This morning's message at church was about the pagan holiday Imbolc, which is the holiday celebrated to make note that the days are growing in length and that Spring is on the way. For the benefit of people in the congregation who are not Pagan, the minister gave a brief explaination of earth-based religion and it's place within Unitarian Universalism. She had an interesting thing to say about belief. I don't remember the exact words, but the gist of it was that it doesn't matter whether the things you profess to believe in are (literally) true or not, what matter is whether or not they help you to connect with...well...people, nature, or whatever it is you want to connect with.
This brought up in the mind the difference, often unspoken/forgotten/confused, between "believing in" something and believing something. Believing is having an idea of how you think the world really works when you don't or can't know for sure. To believe something is to believe that it is true objectively. If this belief is true, then it is true for everyone. It's not knowledge I'm talking about, though some seem to confuse belief and knowledge. (The phrase "I believe and KNOW" comes to mind--as if a belief that is believed strongly enough counted as knowledge. But I digress...) Belief of this sort is a placeholder for knowledge--it's a hypothesis that maybe just can't be tested yet, but should be as soon as that is possible. And then that hypothesis should be accepted or rejected according the evidence.
"Believing in" something, on the other hand, is the belief that that something is good, or useful, or thinking that there is some sort of virtue in believing it. It looks to me as if there are many religious people who "believe in" things without really "believing" them. It's like people saying that they believe in God when what they really mean is that they believe that one should believe in God. Or magic. Or the immortal soul. Or karma. Or [fill in the blank].
I don't really don't think there is anything wrong with "believing in" things, just so long as you don't get so carried away with really believing them that you insist that all other people must also believe them or they are just WRONG WRONG WRONG. "Believing in" is by nature subjective and I suppose this is what people mean if they talk about subjective truth (a concept which has long bothered me and still does to some extent).
I went to the Imbolc ceremony that the CUUPS group put on at my church tonight. Even being the scientific rationalist that I am, I can't resist a bit of ritual from time to time, and no group does ritual quite like Pagans. I've looked into Paganism before but was turned off by what looked like a lot of mumbo-jumbo and superstition. I still am turned off by a lot of this, esp. if someone tries to talk me into some astrology or tarot or something of the sort. But what I like about Paganism is the way that it follows real cycles in nature and in human life. There is nothing superstitious at all in celebrating the fact that the days are now getting longer and Spring promises to come, even though we are right in the middle of Winter. It is a season of hope--that from the dead of winter, life and warmth will return again. I have found that I can fully participate in this even while staying firmly grounded in reason.
I don't believe that the Lord and Lady of Paganism (mentioned many times in the ceremony) are real but I do believe in hope. I do believe in persevering though the Winter in the hope that Spring will come again.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Overzealous censor edits 'God' out of 'Queen' - CNN.com
LOL Seldom do I find censorship amusing, but this one takes the cake.
Overzealous censor edits 'God' out of 'Queen' - CNN.com
Overzealous censor edits 'God' out of 'Queen' - CNN.com
Monday, January 22, 2007
getting settled in
I've been in my new apartment for one week and two weekends now. It's been really nice having my own place, especially now that I've finally got cable and internet and a landline phone now. Even though I am now at Mike's house using the wireless network I just set up :).
One of the benefits of having my own place is that I can read when I want to without being interrupted. I finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and I highly recommend it. I had gotten tired of reading about arguments against the existence of god(s) quite a while ago after I'd become quite secure in my atheism--I felt it was time to quit beating that point into the ground and go on. But that sort of stuff makes up only a very small portion of this book. Most books on atheism seem to be written by philosophers, and as much as I like philosophy, it was a breath of fresh air to see a distinguished scientist tackle the issue head on. He is not interested only displaying that the supernatural claims of religion are imaginary, but he took some time tackling the question of how we ended up with religion in the world in the first place. I found his discussion about the evolution of religion from a Darwinian perspective pretty interesting. I ought to go back and spend some time reviewing the book, and then write a real review. If I ever get around to it.
