Reddit Atheism

Reddit is a social news website that has quite a following.  If you want to know more about atheism, you can go here and check it out. http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/faq#Doatheistsbelieveinghosts or reddit.com.

You can troll the site and find hoards of images like the one above.  It can suck you in and waste an incredible amount of time, so fair warning!

In defense of Atheism 2

Another post of point counterpoint in the argument over Atheism, we'll explore 3 more questions in approval of faith and blow them out of the water!

Religion is a force for good. Or people do good things BECAUSE of religion.

This is a half truth.  Of course people do good things because of their faith.  People do good things for all sorts of reasons, some of those reason aren't good at all.  The question we should ask is; Are religious reasons the best reasons for doing good things. No. Religion works from a reward standpoint.  If you do good or live by certain tenants you will go to heaven or be in god's good graces.  This leads, if you did not do these things you would not go to heaven or be in god's good graces.  How is this the highest moral objective?  Isn't doing good for its own sake better?  A humanitarian will go to Africa and feed the poor not to proselytize, like all missionary services do, but because feeding people is noble unto itself.  I find the real moral ideal is to do good because it is good. Not for divine reward.

Somewhat conversely we find just as many occurrences of evil and wrong done in the name of religion as good in the same.  I may have just made you think of an instance on your own.  One only need to pick up the news paper and read the international headlines for the latest suicide bombing or the latest mass grave uncovered.  Steven Weinberg said, "Good people do good things, bad people do bad things, it takes religion for good people to do bad things."  There is no other way to describe the suicide bombing cults or the female genital mutilation community (which is 100% religious) not to mention the Inquisition, heresy trials, and modern day jihad.  So what we have hidden in this religious force for good is also a force for evil.

The bible is true because it says so. The bible is true because it was inspired by god.


I hear this all the time and I can't understand how people don't see the logical blunder in the first statement.  Something is true because it says so?!  I can say ANYTHING, especially if its ridiculous then say its true and you would believe me?  I'm telling you now there is a teapot orbiting mars in an elliptical orbit and it was put there by the first people and this is a true statement.  Would you believe me?  What does the evidence say?  There is NO evidence what so ever to accredit this statement.  WE need to base our ideas on evidence and not word play and logic tricks.  I can then stand in front of you and say, "prove me wrong about my teapot."  Certainly we can't for technology has not gotten us to that point that we can detect any possible thing in orbit of mars but this is no argument for the veracity of my statement.  In fact we can use probabilities to guess within a high degree of certainty that it is untrue. Saying it's true only because it says so is a circular argument and by definition is invalid. The onus is not on the unbeliever, it is on the statement maker.

One day I might like to travel to the Vatican and see the Sistine Chapel.  After my visit I may be 'inspired' to write a book or make a painting, directly because of my visit.  My creative works do not have to about the chapel or even represent it in any way.  The works can be about something else entirely.  My small point here is that inspiration is not enough to prove the works have a direct connection to the origins of the inspiration.

But in defense of the bible, it is said that they were inspired by god, which is to say that this is gods word.  Even if we discount all the contradictions, which there are many, and all the inconsistencies, we are told that this, like the koran, is the perfect word of god.  I would tell you now stop and now go read the bible and tell me, is this book perfect or could we improve upon it?  I say we could easily improve on many facets of the bible from the glaring immoralities, single dimensional characters, ideas that can be interpreted in many different ways, and from what we now know, that the early christians edited the bible.  Israeli researchers and archaeologists confirm this.  If the bible, which is actually many books depending on your exact faith, is the perfect word of god, how can it also be edited by terrestrial beings? Besides all this, there is nothing in the bible or koran in which information is any more advanced than that of a 1st or 7th century man.

Entropy: The universe without god violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

This argument usually entails arguing against the big bang model of cosmology.  They make the argument that the universe's energy should be decreasing, a running down towards chaos.  They say "Entropy increases as available energy decreases.  In other words, the purely natural tendency of things is to move toward chaos, not order, and available energy necessary for work is lost (mostly as heat) in this process".  This is true OF A CLOSED SYSTEM.  They purposefully leave that out of the discussion.  The universe is not a closed system.  They are misleading you by giving cherry picked information combined with half truths.

