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

HEYYYYYYYY Jackboot!

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by  controlling money and its issuance. -James Madison

Lest we fall victim to the civilizations of old. Lest we pass into the dust of time. We are quickly nearing the apogee of victory or the knife edge of defeat. Why must we be brought to this point in time? Why must it be us and this next generation of people who decide the fate of the future.  Indeed it always has been this way, but this time, there is an urgency which will not wait for us.  We are facing problems on a scale unprecedented and our systems of governance make sure, that all remains the same to keep the gears working. Not a single system is untouched. Some are damaged many in total disrepair.

Not even the earth itself goes untouched by our consumption. We have it lucky locally but a quick search will bring up many areas who are suffering ecological damage unheard of, even 20 years ago.  Anaerobic lakes and waterways are becoming common and like the oxygen starvation of these biomes, our politics seem to represent fewer and fewer of us while they control more and more.

People will look back at us as we are now and will exclaim in utter disbelief in how backwards we were, as we do now on peoples past . The trick which we must accomplish is avoiding history exclaiming how we were a nation that had everything, and squandered it all away in pettiness.  Our disputes are not beyond reproach but it is the people we have let come into our charge that are.  These people, our elected officials, have wrestled away control of our arguments from us.  They form the debate topics and they put sound bites over the air as truth.  They have taken a hold of us and its time we recognize this so we may begin to push back.

We can start with campaign finance reform.  Does anyone here not see the conflict of interest of having business give money to our elected officials?  Does anyone here not recognize how our votes are diminished when our corporations give millions of dollars each to our hopeful representatives? Our votes have been largely replaced by dollars often times ranging in the hundreds of thousands. Corporate controlled news agencies owned by these same money donators only discuss politics with two parties in mind.  They keep the horse race alive. With the power of the internet we can have a free choice again.  Our candidates can get their message heard at minimal cost and with minimal molestation.

We can start with state primaries occurring at the same time.  As it is now we have states like Iowa and South Carolina deciding for us.  They vote first "weeding out" the less preferable candidates, giving their vote far more weight.  As some of you can attest, those who follow politics, many candidates have fallen away from the "top tier", so called by the popular media due to a minority vote.  We can easily make it a choice to vote for candidates who matter to us, not for the party.

We can start with ourselves.  We have become entrenched in our ideologies in total disregard for the ideas of a new generation.  There are good ideas out there and there are bad.  We can engage in rational discourse, separating out the bad ideas from the good, refrain from pure opposition, and embrace views and policy that benefits everyone. My friends, I ask you to break free of your shackles that they have put us in, free you mind, free you choice, and don't listen to them, listen to your heart, your intuition, not their hate, not their propaganda, not that which will bind you servitude.

Lastly, we can start with refusing to treat money as a commodity in and of itself. Thomas Jefferson had this to say; “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”  Since when did the creation of an item out of nowhere, give that item an intrinsic value.  We need to look at our monetary policy with a critical eye and ask; Is this a system geared towards abuse and control or simply altruistic? In case you haven't noticed, the owners and architects of these financial institutions which set up our system to crash in 2008, have gone completely without legal notice.  How many people have they harmed and how much pain have they caused without a single summons being issued?  You can rob a bank for $100 and spend 20 years in jail and yet crash the western worlds markets and get away with record bonuses! They are protected by our so called elite who have no interest in us, beyond pushing our dollars up the pyramid. They do not care about us. They do not care about us. Their greed is insatiable. 

Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. – Theodore Roosevelt

I don't always know what to do, or what exactly to say but I do know that I can make an impassioned plea for your rationality. To unbind you and myself from fear.  I implore you don't let them decide for you. There is still hope yet. All is not lost. We can still pull out from this !IF! we pay very close attention. We need to join hearts in unison and exclaim "If we are not free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" We will throw ourselves onto the gears. We will revolt with our very existence.