One of the benefits of having my own place is that I can read when I want to without being interrupted. I finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and I highly recommend it. I had gotten tired of reading about arguments against the existence of god(s) quite a while ago after I'd become quite secure in my atheism--I felt it was time to quit beating that point into the ground and go on. But that sort of stuff makes up only a very small portion of this book. Most books on atheism seem to be written by philosophers, and as much as I like philosophy, it was a breath of fresh air to see a distinguished scientist tackle the issue head on. He is not interested only displaying that the supernatural claims of religion are imaginary, but he took some time tackling the question of how we ended up with religion in the world in the first place. I found his discussion about the evolution of religion from a Darwinian perspective pretty interesting. I ought to go back and spend some time reviewing the book, and then write a real review. If I ever get around to it.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Getting a place of my own
I've decided to get into an apartment for a year and try to save up for a house while I'm there. I'm going to sign the lease Friday evening and start moving in ASAP.
Finally, a place of my own!
Finally, a place of my own!
Monday, January 08, 2007
Amusing Video
The rant gets a bit old, but hold out until the middle of the video and it gets funny. This is for every one who has been awoken on a Saturday morning by Mormon missionaries.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Atheists say they've been threatened over their views
I was at the atheist meetup group in Louisville where this guy interviewed our group. I just happened to stumble on the story on the internet today. It's not bad :)
Atheists say they've been threatened over their views
Atheists say they've been threatened over their views
DYLAN T. LOVAN
Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The note on Blair Scott's windshield wasn't a nice one.
The anonymous writer had to have seen Scott's atheist-themed bumper sticker, an uncommon sight in the small south Alabama town where he lived at the time.
"It just amazed me that people would take time out of their day to return to their car, grab a pen and paper and write a 'You're going to hell and you're going to burn in a lake of fire,' and stick it under my windshield," said Scott, a 36-year-old veteran who installs computer systems in prisons.
Outspoken atheists like Scott remain a minority, but there are dozens of atheist chapters sprouting up around the country, and even many in Southern states dominated by conservative Christians.
Many who consider themselves atheists said they're afraid to mention their views on religion or that they don't believe in deities. It's an especially unpopular opinion in the South, they said.
"Do I think that any of these people are really afraid if someone knows they're an atheist that they're going to get shot down on the street tomorrow? No. But the thought is always there in the back of your mind," said Joe Mays, Louisville computer technician who helped organize an atheist group that meets monthly.
Atheism is generally considered a disbelief in god or other deities, but some self-described atheists said they feel it is better described as a conclusion one arrives at sometime in their life.
"I don't really care for the word belief," said Edwin Kagan, a northern Kentucky lawyer who has defended atheist clients. "People say do I believe in evolution? It's not something to be believed in, it's something to be learned. Like the multiplication table. Do you believe in the multiplication table, or do you use it, do you learn it?"
Some estimates say as much as 15 percent of the population is atheist, though few call themselves by that title, said Jim Heldberg, national affiliation director for American Atheists in San Francisco. Heldberg said his group has 60 independent groups in many cities around the country. And there are many high-profile people who have expressed atheist views or a disbelief in God, including cyclist Lance Armstrong, golfer Annika Sorenstam and actresses Angelina Jolie and Jodie Foster.
At a meeting of the Louisville atheist group earlier this year, several members spoke of a fear of retribution if they mentioned their views around family or at work. Most didn't want to be identified. The members - including a factory worker, a nurse, a real estate agent, an accountant and some who work in computers - considered putting up flyers in local bookstores to attract new members, but they scrapped the idea when one said they would likely be torn down.
"Nobody's your friend when you're an atheist," one member said. Another member, Christopher Helbert, wryly suggested that he would rather his parents know he was gay than an atheist, because they would say "gay is curable."
A study at the University of Minnesota this year lends credence to the group's discussion. It found that Americans favor gays and lesbians, recent immigrants and Muslims over atheists in "sharing their vision of American society." Respondents also said they were least accepting of intermarriage with atheists than with any other group.
