sudo life

It was once nearly universal that people believed that god existed, and that without god, life would be chaos.  That time is in the past.  Recent data has shown that somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent of americans are non-religious, placing this group in second place in terms of population.  Only Christianity as a group can claim higher numbers.  But that’s tricky, because Christians are great at fighting between themselves.  Are the Catholics really Christians?  How about Calvinists?  Or Mormons?  Or Fundamentalist? Or evangelicals?  When you break down Christianity into incompatible subgroups that love to hate each other, the non-religious numbers more than many of them.  There’s all sorts of interesting things to consider about these statistics, but I’ll have to take those up in another post.  This post it aimed at posing a simple question:

In a nation where around one out of every six people are non-religious, why are things as ordered as they are?

While you’re thinking about that, consider these numbers as well.  If you don’t want to take the time to read it, it talks about the disparity between the religious percentages in society and in prison.  Outside of prison, the non-religious number one out of six.  Inside prison, the non-religious number around one in 500.  If it’s true that non-belief leads to chaos and anarchy, why aren’t the prisons overflowing with the non-religious?  Why are our prisons instead overflowing with people who claim belief in god?

Another example is Norway.  Norway is over 70% atheist.  According to the theory that god is necessary for morality and meaning, we would expect Norway to be anarchy and a hell hole.  But that is not the case.  Norway is one of the most responsible and peaceful nations in the world.   The hypothesis that god is necessary for morality and meaning is falsified by this evidence.

The fact of the matter is that god is not necessary for living a moral and meaningful life.

Is god necessary for you to love your family?  If you discovered that god did not exist, would you suddenly hate your wife, your husband, your sister, or your brother?  How about your children?  Would you kick them to the curb if you discovered Richard Dawkins is correct, and god was only a delusion?

Would you find your hobbies suddenly unfulfilling?  Would fishing become a chore?  Or hiking?  Or watching your favorite sports team?

Would you no longer donate to charity?  Would you ignore someone broken down on the side of the road?  Would you decide not to help your neighbor change their tire?

Would you decide that it’s now okay to steal whatever you want, to rape and murder whoever you want?

If you’re anything like everyone I know, your answer to every one of those questions is ‘no.’  And that’s my point.  God isn’t necessary for any of those things.  So let’s stop pretending that it is.  I know how the religious are stuck to their beliefs, but please, why don’t you reconsider this particular belief.

Atheism christianity, morality, Philosophy

There are some people in the atheist community I just can’t stand, and absolutely disagree with. Atheists are people, and becoming an atheist doesn’t change our basic nature. There are atheists at every stage of the human spectrum.

I’ve been going to a group that meets on sunday mornings here in KC, called ’skeptical religion studies.’ We’ve been viewing a scholarly lecture about the different world religious (christianity, hinduism, islam, and buddhism), and then having a (not-so-scholarly) discussion afterwards. I am the youngest attendee at these meetings by at least a decade.

The last few times, I’ve walked out halfway through the discussion. I just couldn’t take it any more. People who think they have it all figured out. Christianity is all a lie based on a bringing together of local pagan traditions. The catholic church kills authors of books they don’t agree with. Those are two examples of things that have been advanced by different people in these meetings as cold hard facts. It makes me want to pound my head on the wall. Then there are the atheists who don’t believe in god, but believe in all the paranormal b.s. Who think we live in a subjective reality. I have no idea where their coming from; everytime they talk, my ears go numb.

A couple of weeks ago, one group of them asked the question, ‘for all you who don’t believe in ghosts, where does all the energy go when we die?’ There was one good answer to this, but it was drowned out by some idiot going on and on about how the body runs off of ‘combustion.’

As an human being, you don’t have to know everything in the world. You know what’s really important? Being able to admit that you don’t know something. Repeat after me, ‘I don’t know, but that’s an interesting question, and I should look it up and find out.’ Or if there is someone else in the area that does know what they’re talking about, let them talk.

