Secularism vs. Atheism

It has been a while since I have posted (I have been extremely busy, especially at work), but I was briefly inspired today so I thought I’d throw a random post in.  Hope you guys enjoy it.

Many Christians simply do not understand the difference between “secular” and “atheist”.  In their eyes the two are exactly the same thing.  This comes from the apparently commonly held belief (I’m not sure whether it’s so much a “belief” or just a “claim” they often make to bolster their arguments) that not talking about God somehow promotes atheism.  I can kind of see how, if you had twisted your way of thinking so that you could accept obvious bullshit as absolute truth, one might come to the conclusion that “removing God” from something was inherently atheistic.  However, to “promote” atheism one cannot simply remove any given god.  To “promote” atheism one has to speak out against the concept of gods.

This is the major difference between secularism and atheism.  To promote atheism is to teach that there are no gods.  To promote theism is to teach that there are one or more gods.  To promote secularism is to have nothing whatsoever to say on the matter.

Really, it’s all a matter of perception.  If, for instance, our schools were actively promoting atheism (I mean REALLY actively promoting atheism, not the “promoting atheism” claimed by ignorant doomsayers), then secularism would be the champion of the religious, assuming they could not simply kill all people who disagreed with them and force their beliefs on all children everywhere.  Secularism would be okay by them if it were removing “not their beliefs”.  They would have no problem with it at all.  Then Christians could easily see how secularism was different.  There would be no confusion at all.  Why?  Because the only reason there is confusion today is because they want there to be confusion.  They want to smudge the line, stretch the truth and obfuscate the facts because secularism means a change in the status quo, which favors them.  Contrary to all of their claims, Christians do not want an equal playing field.  They’ll accept an equal playing field if they have to, as they have tried to do with the “teach the controversy” bullshit.  (Unfortunately for them the only “controversy” about evolution is in their heads.)

Equality is what Christians want only when they can’t have superiority.  Even then it’s often only a pseudo-equality they are actually attempting to achieve.  To “teach the controversy” appears, on the surface (and in their claims), to give “equal” classroom time to two competing ideas, one a scientific theory, the other a fanciful fairy tale thinly disguised as a scientific theory.  If you listen to them then “teaching the controversy” would be “equal”.  After all, people who’ve done all the work of figuring things out have one idea, people who would rather let moldy old parchments which tell of unicorns and magic dictate their reality have another idea, presenting both would be “equal”.  Of course that is a false dichotomy.  There are those who believe life on this planet was seeded by aliens or meteorites.  They may or may not be concerned with the origins of that life, but it is possible that neither the theory of evolution nor the fairy tale of intelligent design fits in with their beliefs.

In the end all of their complaints are about answering the same question.  “How can we get (more of) our teaching in the classroom so that future generations of children don’t look at people with our beliefs like they were some kind of alien retards?”  That’s really what it’s all about; propagating their beliefs.  They have no interest in equality because, all things being equal, science is going to kill idiotic religious beliefs sooner or later.  And that’s the real problem they have with secularism.  It makes all things equal.

Many probably do actually believe that secularism in schools promotes atheism.  Though I don’t think all of them are too stupid to figure it out, they are all at least too stupid by choice to want to figure it out.  It will be a while before the world as a whole rejects fairy tales in favor of enlightenment and knowledge, but in America and, especially, many European countries the winds of change are blowing, sometimes in gale force.  That has to be pretty scary for many, especially those who already believe that they are so super special and that their message is so super dangerous to anyone who doesn’t agree with them that the world is out to get them.

Fortunately, courtroom judged clear up to the Supreme Court have access to dictionaries and are, generally speaking, pretty intelligent people who are fully capable of figuring out the vast difference between “secular” and “atheist”.

Been a few weeks

I haven't felt much like talking about atheism lately, but I did see a picture today which inspired me to try to be funny.  Given that a good share of atheists are liberals I thought some of you might find it amusing to.  To that end I've created a video and a YouTube channel to share my amusing vision.  It's nothing big, just a brief commentary on a picture of Romeny and Christie, but the thought amused me greatly, as I hope it does you.

On a side note, I am hoping to get back to blogging soon.  I do enjoy discussing atheism, but there has been a lot going on in my life lately.  Things are looking up and I'm finding new inspiration in the GOP just about every day, most notably with the observation that evolution denial leads to dumb ass beliefs, such as that the female body, rather than evolving to propagate life as efficiently as possible was "created" with the ability to reject pregnancy as the result of rape.  Unless, of course, she secretly wanted it.