"I think the key to this animosity is probably this idea that somehow morality and religion are deeply linked and if you lose any kind of religious doctrine, you inevitably lose some purchase upon morality," said Sam Harris, best-selling author of "Letter to a Christian Nation."
Harris' book is a response to Christians who have criticized his writings on atheism.
"People think unless you've found Jesus, you can't love your neighbor in any significant sense," he said.
Some atheists have gone to court to challenge American institutions, most popularly the "Under God" portion of the Pledge of Allegiance, which was added in 1954.
In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools, agreeing with a suit filed by atheist Michael Newdow of Sacramento, Calif. The Supreme Court in 2004 reversed that decision. Newdow has since revived the case and last year a federal judge ruled in his favor.
Newdow said atheists cannot get elected to office and that elected officials consistently side with people of faith on many issues.
"Government sends the message that it's a bad thing to be an atheist," Newdow said in a phone interview.
Scott said when he was living in Mobile, Ala., people were tipped off to his atheist views after he wrote an editorial to the local newspaper protesting a proposed bible class at a public school. He said he never mentioned that he was an atheist in the letter.
Scott said after that, his car was bashed up by a baseball bat and a cross was planted in his yard.
He has since moved to Huntsville and now heads a local atheist chapter in that town, which he said is much more tolerant because of the number of NASA scientists who live there.
"I think there's almost an unwillingness to come out of the closet for most atheists, especially in the Bible belt, because of the type of repercussions from people of faith," he said. "Some nasty stuff has happened to people, some really nasty stuff. And people are afraid of that."
---
On the net:
"Letter to a Christian Nation" http://www.samharris.org
Atheists say they've been threatened over their views
Atheists say they've been threatened over their views
DYLAN T. LOVAN
Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The note on Blair Scott's windshield wasn't a nice one.
The anonymous writer had to have seen Scott's atheist-themed bumper sticker, an uncommon sight in the small south Alabama town where he lived at the time.
"It just amazed me that people would take time out of their day to return to their car, grab a pen and paper and write a 'You're going to hell and you're going to burn in a lake of fire,' and stick it under my windshield," said Scott, a 36-year-old veteran who installs computer systems in prisons.
Outspoken atheists like Scott remain a minority, but there are dozens of atheist chapters sprouting up around the country, and even many in Southern states dominated by conservative Christians.
Many who consider themselves atheists said they're afraid to mention their views on religion or that they don't believe in deities. It's an especially unpopular opinion in the South, they said.
"Do I think that any of these people are really afraid if someone knows they're an atheist that they're going to get shot down on the street tomorrow? No. But the thought is always there in the back of your mind," said Joe Mays, Louisville computer technician who helped organize an atheist group that meets monthly.
Atheism is generally considered a disbelief in god or other deities, but some self-described atheists said they feel it is better described as a conclusion one arrives at sometime in their life.
"I don't really care for the word belief," said Edwin Kagan, a northern Kentucky lawyer who has defended atheist clients. "People say do I believe in evolution? It's not something to be believed in, it's something to be learned. Like the multiplication table. Do you believe in the multiplication table, or do you use it, do you learn it?"
Some estimates say as much as 15 percent of the population is atheist, though few call themselves by that title, said Jim Heldberg, national affiliation director for American Atheists in San Francisco. Heldberg said his group has 60 independent groups in many cities around the country. And there are many high-profile people who have expressed atheist views or a disbelief in God, including cyclist Lance Armstrong, golfer Annika Sorenstam and actresses Angelina Jolie and Jodie Foster.
At a meeting of the Louisville atheist group earlier this year, several members spoke of a fear of retribution if they mentioned their views around family or at work. Most didn't want to be identified. The members - including a factory worker, a nurse, a real estate agent, an accountant and some who work in computers - considered putting up flyers in local bookstores to attract new members, but they scrapped the idea when one said they would likely be torn down.
"Nobody's your friend when you're an atheist," one member said. Another member, Christopher Helbert, wryly suggested that he would rather his parents know he was gay than an atheist, because they would say "gay is curable."
