Or would you realise that it is not quite the “offer you can’t refuse” it appears to be and simply tell me to go fuck myself?

Peace,
dj357

Objectivity means caring about Truth

This, however, has clearly flown right over the head of Fr. Vincent Twomey, a retired Professor of Moral Theology. He prepared a series of course work for Hibernia College, a teacher training college in Dublin, and his course notes in the religious education module dealing with non-religion made claims such as “What bothers very few of its latter-day exponents is the fact that atheist humanism produced the worst horrors history has ever witnessed, namely Nazism, Fascism and Marxism…” and “Atheism has had, historically speaking, a negative effect on society.”

Listening to this clip of Mr. Twomey speaking with Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, one may notice that Mr. Twomey makes a large effort to try and claim that both his course work and Catholicism in general are, indeed, objective. As the title of this blog post says, however, being objective means caring about truth and claiming that “atheist humanism produced the worst horrors history has ever witnessed, namely Nazism, Fascism and Marxism…” means throwing truth out the window, thereby discounting any form of objectivity.

As mentioned by Michael in the audio clip Nazism, Fascism and Marxism are all unique ideologies entirely distinct from both atheism (itself not an ideology) and humanism. Furthermore, humanism is an ideology that is exquisitely focused upon preventing large-scale suffering, which is completely at odds with the results of Nazism and Fascism. I won’t delve into the issue of atheism in Nazi and Fascist parties and states as Michael covered enough relevant examples in the audio clip and in many of his recent debates, but I will reiterate that neither Stalin nor Hitler committed their crimes against humanity on the back of a lack of belief in God/god(s)(aka atheism).

To be objective one must favour truth and fact above all else, and Mr. Twomey’s thinking is cleared clouded by his Catholic education. It would be hard, I’d imagine, to be a Catholic Priest and a Professor of Moral Theology and be wholly objective and critical when discussing religion.

Peace,
dj357

World Atheist Convention: Day 2 (Super, Super Late Edition)

As I haven’t been blogging for months, I completely missed the fact that I never actually posted this piece. While it’s remarkably out of date (back in June for cripes’ sake!) it’s still got enough content in it that I can’t leave it sitting in my drafts. Enjoy!

[08/06/2011]
Unfortunately due to a lack of internet access and other things during the weekend I wasn’t able to keep hugely up to date with blog posts on the conference and I also missed the early sessions on Sunday morning, which is a shame as I missed the awesome Maryam Namazie who I hear was on form as ever, but I’m here to add my voice to the many others reporting from the event.

World Atheist Convention 2011: Day 1

Aloha and greetings from sunny Dublin! Unusually warm and sunny for Ireland despite the time of the year but rather nice to start off the weekend of the WAC 2011!

I’d like to just stick my oar in on a topic that came up and piqued my interest. It’s the issue of why do we have a gathering in the first place? Surely all we could talk about is our shared lack of belief. It conjures up a rather dolorous image of a group of people twiddling their thumbs and constantly asking each other if they believe in God yet. The simple answer is because we are the minority. The wonderful point was made that in a society where most everyone collected stamps and thought it was a moral requirement, there would be groups of aphilatelists popping up discussing how to live their lives well while not collecting stamps. The same is true of atheists. The long answer is that in a world that is primarily religious, a world where the common consensus is that religion of some form is a necessary foundation for a moral life, a world where people are assumed to be religious, a world where social and legal policies greatly reflect the religious beliefs of the people and their elected members of government it is vital the people who don’t collect stamps stand up and say “Hey, hang on a second. How dare you accuse us of being amoral when you impose a pre-existing, socially conceived moral framework onto your religion and then try to pass it off to us as having its origins in your delusion of choice.”

That is why we have conventions.

Beliefs vs. Fact

This has long been a debate of various sorts and forms in the non-believing community but I think I’ve finally figured out how I want to phrase my argument in relation to it.

We have these things called beliefs, that quite often are not based on evidence, yet are still robust, rational and logical. For example “I believe that peanut butter and jam make a good sandwich filling” is a rational belief as I’m basing it upon my own experience and the experience of others. The problem with beliefs though is that they can quite often be wrong and can also disagree with both established consensus and even reality itself. For example “I believe that I can see Angels who guide me through life and watch over me.” On the one hand, a lot of people don’t share this belief, and on the other there’s no actual evidence for it outside of one person’s subjective experience.