Anyway, here's the video.
Second thoughts

Sorry I haven't been posting

I may not be posting again for a while.  I have too many things going on right now, not the least of which is the Magic the Gathering 2013 Core Set release.  I'll be back posting again sooner or later, angrier than ever, when I start getting my butt kicked in MTG.  Thanks for your patience.

Faith

Faith is a strange beast, when you think about it.  Theists often describe it as belief without evidence.  Atheists often describe it as belief despite evidence to the contrary.  But really, there’s a little bit more to it than that.  It’s really belief even though you know better.

The way it works is quite interesting, really.  There are mechanisms, built both into the human mind and the concept of faith, to help people keep irrational faiths.  You are promised incredible magic powers, something I think we’d all like to have.  Who wouldn’t want the power to magically produce food to feed the hungry, or a spell to help us out when we’re down on our luck?  That desire to want it to be true is the part built into us that helps us keep irrational faiths.

The mechanism within faith itself is really quite ingenious in its simplicity.  Faith, especially in Christianity, comes with a ton of built in excuses for why it doesn’t work.  A common one is “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord they God”.  In other words, “Yes, you have the magic power to live through drinking poison, but if you drink poison God is going to let you die because you’re being a show off about it.”  There are excuses for why you can’t prove it.

But the most insidious (and, it seems, natural) mechanisms to excuse faith when it doesn’t work is self blame.  If you have faith you can walk on water, move mountains, heal the sick…  Can’t do that?  It’s your own fault.  You don’t have enough faith.  ANY time faith fails to deliver on the promise of magic powers it’s a fault with YOU, not a fault with your BELIEF.  So there can never be a test of the belief itself, only a test of one’s own faith.

There are, of course, other built in excuses for your magic powers fizzling.  God wants something else from you.  It rains on the just and unjust alike (though God does seem willing to give the unjust AIDS or send earthquakes on their decedents).  It’s not in God’s plan.

And, of course, it works better if you’re more prone to believing in supernatural powers, which is why the religious want at your children.  They want to instill this propensity for supernatural nonsense in them at an early age so that they are more likely to keep it in the future.  The younger they are when exposed to supernatural beliefs the more difficult it is to remove these beliefs from them.  The Catholic church knows all too well that the youth are the key to the church’s future.  That’s why they baptize kids as infants.  It is a huge event in the family life, a way for the family to show off their new baby, which every parent wants to do, an experience to tell their children about when they get older with pictures to share and baubles to pass to the child to commemorate the occasion.  It seems important.

As atheists we often think of faith as something stupid people use to excuse themselves from reality, but really there’s a whole lot more to it than that.  There are so many mechanisms in place to force people to keep their faith that, once you get caught up in it, it is very difficult to get out of it.  Faith replaces reason for these people.  Many think that an honest questioning of their faith, never mind actually doubting it, is a mortal sin which will deny them their magic powers should Jesus come back right then, and he’s coming back any minute now…any minute…wait for it…  We often get frustrated at the annoying, circular things Christians say to us which just make no sense whatsoever, but when you get down to it, it’s not their fault.  They MUST believe, they MUST defend, they MUST attack as these are all parts of the faith defense mechanism which they firmly believe their very existence depends on.  Yes, it makes me angry when they do it to me, but when I think about it, it’s really kind of sad.  These people aren't really being the thick-headed idiots they seem to be.  They've just fallen into a mental trap, through no real fault of their own, which is very difficult to escape.  Everything they believe, everything they've been promised, everything they think they desire comes crashing down the moment they start to "see reason".  Often their friends go with it.  It's no wonder they often won't budge and believe whatever ridiculous things they have to in order to keep their faith.

What's an atheist?

This time I’m just going to share a little anecdote with you from earlier in the week.  And I’m going to make it relatively short.  Let me know what you think.

My wife and I were watching Bill Maher the other night and somehow the subject of intelligence and liberalism came up.  I mentioned to her that I had bookmarked an article which says that the more intelligent a person is, the more likely they are to be liberal AND atheist.  My wife had not heard this and expressed an interest in reading that article, which I promised to send her a link to when I got back to work (which I have done).

Meanwhile my 11 year old daughter was sitting in the next room eating.  It was hot so everyone just tore themselves away from their computers and game consoles to eat when they felt like it.  She overheard the conversation and asked, “What’s an atheist?”  I was a little shocked that she didn’t know.  I don’t make my feelings about religion any secret in my house.  But I realized that, though the wife and I talked about religion all the time and I always answered any questions the kids had with hard-line atheist answers, we really didn’t use the “A” word that much.  Not that it was that big of a deal.  I was just surprised that she didn’t know.