Our solar system from our perspective does seem fairly closed.  So lets run with this for I am attempting at an analogy.  Our Earth is also a mostly closed system.  Only energy waves and some very small bits of metal seem to every leave its surface.  Energy waves are all that is contained in the electromagnetic spectrum. Heat, light, and radar waves all shoot out into space.  But most 'stuff' remains.  IF there was no sun we could imagine how the Earth would eventually cool into a lifeless rock where entropy would increase and concentrations of material in the oceans would dilute and it would become a boring place.  But as the sun sends us energy some chaos occurs and this leads to life rising up, the Earths core being churned up, and weather allowing life to exist on all parts of the planet.  

I hope I have made the distinction clear.  That entropy is talking about closed systems and not the cosmos.  Entropy also says that chaos is more probable than order.  If you fling a pile of rocks out the window, they will land 'willy nilly' and not into a nice rock wall.  However correct this may be in relation to gasses and dilutions of salts in water and the like, this is not an argument against life in its ordered form.  Life is made possible by replicators which by definition cannot evolve towards chaos but life observes an order for it to create repeatable processes.  Just like viewing a nice rock wall is not an argument against entropy, entropy is not an argument against life.

In defense of Atheism

I would like to post some point counterpoints in defense of Atheism or in the least for anti-theism.

One of the most common things a nonbeliever will hear is; What if you're wrong?

I usually understand this point to be Pascals wager or Pascals Gambit.  Pascal gives a simple cost benefit analysis to defend theism. It states that if there IS a god and you believe, you go to heaven. If there IS a god and you don't believe, you go to hell. Conversely if there isn't a god and whether you believe or not, you have lost nothing.

So that's simple, you must believe right? Well, no.  First on the rebuttle is can you actually fool god?  If a person examines the evidence, eg the bible, koran, ect., and cannot find that to be accurate or true, can he  then say he believes in a vain attempt to enter heaven? Will god not see through this deception? Wouldn't the jealous god of the bible be angry then? Obviously this makes no sense but it gets worse. How about living with self respect. Are you seriously telling me that you can extol the faith when you know it's wrong?! What kind of person would you then become? If god gave us reason and logic, would it not then be wrong to dispose of these?  Wouldn't god want us to search for truth, not settle for self imposed brain washing? It is unhealthy to knowingly believe in a lie.

Pascals wager is really a disgusting attempt at creating self delusion in expense of your self respect, dignity, humanity, health, reason, and all the little things that make us explorers of humanity and the cosmos.  This is "religious hucksterism of the cheapest, vulgarest, nastiest kind that is possible to imagine" AND all this says nothing about believing in the wrong god. Last point here, if this god is so forgiving, so loving, so smart, so wonderful why would he have no room in his 'heart' for honest, decent people who have done nothing wrong at all?

Another arguments goes like this; We would not have morality if not for god or religion.

How long have people been around gives you the easy, fast answer.  If you believe the world is only 6,000 years old, there isn't much I can do here.  If you accept that humanity has been around on the order of 100,000 plus years, it is plain to see that we would not have gotten as far as we did if morality wasn't innate.  Morality also follows cultural development and this usually have a religious element to it but as is also plain religion and the bible or koran have come only in the last 2,000 years. How did humanity get by for 98,000+ years without god? How did the jews who wandered the desert before coming upon MT. Sinai know that murder, rape, perjury, theft were not okay? Of course they knew long before then.

If we could go back say 1,000 years or during the time of the Inquisition, we would see that they followed the bible and its tenets very closely.  They persecuted witches, tortured and killed heretics, endorsed slavery and genocide on an order that would frighten and outrage us today.  We can also read the international headlines and read what most muslim countries offer us in light of gods wisdom.  Cutting off the noses and ears for women who dishonor the family, stoning people for conversing with the wrong interpreters of muhammad, and throwing battery acid in the face of women for attending school. Is muhammad's law just and reasonable, I THINK NOT!

Please don't think we need to be stuck in the bronze age of morality and wisdom of our world.  Is it not apparent that we need to understand our history and moderate our ignorance of issues and topics with care and understanding?  Do you realize modern western culture has moderated christianity to its current standing and the muslin world lags behind us only for the fact that their faith guides their society and not education, science, and reason.  Do not let faith guide your actions anymore.