The body is a bio-chemical machine. When those bio-chemical reactions are interrupted on a large enough scale, we die, and eventually all those bio-chemical reactions cease. That’s pretty simple. There is no mystical energy. And there sure as hell isn’t any combustion going on.*

Then there are the atheists I only know through the net. Some of them are awesome. Some of the others, not so much. Many of them are plagued by the same sort of issues I mentioned above: the inability to admit they don’t know something. They would rather make up something that sounds true rather than provide a basis for what they are talking about. ‘Truthiness’ is bad whoever is using it.

That’s not to say my way is better than anyone else’s. There are atheists out there I disagree with, but would good along fabulously with. I just cannot stand the attitude that says, ‘I’m right and your wrong’ without good reasons. It’s one thing for an evolutionist to tell an cdesign proponentists that they’re wrong, because they have a mountain of evidence supporting their position. It’s not ok for someone to claim that Jesus never existed, and was entirely made up by the romans and was really just Mithra in disguise. I’m sorry, there just isn’t that much evidence, and the issues are really nuanced. The scholarship surrounding these issues are far from conclusive. So, I don’t want to hear it put forward as fact. It’s an interesting theory, but nothing more.

After reading a story or two this morning and really irked me, I just had to get this out of my system.  If you’re an atheist who reads quite a few of the atheist blogs, you can probably guess what I’m talking about.  The whole thing disgusts me.

I realize I’ve said some pretty nasty things on this blog, especially about christians who believe in hell.  If there is one thing this incident has driven home for me is the need to focus on the positive aspects of our world view.  Between this latest news, and the wonderful ‘sermon‘ I viewed yesterday evening, I’m going to try to go in a new direction.  We should look to people like deGrasse Tyson as role models.

*Ok, oxidation does occur, but not nearly at a rapid enough pace to be considered ‘combustion.’ Maybe I am wrong, though, and I don’t really understand what the word ‘combustion’ means.

Atheism Atheism, critique

Cailin has written a great description of what it’s like to look up (and around) at the awesome beauty of the Universe we live in:

These are the moments that fill me with the greatest pleasure and wonder, my appreciation for my own existence swells within me and I feel my eyes glaze with tears of joy and sorrow.

I once read a comment by someone made when viewing a beautiful sunset.  They said, ‘How can anyone look at something so beautiful and think there is no god?’  I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking, ‘Why would I want to pollute something so wonderful with something so ugly?’

Via The Friendly Atheist.

Atheism astronomy, Atheism, beauty, Science

possummomma talks about questioning your faith:

Is this really what theists are imagining when they say they’ve “questioned their faith”? I ask this sincerely because, if so, then this explains why so many theists will make the argument that atheists have become unhappy with God or angered by God. Is it really accurate for them to say that they’ve “questioned their faith”?

She’s refering to an article about a woman who is talking about her faith after her daughter was abducted. A very difficult situation, I have no doubt about that. The woman says:

Kate McCann said fear about what might have happened to Madeleine, who was taken from her bed in the family’s holiday apartment 102 days ago, led her to question her belief in God. “You find yourself asking, ‘Why do this to Madeleine? Why have you let this happen?’” she said.

But Mrs McCann said these “darker moments” of doubt were short-lived. “You realise that God hasn’t done this, somebody else has done this. I find myself asking God to help us find Madeleine and keep her safe”, she told the BBC’s Heaven and Earth programme.

Blaming god for something is not questioning your faith. If you blame something on god, then you still believe in his existance, you’re just questioning his motives. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good question to ask, but unrelated to faith itself.

A question of faith would be, ‘does this experience imply that god doesn’t exist?’ Asking that question is what lead many to eventually leave their faith. They see all the evil in the world, or experience it theirselves, and the question naturally arises, ‘what kind of god would allow this? doesn’t it make more sense that no god would, and that this is a godless universe?’ It harkens back to the problem of evil, which I’ve written about in the past.

There is an even deeper issue, though, and that is the question of meaning, and why most people refuse to take that next step. I’m current reading ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach,’ so I want to hold off talking about that more. Look for this post coming up, however! If you just can’t wait (yeah, right), I have talked about this in the past.

Atheism Atheism, christianity, faith, spirituality

By Penn Jillette

“Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day. “

Atheists are often accused of being arrogant, which is rather strange when you think about it.

Atheism inspiration