Anyway, I explained to her what an atheist was and what a liberal was (she had also asked that) and she responded, “Oh.  I’m an atheist, then.”  Daddy was proud.  This is the daughter that was being secretly brainwashed by the neighbors a couple of years ago, so it was good to hear her state a position that will not have her someday subservient to some man, doing as she’s told, or avoiding us and not taking our calls because we’re “of the devil” and might “lead her away from God”.

And there are churches out there which do try to separate people from their family members who don’t attend their church, especially atheists.  It serves three purposes.  First, it prevents them from coming into contact with someone of an opposing view and possibly being persuaded that the church is wrong.  Second, it increased their dependence on the church and church members, separating them from the outside world so that leaving the church means a terrifying loss of all of your friends.  Third, it gently persuades the family members to join the church if they ever want to have a relationship with their beloved family member again.  A disgusting and slimy tactic all around, and one employed with great success in the Jehovah’s Witness church and other such fundamentalist weirdo churches, one of which some of my family members attend.  It used to be just “the Pentecostal church”.  Now it’s some 5 mile long name with “Tabernacle” in the middle of it somewhere.  It always amuses me when religious people believe that using the strange 17^th century language from the Bible is somehow “Godly”.  It’s just the stupid way they talked back then.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  But try telling them that.

That’s it for this week.  Short and sweet, as promised.  Have a great weekend!

War on Secularism

You often hear about the war on Christianity or the war on Christmas or the war on this religious concept or that religious concept.  When you look into these claims you find that most of them are as imaginary as any deity.  So what is with all these claims of wars on various religious aspects?  It’s all part of the Christian war on secularism.  It’s an excuse.  It’s an excuse to feel persecuted, an apparent rampant addiction many Christians have.  It’s an excuse to attack what they don’t like.  Christians always seem to be on the attack for something, they always have an excuse for that attack and that excuse is almost always that they are fighting persecution.  Why do they want to force my children to participate in their religious rituals in public schools?  They are fighting the persecution of their children who are harmed by the ban on prayer in school, of course.  Never mind the fact that there is not now, nor has there ever been a ban on prayer in school.  It just can’t be a sponsored prayer.

To this type “persecution” means simply “not getting my way”.  Christians in America seem to have this sense of entitlement.  They think that anything they claim is automatically true.  For instance, intelligent design nuts want us to “present both sides of the argument and let students decide for themselves”.  It’s only fair, right?  After all, what 6^th grader is any less qualified than any given scientist with a doctorate in physics or biology and years of research in the field to decide the merits of scientific theory?  A VAST majority of scientists have rejected intelligent design as the load of crap it is, but they want to teach it to kids anyway, but they can’t because they are being persecuted by scientists who laugh at ID proponents as if they were idiots and laws which prevent them from teaching their version of reality for no reason other than it’s not based in reality.  Boo hoo.  Christians are so persecuted.

What they don’t realize is that secularism is not “anti-religious”.  It does just as much for them as it does for the non-religious and those of other religions.  They wouldn’t, after all, want the Witch’s Creed hanging above the door to their school.  These same whiners that are bitching about theology not being openly taught in our schools would pitch a fit if it were any other religion in our schools.  And this is the reason atheists like me are so angry, so sick of hearing these people flap their ignorant gums.  I call it the “whiny little bitch” syndrome.  They’re like spoiled little brats bitching and whining when they don’t get their way about how unfair everyone is being to them.  Of course they never seem to have a complaint when they are violating the hell out of other people’s rights.  If two guys get married, how does that affect a single straight person?  It doesn’t.  Yet somehow letting it happen would be a violation of the rights of people who are in no way involved in that marriage, will never meet either of these guys and are completely straight (for the most part, of course.  There are closet gays who truly believe they are secretly wicked and hate themselves for it who fight homosexuality with a spiteful passion because the thought of homosexuality simultaneously excites and disgusts them, fueling a self-loathing that, in turn, fuels virulent, spiteful hatred toward people who openly display the tendencies they secretly hate themselves for having, of course).

So, what is “secularism” anyway?  It’s nothing more than lack of religion and religious consideration in the public arena such as schools and governing.  Simply put it means that you don’t take into account religious considerations and other personal superstitions when making law or policy.  Put even more simply, you don’t force your religious beliefs and practices on others.  That’s it.  It doesn’t mean that religion has to be kept a secret.  It doesn’t mean you can’t have or even express your religion.  It doesn’t mean you can’t take personal time to pray in a public location.  It doesn’t mean anyone has to give up any aspect of their religion.  It simply means they can’t force others to participate or live by someone else’s religious rules.  What it means for the schools is that nobody can set aside time for all students so that some students can participate in religious practices.  Students wishing to engage in some archaic ritual can still find a quiet spot to pray, though with today’s zero tolerance policies I’m afraid they can no longer sacrifice their goats on school property due to restrictions on weapons in the school, but that has nothing to do with me.  But it ALSO means that the Christian students don’t have to sit quietly for 5 minutes while the Wiccan kids dance naked around a bubbling cauldron, though as sexually repressed as many Christians are I think they might actually like that.  I know when I was 15 there were a few girls in my class I wouldn’t have minded watching dance naked around a cauldron.