We also have things called facts. These puppies are a hell of a lot more useful. For example “so long as the Earth maintains it orbit around the sun, the sun will always rise the next day” this is an established fact. We can link the rising of the sun to the structure of our solar system and based upon that establish logically and rationally that the above example is indeed a fact. The important thing to note here is the details may differ or change with new scientific understandings or discoveries, for example it could potentially happen that the times we now attribute to sunrise and sunset across the globe could migrate slowly forcing us to alter our current timezone system (it’s not likely, but certainly not impossible) but still the rising of the sun would remain a fact. So too can we say that while the individual mechanics underlying the Theory of Evolution* may change, or more rather our understanding of those underlying mechanics, the theory as a whole is an undeniable fact.

That word “undeniable” is a key one though. With beliefs one simply believes or disbelieves. With facts, however one can accept it or deny it. While accepting it requires no active belief (we don’t believe in gravity, we accept it as a fact of nature) denying facts requires some active belief. To deny a fact such as gravity, one needs to actively believe either that people are wrong and it is not a fact or believe that universe does not in fact function the way the so-called fact would imply.

This important distinction between disbelief and denial is rather profound and it’s effect can be seen in modern parlance. People who doubt that Hitler and his Nazi government put millions of Jews to death during WWII are not called Holocaust-disbelievers. The Holocaust is not a belief to be debated upon such as Deism or Theism etc… it is an established fact of history. To doubt the Holocaust happened is to deny a fact of the world. As I mentioned above, some details may change over time, we may yet uncover secret documents that detail that someone other than we thought was actually signing the orders in Auschwitz for the murders (unlikely) but the overall fact will remain a fact.

With all this in mind I think it’s time we stop asking/responding to questions in the form of “Do you believe in [insert established scientific fact here]” and start demanding that the question become “Do you accept [insert established scientific fact here]”

I do not believe in a God or gods. I do not “deny” God or gods as they are not Fact. I do not “believe” in Evolution, I accept Evolution. These are important phrases and important kinds of phraseology that I think would serve not only the non-believing community well, but mankind in general also.

* – It’s NOT just a theory. It’s a Theory.

Thank You, Tom Sears!

In a previous post I said “F**k you, Tom Sears” and now I’m saying thank you because Tom Sears graced me with a response to the email I sent him in direct response to his comment that he would be praying for me (and other poor, silly atheists) –

F**k you, Tom Sears

and have a crappy New Year!

Apparently, according to Tom Sears article in the Oneonta, NY Daily Star, Atheists’ numbers doom [us] to irrelevance

As a foreword to my summary breakdown of the utter twaddle that Mr. Sears is trying to peddle to us in his disturbingly biased article I would like to point out that if we are going to be talking irrelevance then let us please focus on a religion whose founding rules are over 2000 years old and were composed by nomadic desert-dwellers in the bronze age. That doesn’t exactly sound like the most relevant and up-to-date place to base your society on, now does it? On the other hand, godless, secular societies base their rules and social interactions upon the latest and most substantiated evidence they can find. Relevance kinda sounds like our thing there Tommy boy.

God Exists…

This is going to be a very provocative statement and many people who know me may be shocked to hear this but, God exists. At least, that is, he exists just as much as any abstract human conception can be said to exist like love or anguish.

The True Difference

The true difference between atheists, rationalists, freethinkers and non-theistic scientists and the people on the theistic side of the table lies in the explanation of the origin of the universe, and what may or may not have existed before the Big Bang.

A Few Quick Thoughts

Having watched Peter Tatchell’s documentary “The Trouble With The Pope” and reading discussions of the Pope’s comments yesterday I’m struck by a potential bone of contention regarding the Vatican’s stance against artificial contraception.

In Peter Tatchell’s documentary and comments made by the signatories of an open letter protesting the Pope’s visit, the claim is made that the Vatican’s stance against Artificial Contraception has had the effect of increasing large families in developing countries, as highlighted in “The Trouble With The Pope” in the Philipines.

Criticisms of this claim and of this documentary in particular have mentioned such factors as developing countries having large families as part of standard practice in order to have a large base of people contributing the wealth of the family by all contributing to work, in the case of the Philipino family in the documentary this involves trolling the local rubbish dump for plastic to sell.

Ruminations

So, I spend a lot of time giving out about religion on this blog, so I figured it was time for a little bit of a more personal touch.

I spend a lot of time giving out about religion because it’s something I see (or at least it’s effects) in almost daily life, whether it be in person or in the news and I’m rarely seeing the positive sides of it. This drives me to point out, what I believe to be, the imbalance between the pros and cons of organised religion and it’s usefulness in a modern society such as we find ourselves in.

Where people see religion as uniting, I see it as divisive. Where others see community, I see shared delusion. Where others see effect, I see placebo, and I can’t in good conscience stand by and say nothing when I believe there to be far better alternatives out there that do not depend on strict obeisance, daily prostrations, circumcision or whatever other medieval practice is associated with said religious ritual.

My brain is constantly going at 64 in a 50 zone and so these are things I cannot help but ruminate upon. That being said, it’s not all I think about. Far from it.