Y U NO LEAVE COMMENT?

This blog is still a young blog.  June 20th. of 2011 was the first post and after Sept. I almost quit writing at all.  Aiming to forget this blog came the new year. Not quite a resolution but on more of a suggestion that I keep writing, I have been posting new topics and have kept the blog current for about 2 months now.  I have seen a dramatic increase in traffic from before with a lot of traffic occurring most recently.  Total views of this site are not anything to brag about but it has raised the questions; Does my writing reach anyone?  Do people read and care?

I have just relabeled the blog posts into a more concise listing and have come to realize that this blog may lack focus.  My aim is to have a mix of topics and still focus on 3 main issues encompassing Atheism (religion), politics, and entertainment.  After the relabeling I have noticed that many posts are under the philosophy label and this is somewhat of a catch all of coherent ideas and some inane ramblings.  Politics and entertainment both have a high content total and to keep it balanced, I will write more on Atheism; what is it, what it means, and to show its not devil worship.

This posts goal is to generate some level of feedback.  Since I am new to blogging I have no idea on what it takes to get followers or even comments out of people.  As of now not a single person has commented which isn't actually disheartening but it is somewhat like being in the dark.  I have tried to post decent content and make the page look half-well designed.  I have also begun to include more photos and embed more videos for a more entertaining site.

I have searched blog spot posts randomly by using the 'next blog' widget while logged in and many blogs seem very uninteresting.  Sometimes the page that it lands on may have only a tertiary relevance to the blog itself and this single sample is judged for better or for worse.  I can see how some of my older posts are less attractive then my current content.  So then how do I get a person to stick around a little longer?  I can see how a great many people may be put off by the Atheist topics but I try to include enough variety to hook a greater audience.  Is it working?

Tell me what YOU want to see or read about. How do YOU want this blog to look?  Tell me am I relevant to YOU?

An atheist or should I say a human's point of view

At the bottom of this post lies the url for the point of this post.  When you look at a person, what is it you see?  Do you see a baseless individual or something more perhaps?  Do you see a soul or a primate? When you look into the eyes of a child, do you see a muslim child or catholic child or simply a child?

I frequently come across the writings of religious believers and its runs the gamut of reasonable discourse to insane ramblings that seem more akin to the residents of a mental hospital. The worst make flagrant attempts to sway only the most credulous of us into their way of twisted thinking. This gem here was gleamed from the a fore mentioned link: "....anything this side of Hell is mercy. Remember--you deserve to go to Hell."  This is in reference to the 'basic' person; you, me, everyone.  This does not seem fit for a healthy mind to think such of people.

Let us try to imagine our soul, just now infused into the zygoat of our mothers womb.  Did I ask or better yet, did my soul ask to be created and then infused into this biology?  It seems to me that in any event we all came into this world through no choice of our own. Only now many years after our birth do we now have the ability to even question such things. So here we are 'given' life for which we do not deserve for we are immoral, grotesque, sinners.  We are all apparently just a breath away from being evil.  If you thinks this of us, then we do indeed deserve hell. But fortunately for us all, there is no evidence of any sort that leads, either rationally or logically, to these conclusions.  This evidence include literature, science, history, and even other holy books and scripture.

If the theist god who created the cosmos is to be true, he gave us many faculties in which to learn and disseminate how the world really is.  This quote says much:  "....because ''believing on Christ'' means surrendering everything, giving up everything. If you are not willing to surrender everything,..."  I have heard this before and I'm betting you have as well.  I understand this to mean that we are to give up our logic, reason, skepticism, and even our very inquisitive nature.  Why would god give us these things just for us to dispose of them?  This isn't how you treat a gift.

Would anyone argue that we are not, at a base level, explorers. We all explore the universe, our world, ourselves, human experience, emotion, and a myriad of other 'things'.  Even the religious try to get to the truth, even if they incorrectly discount certain information.  So in our very nature to seek religious truth, the above quote seems to be irreconcilable with what the aim of its objective is.