A study at the University of Minnesota this year lends credence to the group's discussion. It found that Americans favor gays and lesbians, recent immigrants and Muslims over atheists in "sharing their vision of American society." Respondents also said they were least accepting of intermarriage with atheists than with any other group.
"I think the key to this animosity is probably this idea that somehow morality and religion are deeply linked and if you lose any kind of religious doctrine, you inevitably lose some purchase upon morality," said Sam Harris, best-selling author of "Letter to a Christian Nation."
Harris' book is a response to Christians who have criticized his writings on atheism.
"People think unless you've found Jesus, you can't love your neighbor in any significant sense," he said.
Some atheists have gone to court to challenge American institutions, most popularly the "Under God" portion of the Pledge of Allegiance, which was added in 1954.
In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools, agreeing with a suit filed by atheist Michael Newdow of Sacramento, Calif. The Supreme Court in 2004 reversed that decision. Newdow has since revived the case and last year a federal judge ruled in his favor.
Newdow said atheists cannot get elected to office and that elected officials consistently side with people of faith on many issues.
"Government sends the message that it's a bad thing to be an atheist," Newdow said in a phone interview.
Scott said when he was living in Mobile, Ala., people were tipped off to his atheist views after he wrote an editorial to the local newspaper protesting a proposed bible class at a public school. He said he never mentioned that he was an atheist in the letter.
Scott said after that, his car was bashed up by a baseball bat and a cross was planted in his yard.
He has since moved to Huntsville and now heads a local atheist chapter in that town, which he said is much more tolerant because of the number of NASA scientists who live there.
"I think there's almost an unwillingness to come out of the closet for most atheists, especially in the Bible belt, because of the type of repercussions from people of faith," he said. "Some nasty stuff has happened to people, some really nasty stuff. And people are afraid of that."
---
On the net:
"Letter to a Christian Nation" http://www.samharris.org
Saturday, December 30, 2006
10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism :: Sam Harris
Must read for anyone who thinks they know anything about what atheists are all about.
10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism :: Sam Harris
10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism
By Sam Harris
December 24, 2006
The Los Angeles Times
SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term “atheism” has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.
Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was “not at all to be tolerated” because, he said, “promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist.”
That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims “never to doubt” the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.
Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity’s needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn’t have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the “beginning” or “creation” of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.
The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, “The God Delusion,” this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don’t know precisely how the Earth’s early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase “natural selection” by analogy to the “artificial selection” performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
When scientists don’t know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn’t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature’s laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.
From the atheist point of view, the world’s religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn’t have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as “wishful thinking” and “self-deception.” There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.
In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.
10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism :: Sam Harris
10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism
By Sam Harris
December 24, 2006
The Los Angeles Times
SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term “atheism” has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.
Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was “not at all to be tolerated” because, he said, “promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist.”
That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims “never to doubt” the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.
Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity’s needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn’t have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the “beginning” or “creation” of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.
The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, “The God Delusion,” this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don’t know precisely how the Earth’s early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase “natural selection” by analogy to the “artificial selection” performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
When scientists don’t know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn’t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature’s laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.
From the atheist point of view, the world’s religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn’t have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as “wishful thinking” and “self-deception.” There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.
In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
live and learn
Turns out I didn't get the house after all. (See the post below.) The mortgage situation turned out alright. The problem was that the seller would not fix the stuff he'd agreed to--including some old wiring that had the insulation falling off of it. So that was it. I'll start looking for a house again sometime next year--for now I'm taking a break.
Enough of that.
I've been on a bit of an Alanis Morisette kick for the last few days.
This is one of my fav's from her, mainly because I can relate to it. Yes, Mike, this one is for you.
Enough of that.
I've been on a bit of an Alanis Morisette kick for the last few days.
This is one of my fav's from her, mainly because I can relate to it. Yes, Mike, this one is for you.
Friday, December 08, 2006
uncertainty
I'm not feeling real happy right now and I feel like spilling out my feelings. I don't have someone to talk to right now so I guess I'll just spill it out for the whole world to see.