Atheism is not a belief

Atheism is not an active disbelief, it is a passive disbelief, in that passive disbelief is the default state for any extraordinary claim that has no apparent and obvious evidence for it’s truth claim. (take a second to re-read that bit and understand it, it’s important)

One can however take the lack of apparent and obvious evidence for this extraordinary claim and say, based on this, that they believe that this claim is not true, however this is an active disbelief and is distinct from ‘textbook’ Atheism. Many among the atheist ‘community’ have described the difference between these two as being ‘weak’ and ‘strong’, the latter being an active disbelief, however this is unfortunately confusing and unclear for those who are unaware of this distinction and most uninformed people assume that Atheism is in fact an active disbelief, which is not the case.

It is from this lack of clarity in terminology that comes the claim from many religious people that atheists “have faith” in their atheism, or even worse, in science. This is not only intellectually dishonest, but it’s also based upon a mountain of bad inferences and terrible logic and again a lack of understanding where terminology is concerned.

Faith is belief without evidence. Science only takes seriously claims that display overwhelming evidence for their truth claim. Atheism is a lack of belief.. An active disbelief in the existence of God, or gods, is based (in the case of rational minds) on the lack of overwhelming evidence in favour of that truth claim. As such, atheism, even when it’s not correct to refer to it as such, is all about the evidence, as is science.

If there’s no evidence either way, then there’s no basis upon which to form a belief either way.

peace,
dj357

Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life

The following is the Declaration on Religion in Public Life as compiled and agreed to by the participants of the “Gods and Politics” World Atheist Conference, organised by Atheist Alliance International and hosted by Ateistisk Selskab. Repost it, discuss and use it because it is a fantastic compilation of the big issues that freethinkers and atheists alike agree need to be tackled in the modern world.

Eternal Life or Eternal Snoozefest…?

[edit: apologies for this article being slightly outdated]

Thanks to Louis for the link.

Aschwin de Wolf has recently commented on the propensity of the ‘big guns’ in the New Atheist movement to comment on the issue of eternal life and how it relates to religion and, more importantly, human values and ethics.

He has this to say:

Some contemporary atheists and secular humanists do not stop at debunking the idea of God but seem to think that making a persuasive case against religion requires them to refute all of its associated ideas as well; including the desire for immortality.

Well, first off, I fail to see how anyone has been arguing against the desire for immortality. The primary concerns most ‘players’ in the atheist movement have about the issue of immortality stem from the issues of believing this life is not or less important than the supposed next one, leading to a breakdown of the need for and the logic behind moral behaviour. I firmly doubt that if given a chance no one would turn down eternal life, provided they could end it if they found themselves suitably bored.

An Unknowable God…

I was just checking out the Australian show “Q and A” featuring Richard Dawkins as a panelist and the title of the show was “God, Science and Sanity”. I must admit I found Stephen Fieldings constant reply to questions “Well, look, ya know, I think people will come to their own conclusion” to be remarkably unsurprising since he believes the world is less than 4 billion years old (despite not actually saying this directly!). It seems to be a common tactic of these people to dodge explictly saying they believe things that are bat-shit crazy in front of an audience of people who would see it as exactly that. Though planted beside Richard Dawkins, you can hardly blame the guy for not saying directly “Jesus is my saviour and you’re all going to burn in Hell for believing in Darwin’s lies” (or something to that effect).

However, the main thing that grabbed my attention was the comment of Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio who quoted an ‘amazing Jewish philosopher’ as saying that

“…the second you begin to define God, you limit God. God is un-understandable…the second you begin to grapple with that, you begin to limit what God is…”

The host, Tony Jones, asked Richard Dawkins if he thought this was “clever sophistry” and while that would be an apt descriptor for that pile of toss, it’s not enough. To say that God is un-understandable is to completely negate any need for God, any reason to believe in God and any reason to have religion around at all.

If we cannot understand God, we cannot hope to interpret anything he has to say about life, or the world around us, or, indeed, how we should live our lives. Christian, Muslims and Jews alike all base their religious observances, rituals and dogmas around their individual understanding and who God is, what God is and what he demands of us as apparent creator of the universe. But if it is impossible to define any of this because that would be limiting what God is, who God is, or what he wants then God is merely man-made bullshit.

This is not “clever sophistry” or “amazing philosophy”, it’s just plain gullibility and naivety and it makes a mockery of the supposed “reason” that religions are said to bring to the world. If your God is un-understandable, and yet you make the claim that a “Holy” book says that your God wants male childrens penises mutilated then you are falling prey to idiocy, plain and simple.

To then consequently claim that you have a monopoly on the “Truth” is to move into the realm of sheer delusion.