There is racking misery to be found right here on earth. Fortunately nothing in, on, or above this earth tells me there is a hell waiting for us. Nor is there a heaven where god sits waiting for us to commit thought crime to judge us without appeal.  I cannot submit myself to this willful attempt at intellectual suicide and I implore you not to fall for these tricks they would have you fall into. All this talk of humanity belongs in hell seems very hateful to me. Why would god use hate in order for us to conform to his wishes, which seem to me to be mightily terrestrial.

There is nothing in the bible or koran or any other holy text that suggests they have any special knowledge.  There is nothing in these books that have any information any more advanced than that of a 1st or 7th century man.  A modern wheelbarrow would have been the invention of a lifetime and yet we should listen to them on the creation, workings, and death of the universe? No sir, I will not let this happen. I will not subscribe to ignorance in the face of knowledge. I will not let my mind fall victim to irrational discourse. I will not let my country fall victim to theocratic politicians. And I beg that you will not either.

http://freegracepreacher.blogspot.com/2010/07/letter-to-awakened-sinners.html

Unbelief IS an option.

"I didn't know unbelief was an option." I once heard this, I can't remember where, from a person who formerly believed in a religion.  One of the other statements I have heard was "I didn't realize that there were people that had read my holy book or had looked at religion with an open mind and found no proof. I thought it was simply Christians (or any other religion) and people who haven't yet found god."  Statements of both these kinds are from people who have had little or no contact with a person of non-belief or perhaps a person of another faith, in an open and non confrontational atmosphere.

I wanted to define Atheism and what it means or does not mean.  The dictionary would say:
a·the·ism/ˈāTHēˌizəm/  Noun:  The theory or belief that God does not exist. But this is not quite right. Atheism is not a "belief" that god doesn't exist, it more means that a person can find no evidence to believe in god.  The difference may seem subtle but it is important.  Think of Atheism as a zero point expression.  A baby would be Atheist for they no more believe in god, a religion, or Santa Claus *yet*, for how could they. They can't read or speak!  Atheism is akin to NOT believing in alchemy or astrology.  If you do not believe in these two things, we don't have a word for it!

More often than not, a person who 'invokes' Atheism usually has a good grasp on not only his countries popular religion but also of the other minority ones as well. What is also interesting is that many studies have been conducted, where an Atheist or a person who discounts a religion will actually possess more information of that religion than the general population or even that of the layman's of that religion. I will reference the Pew study here: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1745/religious-knowledge-in-america-survey-atheists-agnostics-score-highest

This is a basic framework for Atheism but like all things, there are shades of colors. For example there are 'strong' Atheists and 'weak' Atheists. A strong one will say god is false versus a weak one will say it cannot be proved true.  This is not contradictory to the above framework.  A weak Atheist should not be confused with Agnosticism, a person who says god may or may not exist and may or never be proved.  Now to muddy the waters a little an Atheist may say, without being an Agnostic, that one day god can be proved to be true, if the evidence proves it to be true.

Even if god were to be proved true it would not prove a specific religion was true. This gives us Deism which many of our nations forefathers were. Others were ambivalent on religion and still more were christians and catholics.  Thomas Jefferson was a Deist but today when it is more sociably acceptable to invoke Atheism but still not politically so, may have called himself an Atheist, along with James Madison, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin.

"Atheists have no morals, since they don't believe in God". This is true in part.  There is nothing in Atheism that says anything on morality or politically or anything besides god. You can be a communist or mad psycho killer and be atheist (which you can be part of any religion and be a psycho killer as well).  More often than not what you will find along with Atheism is being a Secular Humanist. Humanism is for another topic but I can most assuredly tell you, it is not devil worship or the like.  I can pull up many parts of scripture in the bible or koran, which by my western sensibilities are indeed IMMORAL and repugnant. It is undeniably interesting to find out what most religions texts find to be moral but many practitioners of said faith find to be abhorrent behavior.

 I would like for you to view your faith from a critical eye, actually read your holy book, and then challenge your beliefs with debate, either in person or watch debates on youtube, Fora.tv or anywhere else.  I must applaud many christians who would say, "If my faith cannot stand the test of scrutiny, I should not be believing in it."

On closing I would like for you to watch this video. A search on youtube on this video will bring up 3 different parts. Please search for them.

Book review in less than 100 pages.