The main thing bugging me is that I found out the mortgage on my new house is going to cost me quite a lot more than I thought it was going to. All these stupid fees. I'm not going quite into it right now, I'm just irritated that I got these mortgage papers in my mail on a Friday night and I can't get any answers to my questions until Monday. Arrrrr!
*Sigh* Ok, I've got that out in writing now and that makes me feel somewhat better.
It's times like this that bring out an odd and hard-to-understand bit about myself. Why do I get all upset and defensive when my tries to tell me about how his uncle knows all about mortgages and how he could give me an estimate of my costs. Maybe it's that I really don't trust that he knows what he's talking about. For some reason I have this really hard time accepting advice from someone unless I have (a lot of) experience that tells me they really know what they are talking about. Like my Dad--I can trust that if I'm out somewhere and my car won't start, I can call him and most of the time he could tell me just what to do to bring the damn engine to life. On some other topics I may be less inclined to listen.
I think another bit of the problem is that I like to figure things out for myself. When someone tries to tell me how to do something, if I have not asked them for their advice, it's like they're telling me "Here I see you are not competent enough to figure it out on your own, so let me set you straight." That just drives me NUTS for some reason.
Hey, all you who have given me well intentioned advice, before you get defensive: I never said it was a rational response. I'm quite sure it isn't. And I probably should be on the giving end of some sincere apologies.
I suppose the flip side of this personality trait is that I do like to figure things out for myself. And if I didn't question so much the things people told me, I'd still be believing odd stuff like the notion that I'm somehow deserving of eternal condemnation because I have not always chosen to do the right thing in every circumstance in my life. Or that I can escape this supposed condemnation by believing really hard that some guy who was God 2,000 years ago died as a sacrifice to God to save me from God's wrath. Oh and that he then rose from the dead and lives in some place outside of space and time called Heaven . . . Well, you get the drift (assuming you don't believe these things yourself).
I have a tenancy to think for myself and question what the authorities have told me.
Not just in religion either . . . I also question political and other authorities. There is just so much lying and corruption in the world it's really hard to know who you can trust. Far as I can tell my best bet is to trust my own powers of reason.
The mortgage is a rough call because I have neither expert knowledge in the area, time or motive or resources to gain this knowledge, nor anyone to talk to with real expert knowledge who is looking out for my interests (and not trying to squeeze money out of me).
Times like this I just have to gather all the limited information I can, and after that just take the plunge into the unknown. Life is just full of uncertainty. It always was.
I know I'll feel better in the morning. I always do.
The main thing bugging me is that I found out the mortgage on my new house is going to cost me quite a lot more than I thought it was going to. All these stupid fees. I'm not going quite into it right now, I'm just irritated that I got these mortgage papers in my mail on a Friday night and I can't get any answers to my questions until Monday. Arrrrr!
*Sigh* Ok, I've got that out in writing now and that makes me feel somewhat better.
It's times like this that bring out an odd and hard-to-understand bit about myself. Why do I get all upset and defensive when my tries to tell me about how his uncle knows all about mortgages and how he could give me an estimate of my costs. Maybe it's that I really don't trust that he knows what he's talking about. For some reason I have this really hard time accepting advice from someone unless I have (a lot of) experience that tells me they really know what they are talking about. Like my Dad--I can trust that if I'm out somewhere and my car won't start, I can call him and most of the time he could tell me just what to do to bring the damn engine to life. On some other topics I may be less inclined to listen.
I think another bit of the problem is that I like to figure things out for myself. When someone tries to tell me how to do something, if I have not asked them for their advice, it's like they're telling me "Here I see you are not competent enough to figure it out on your own, so let me set you straight." That just drives me NUTS for some reason.
Hey, all you who have given me well intentioned advice, before you get defensive: I never said it was a rational response. I'm quite sure it isn't. And I probably should be on the giving end of some sincere apologies.