Secularism, in a nutshell, is nothing more than promoting equality for all beliefs by simply removing all beliefs.  In no way does secularism promote atheism, one of the absolutely dumbest and most infuriating claims some Christians make.  To them, not talking about God in the school is the same as telling students God doesn’t exist.  Crap!  I just realized I haven’t talked about how great it is that we aren’t in a worldwide nuclear war all week!  All week long I’ve been promoting nuclear war because I wasn’t talking about it!  It’s a good thing I’m not in charge!  It’s also a good thing I’m not a complete moron who is stupid enough to think that not talking about something is exactly the same as supporting the opposite thing.

Over the years we atheists have been accused of starting many wars and doing many evils when in reality the claim of the war on one thing has been nothing more than a cover for a war on another.  And what has it gotten the bitchers and whiners?  Basically, a war.  Except it’s one sided.  They’re fighting a war on secularism.  From our perspective, we’re not really fighting a war.  We’re fighting for basic rights for all people, regardless of religion, but we don’t see it as a war.  Generally, I think, atheists see it as fighting against stupidity.  This is a war Christianity has been fighting for centuries.  We’ve only just begun fighting in the last few decades.  And already we’re kicking ass.  Church attendance is down, atheism is up, people have begun reporting the vile things their preachers do and the church no longer has the power to cover it up and secularism is winning step by step.  Even over just the last 2 decades the tide has turned so much.  DOMA was passed in 1996 and now, 16 years later, it’s already starting to fall apart in the courts.  Every poll shows acceptance of gay marriage going up drastically over the last decade.  It seems America has always known that “freedom” means that you have to accept that neo-Nazis have a right to spout hate, but they’re just starting to realize that it also means gays have the right to love.  School prayer is banned, creationism is banned, intelligent design (creationism 2.0) is banned…  We’re winning a war we’re not even fighting.  In 10 years time I think this country will see drastic change for the better, and there’s not a damned thing God can to do stop it.  Don’t believe me?  Pray your heart out that he does and see where he gets you.  Compared to moving a mountain, killing a few atheists with lightning bolts from the heavens should be a snap.

Can't We All Just Get Along

I read an article recently on my favorite forum written by an apologist who THOUGHT he had a very good idea about how Christians and atheists could get along and stop all the arguing.  His solution, if you weren’t a theologian, that is to say formally trained in theology, consider yourself unqualified to speak on matters of spirituality.  And to make it “fair”, if you weren’t a scientist you were to consider yourself unqualified to speak on matters of science.  I understand the concept he was trying for.  If everyone accepted this the science deniers would have to shut up unless they were scientists.  That would certainly be a good thing.  But what else would happen?  Atheists would lose their voice completely.  How many atheists go do school for theology?  How many non-religious scientists minor in theology?  So what the writer wanted was, basically, to leave the scientific discussions to the scientists and the religious discussions to the religious.  An atheist would be required to get a degree in theology, a worthless degree for someone who plans no career in religion, to even express an opinion.  So, science would lose its nutcase detractors who have no clue what the hell they’re talking about and religion would lose everyone “not like them”.

There are, of course, some major flaws with this.  First, not every non-scientist who speaks about science is an idiot.  I like to think I know a thing or two about science.  Given a mass in any measurement I can calculate for you the energy in ergs that mass is equivalent to.  Granted, it would take me a while to convert 186,000 miles per second to the number of centimeters per second light travels to do the calculations, but I know all the steps involved and all the measurements necessary to solve E=MC^2 for a given mass.  That is not to say I have anywhere near the knowledge of an actual physicist, but then, I would never be foolish enough to argue against an actual scientist in matters of generally accepted, peer reviewed, established theory.  I can accept that any given scientist in a field knows more than me and if accepted theory doesn’t agree with me there is a very high probability I am wrong.  As a non-scientist, I already don’t debate science with scientists because I understand that no number of moldy books of superstitions makes me their equal.  Theists who argue science, however, are generally regurgitating a pile of shit that they previously devoured veraciously in an idiotic attempt to prove that the scientists are wrong.  They, also, tend not to debate science with actual scientists because when they do they look stupid, but while intelligent people debate the intricacies of science, theists tend to debate the validity of science.  This, I believe, is what the writer intended to put an end to; the general denial of science which makes theists look damned stupid.  So, the first part of what he wanted was for fellow theists to stop making his position look stupid and the theists are the ones who give something up.  This request assumes that non-scientist theologians have nothing to bring to a debate on science, which is absolutely true.