Sam Harris (author) often seems amused but possibly 'unenthused' about being part of what some have called him and his compatriots "The Four Horsemen".  Of course I am referring to Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett and Sam Harris, a quartette of godless heathens.  In a review of his book, A Letter to a Christian Nation,  Sam Harris nails several arguments home with a basic and thought out candor that would make a fan of political correctness shudder. But thank our lucky stars we don't really care for "pc" here.

I don't mean to insult unnecessarily but I can see how both a book like this and reality as we Atheists put it, is indeed very insulting to those whos beliefs we attack here.  People who put faith before reason would find this a very hard read undoubtedly because Sam along with millions of others find that faith should be the last ideal to be propagated through ones mind. But faith is the ideal held foremost to these peoples minds so there is very little common ground with which to begin to converse on these matters in the most polite way.

All that aside this book is in the format of an open letter. Its roughly 100 pages is an easy read not loaded with overblown rhetoric but it is fairly simple and to the point.  Some have chastised it as being  "fundamentalist atheist" while attacking christian fundamentalists.  It attacks the bible. So how can you believe in being christian but not believe in the bible is beyond me but I digress.  It makes strait forward points that get to the heart of the matter and it WILL get you thinking. I give it a 9/10 only for being short even though that was the goal.

A couple of the arguments which I will highlight here is: Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girls parents believe - as you believe - that an all powerful and all loving god is watching over them and their family..........One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the worlds faith. The holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide of Rwanda, even with machete wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died from smallpox in the twentieth century, many of them infants. God's ways are indeed inscrutable......Of course people of all faiths reassure one another that god is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that god is both omniscient and omnipotent?


Even if you don't accept that as a valid argument, as seen in genesis god wiped out the population of the earth himself or in revelation god will do it again, to the point of god doesn't care about death. It should at least set the stage for further arguments and get a person thinking.

If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures.....we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the bible (and the ten commandments [mine]) with a single sentence: Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.


Sam goes on to say which makes my point for my follow up: Imagine how different our world might be if the bible contained this as its central precept.


Reading the comment section of another review of this book, the commenter had this to say "Hasn't the 20th. century taught us anything?  People like Hitler (who said he was christian but was not), Stalin, or Mao suppressed religion and murdered people who practiced it".  Sam Harris says reason should win out but a government that murders its people, does that seem reasonable?  SO, it should seem apparent but if not immediately so we should strive for building up that wall of separation of church and state that Thomas Jefferson fought so rightly for.

It is a secular state that atheists, anti-theists, and the like should and overwhelmingly do strive for but they usually don't get that point across. They, I, would like to see a world where reason wins out but that thinking is set aside for the singular, personal mind.  The conversations we have should reflect this in that criticizing religious beliefs should be like criticizing any other fact or idea but that in no way means one should adopt a totalitarian view against such religious ideas on the scale of government.  To separate church and state does not say to DISALLOW the building of a church or similar.

So go out and buy this book and get some neurons firing. In ending ↓↓↓ abraham going to kill his son on orders from god.  Fortunately for Isaac god either changed his mind or figured he temped abraham enough.

Quotes for you and me

I always enjoy a good quote.  Like a witty one liner they often drive strait to the point and make you think.  My favorite quotes are unfortunately driven by problems.  Better thinkers than I see a broken system, intolerable situation or outright absurdity and they point it out succinctly with a well worded diatribe.


About education


"Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system."  -Richard Mitchell


“Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy – these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.”-john Taylor Gatto

"A well instructed people alone can permanetly free a people."- James Madison

On the government


"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater


If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison


The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. -James Madison


On religion


Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.            -Richard Dawkins


"Question with boldness even the existence of god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."-Thomas Jefferson


"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."-Voltair


"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion."- Steven Weinberg


On sex


For the first time in history, sex is more dangerous than the cigarette afterward.  -Jay Leno


When a man talks dirty to a woman, it's sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man, it's $3.95 a minute.  -Author Unknown


"There's nothing inherently dirty about sex, but if you try real hard and use your imagination you can overcome that." -Lewis Grizzard


On guns


"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." - Mahatma Gandhi


"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." -George Mason


"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered
automatic weapons."-General Douglas MacArthur




He who laughs last probably does not get the joke.