I suppose the flip side of this personality trait is that I do like to figure things out for myself. And if I didn't question so much the things people told me, I'd still be believing odd stuff like the notion that I'm somehow deserving of eternal condemnation because I have not always chosen to do the right thing in every circumstance in my life. Or that I can escape this supposed condemnation by believing really hard that some guy who was God 2,000 years ago died as a sacrifice to God to save me from God's wrath. Oh and that he then rose from the dead and lives in some place outside of space and time called Heaven . . . Well, you get the drift (assuming you don't believe these things yourself).
I have a tenancy to think for myself and question what the authorities have told me.
Not just in religion either . . . I also question political and other authorities. There is just so much lying and corruption in the world it's really hard to know who you can trust. Far as I can tell my best bet is to trust my own powers of reason.
The mortgage is a rough call because I have neither expert knowledge in the area, time or motive or resources to gain this knowledge, nor anyone to talk to with real expert knowledge who is looking out for my interests (and not trying to squeeze money out of me).
Times like this I just have to gather all the limited information I can, and after that just take the plunge into the unknown. Life is just full of uncertainty. It always was.
I know I'll feel better in the morning. I always do.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
YouTube - Atheist
Really cool flick! Wouldn't do any good for some Christians who think scientists and intellectuals are fools anyway though...
YouTube - Atheist: ""
YouTube - Atheist: ""
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Friday, November 10, 2006
It's Official!
I'm now a Unitarian Universalist. I signed the membership book at First Unitarian Church last Wednesday. After deciding to hold off on the decision for about 2 years now, I've done it.
bits of starstuff: joining first unitarian church
bits of starstuff: atheist?
bits of starstuff: joining first unitarian church
bits of starstuff: atheist?
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
This kid's got the right idea :)
I got this from BeliefNet religious jokes:
Afraid of the Dark
A little boy was afraid of the dark. One night his mother told him to go out to the back porch and bring her the broom.
The little boy turned to his mother and said, "Mama, I don't want to go out there. It's dark."
The mother smiled reassuringly at her son. "You don't have to be afraid of the dark," she explained. "Jesus is out there. He'll look after you and protect you."The little boy looked at his mother real hard and asked, "Are you sure he's out there?"
"Yes, I'm sure. He is everywhere, and he is always ready to help you when you need him," she said.
The little boy thought about that for a minute and then went to the back door and cracked it a little. Peering out into the darkness, he called, "Jesus? If you're out there, would you please hand me the broom?"
Afraid of the Dark
A little boy was afraid of the dark. One night his mother told him to go out to the back porch and bring her the broom.
The little boy turned to his mother and said, "Mama, I don't want to go out there. It's dark."
The mother smiled reassuringly at her son. "You don't have to be afraid of the dark," she explained. "Jesus is out there. He'll look after you and protect you."The little boy looked at his mother real hard and asked, "Are you sure he's out there?"
"Yes, I'm sure. He is everywhere, and he is always ready to help you when you need him," she said.
The little boy thought about that for a minute and then went to the back door and cracked it a little. Peering out into the darkness, he called, "Jesus? If you're out there, would you please hand me the broom?"
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night removes the color from our sight
Red is gray and yellow, white.
But we decide which is right and which is an illusion.
NASA - Strange Moonlight
Yes that was a Moody Blues lyric :) I found it appropriate.
But we decide which is right and which is an illusion.
NASA - Strange Moonlight
Yes that was a Moody Blues lyric :) I found it appropriate.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Shark that walks on fins is discovered - Yahoo! News
Fish do walk.
There is now even a walking shark. I see a new car emblem--a shark with feet :)
Shark that walks on fins is discovered - Yahoo! News
There is now even a walking shark. I see a new car emblem--a shark with feet :)
Shark that walks on fins is discovered - Yahoo! News
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Went to church today
No I haven't reconverted :)
I went to First Unitarian church, where I was going to for a while about a year ago. At one point I'd even talked to the minister about joining, but ended up deciding not to do it right away. Since then I've checked out a Buddhism circle, biking on Sunday mornings, and a few weeks ago I checked out another Unitarian Universalist church here in town.