The second part of what he wanted was for non-theologians to stop debating theology.  He related theology to mathematics, starting with a set of generally accepted “truths” and working toward the “answer” from there.  For a physicist this is a pretty idiotic thing to say.  Religious “truth” is different for each religion and each individual.  Mathematic “truths” are universally true.  While not all mathematics involves a single right answer, all mathematics at least deals with probabilities of getting a right answer.  You can test whether a mathematical concept works or not.  The “test” for whether a religious concept is true or not is, “Have faith and when you die you’ll see”.  That is NOTHING like mathematics.  A new encryption algorithm can be shown to work or not work.  Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division can be shown to produce a correct answer 100% of the time.  I have never had a calculator give me a wrong answer, nor have I ever had one give me an answer that I must “accept as correct” on faith.  I know that it IS correct.  Mathematics is proven to work, theology is undisprovable.  Again, they are NOTHING alike.

So, what if non-theologians gave up debating theology?  What, exactly, is that asking for?  Nothing short of all non-“experts” in theology to not debate theology.  This would change the debate from “Does God exist?” to “In what form does God exist?”  Everyone debating religion would accept that God exists and go from there.  On the surface this may look like a fare trade.  Everyone debating science accepts that science is real, everyone debating religion accepts that God is real.  There are a couple of very big differences here.  For one, science IS real.  It has proven real world applications.  No intelligent, sane person can deny that scientific truths have had a major impact on life, even in just the last century, or even the last decade.  Science has proven that it has something to offer in the real world, here and now.  What about theology?  What does it offer and when?  A promise of immortality, AFTER you die.  It is not proven and it offers nothing here and now.  So what the theistic scientist is trying to do is the same thing I have seen a thousand theists before him try.  He is trying to put theology on the same level as science.  He is using what, on the surface, seems like a fair exchange to boost theology from the level of petty superstition to level of scientific reality.  He is trying to assert that, just like understanding science takes formal training in the sciences, understanding theology takes formal training in theology.  This is utter hogwash.  Where did those teaching science get their credentials?  From centuries of experimentation and proven science which came before them, ever evolving as new discoveries are made, each one being proved before it is accepted.  And where did those teaching theology get their credentials?  From centuries of oral tradition, a book which has not changed much for nearly 2,000 years and their own, personal ideas and desires of what religion is and should be.  Science teachers teach science as it is generally accepted based on the currently available data and peer reviewed and accepted theories.  Theology teachers teach theology based on conjecture.  The qualifications between the two fields are more than a little unbalanced.

The article was really nothing more than an elaborate attempt to place theology on par with science; to claim that, just like science, to debate theology required that one be formally trained.  The idea is laughable.  I can read scientific documents, but they are pretty difficult to understand, especially when they start breaking out the math.  But the documents follow standards which I can then look up and, given enough time, I could understand the documents the way they were meant to be understood.  It would not be easy and it would take a lot of time.  Formal training would certainly be a better option.  On the other hand, I can read the Bible and understand it as-is.  If someone tells me it means something other than what I am reading, they are full of shit.  There is no code, there was no standard set when writing the words which must be followed to understand them and, before the last couple of decades when the Internet became prominent, the only thing I needed to understand what it meant was a knowledge of the rest of the book.  Today, of course, there are those who like to bring up the original language (“original” in this case meaning “the earliest known translation from the ‘original’ language”), but very few of those type have any kind of training in ancient languages.  Hell, the entire group of people who re-translated the texts for the Jehovah’s Witness version of the Bible didn’t have a single degree between them in ancient languages.  And there are those who like to introduce other historical documents and history to “nudge” the meaning toward something more to their liking.  But that, alone, shows that it can’t be the inspired word of a deity.  Jesus was obviously more interested in the poor than the rich.  So was God.  So why would he deliver his word in a code that only the well educated could understand, especially given that the education required to understand it would have very limited usefulness outside of understanding the Bible?  Only people who could afford both the money and time to invest in otherwise useless degrees, i.e., only those who were decidedly NOT poor, could have any hope of truly understanding his word for themselves.  Either that concept is stupid or God is, because such a sloppy delivery of such an important word seems pretty damned stupid, as is the idea that a God who loved the poor so much would require you to get a college degree to understand what he was telling you.