Going back was a good experience for me. I recognized quite a few faces and met some people I did not already know from before. We had a good discussion about ethics in the adult Sunday School (they don't call it Sunday School though--here it's called the Sunday Morning Adult Round Table or SMART for short). The Celebration of Life (what they call their Sunday morning service) message was that we can find spiritual nourishment and fulfillment no matter what our specific beliefs or situation in life. Not the words they used, but that is what I got out of it anyway.
I am considering the possibility of joining this time, now that I've tried some other things and other Unitarian churches for a while. I find that now I am a lot more secure now about my atheism, and I'm not worried about being around and discussing it with people who think that I'm wrong. As long as there is respect on both sides, and I'm not expected to submit to a creed (they have no official creed). So now may be the right time to join. . .
I went to First Unitarian church, where I was going to for a while about a year ago. At one point I'd even talked to the minister about joining, but ended up deciding not to do it right away. Since then I've checked out a Buddhism circle, biking on Sunday mornings, and a few weeks ago I checked out another Unitarian Universalist church here in town.
Going back was a good experience for me. I recognized quite a few faces and met some people I did not already know from before. We had a good discussion about ethics in the adult Sunday School (they don't call it Sunday School though--here it's called the Sunday Morning Adult Round Table or SMART for short). The Celebration of Life (what they call their Sunday morning service) message was that we can find spiritual nourishment and fulfillment no matter what our specific beliefs or situation in life. Not the words they used, but that is what I got out of it anyway.
I am considering the possibility of joining this time, now that I've tried some other things and other Unitarian churches for a while. I find that now I am a lot more secure now about my atheism, and I'm not worried about being around and discussing it with people who think that I'm wrong. As long as there is respect on both sides, and I'm not expected to submit to a creed (they have no official creed). So now may be the right time to join. . .
Friday, September 15, 2006
Dear God
I've never heard of XTC, but I was listening to my Sirius radio on the New Wave station on the way to work today and heard this song. Wow! Both the lyrics and the music (I'd post an mp3 if I wasn't worried about copyright). It's an awesome song!
EDIT:Actually I found the video on YouTube! Dear God Video
Dear god,
Hope you got the letter,
And I pray you can make it better down here.
I dont mean a big reduction in the price of beer,
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet,
cause they dont get enough to eat
From god,
I cant believe in you.
Dear god,
Sorry to disturb you,
But I feel that I should be heard loud and clear.
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears,
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street,
cause they cant make opinions meet,
About god,
I cant believe in you.
Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!
Dear god,
Dont know if you noticed,
But your name is on a lot of quotes in this book.
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
And all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it aint and so do you,
Dear god,
I cant believe in,
I dont believe in,
I wont believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners,
No devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
Youre always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And its the same the whole world round.
The hurt I see helps to compound,
That the father, son and holy ghost,
Is just somebodys unholy hoax,
And if youre up there youll perceive,
That my hearts here upon my sleeve.
If theres one thing I dont believe in...
Its you,
Dear god.
EDIT:Actually I found the video on YouTube! Dear God Video
Dear god,
Hope you got the letter,
And I pray you can make it better down here.
I dont mean a big reduction in the price of beer,
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet,
cause they dont get enough to eat
From god,
I cant believe in you.
Dear god,
Sorry to disturb you,
But I feel that I should be heard loud and clear.
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears,
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street,
cause they cant make opinions meet,
About god,
I cant believe in you.
Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!
Dear god,
Dont know if you noticed,
But your name is on a lot of quotes in this book.
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
And all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it aint and so do you,
Dear god,
I cant believe in,
I dont believe in,
I wont believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners,
No devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
Youre always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And its the same the whole world round.
The hurt I see helps to compound,
That the father, son and holy ghost,
Is just somebodys unholy hoax,
And if youre up there youll perceive,
That my hearts here upon my sleeve.
If theres one thing I dont believe in...
Its you,
Dear god.
Monday, September 04, 2006
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