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.

The Flawed Argument Against Secularism

You have all heard the hype.  Every year the Fox News Channel (it pains me to even write that oxymoron of a title to describe a television a station full of slimy political manipulators in journalist clothing) celebrates their imaginary “War on Christmas” where they tell you what atheists think and why they’re wrong, even though no atheists I know think anything like that.  And you’ve all heard of the “War on Christianity” which we are all apparently engaged in, each and every atheist plotting the next way we are going to destroy Christianity.

Now, to be fair, some atheists do like the idea of ridding the world of religion altogether.  I, myself, don’t think it would be a bad thing any more than I think it would be a bad thing to rid the world of charlatan psychics, faith healers, holistic medicine and other such voodoo tripe with no purpose other than to separate the gullible from their money, sometimes at the cost of human lives and health.  But I would like to get rid of religion through education.  I have no desire to persuade people to give up their petty superstitions through legislation and brute force, nor does any other atheist I know.  Even Richard Dawkins, who is very against religion, would never condone a literal “war on religion” where we force people to give up the various baubles, trinkets and silly beliefs that make them feel good about themselves.  No atheist I have ever talked to or heard about would condone such a travesty of justice, a sacrifice if liberty to get rid of religion.

So what is this war everyone is talking about?  The movement goes by the name, “Secularism”.  A strict definition of secularism from Webster is, “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations”.  It seems most Christians take that as meaning “to do away with religion” or “to shun those who are religious”.  That is total hogwash.  As usually Christians have redefined what we are saying to make us out to be attacking them.  You see, Christians seem to have this primal need to feel persecuted, whether they are truly being persecuted or not.  More often than not the thing that makes them feel persecuted is being told they can’t persecute someone else.  That is exactly the case here.

Religion is a very personal thing between an individual and whatever deity or deities they believe in.  Religion belongs in a church.  That is not to say that I think religious people should not be able to speak about their religion outside of their church or their home, and that is not what secularism is about, another false claim religious people fighting secularism tend to make.  In fact, the false claims about secularism are so numerous that some of them are outright moronic.  One Catholic cardinal, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, recently went on a tirade about the evils of secularism.  He felt the need to point out that “Indeed, in the last century, most violence was perpetrated by secular states on their own people.”  I noticed he didn’t say much about the centuries between the foundation of the Catholic Church and the last century.  Nor did he mention the rampant anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church which ended only in the middle of the last century.  Nor did he mention the ongoing persecution of homosexuals, nor the Catholic view that women are somehow less than men, nor the massive cover up of sexual abuse within the Catholic church where the church repeatedly chose to protect a few priests rather than the hundreds of children they abused.  No, we are supposed to believe that a lack of beliefs causes violence because secularist China has a terrible human rights history.  And we are supposed to just ignore 8 year old girls being legally raped by their husbands in Yemen, the fact that Sunni leaders in Iraq started getting arrested by rival Shiite members a single day after the United States withdrew, Saudi women being beheaded for witchcraft or adultery or an Iranian women being stoned to death for adultery, all under Sharia (religious) law.  We are also supposed to ignore the various genocides in Africa over the last few decades, in Rwanda, which is predominantly Christian, Darfur, which is predominantly Muslim and, of course, Joseph Kony, the self proclaimed “spokesperson of God”.  The fact of the matter is that there have been more atrocities committed within the last 50 years by religious countries than over the past century by secularist countries, and let’s not forget the fact that while the Rwandan genocide was not perpetrated by any church, the Roman Catholic church was faulted for failing to condemn the genocide.  Apparently those in the Roman Catholic church can only see violence in secular countries.

Clearly Cardinal Dipshit didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but let’s put a few nails in that coffin, just to be sure.  What countries in the world have the most people who claim no belief in any gods or spirit forces?  Surely they’ll be the worst of the worst.  According to Wikipedia, topping the list is France at 33%.  I stand corrected.  There’s a group of warlords for you.  You drop a bomb on France they’ll pick up the pieces, glue it back together and send it back to you with a note apologizing for breaking your bomb.  Next on the list is the Czech Republic at 30%.  A 2011 census puts 79.4% of the population at being agnostic, atheist or irreligious.  Boy, we’re really getting into some human rights nightmares there.    Next we have the Netherlands and Belgium tied at 27%.  Another rough bunch, clearly.  Estonia is next at 26%.  We’ve all heard of the atrocities in Estonia, right?  Me neither.

Clearly Cardinal Dumbass is confusing “secular” with “communist”, as many Christians like to do.  Or they throw Hitler in as an atheist.  Forget the fact that he was raised Roman Catholic, died Roman Catholic (he never denounced his membership in the church and was never excommunicated and, thus, WAS a member of the Roman Catholic Church at the time of his death), was backed by several high members of the Catholic Church (Cardinals Faulhaber and Bertram congratulated him on surviving an assassination attempt), had communications with the Pope personally and never once declared himself to be an atheist.  In truth, this is a little nugget Christians like to pull out of their asses to support the unfounded belief that secularism leads to evil.  There has never been any evidence to support this belief, so instead they say misleading things like, “Indeed, in the last century, most violence was perpetrated by secular states on their own people.”  The truth is the most secular countries in the world are some of the most peaceful.

So, what is this secularism that everyone keeps talking about which leads to such great evil?  It is nothing more than taking one person’s religion out of everyone’s government.  It is the opposite of Sharia Law.  It is, quite simply, the rejection of religious doctrine in public policy.  You can’t teach my children that the world is 6,000 years old because that’s stupid.  You can’t make laws that say marriage is between one man and one woman because it’s none of your damned business what two or more adult human beings do.  It is the fight for justice “for all”, not just “for those who think like me”.  And what to anti-secularists have to argue against secularism with?  Lies, deceit, falsehood and dishonesty.  Arguments like, “If you let two men marry what’s to say a man can’t marry a horse?”  How about the fact that nobody is arguing for a man marrying a horse?  How about the “two consenting adults” part of what gays want?  How about you stop being so damned obtuse and just come out and say, “My religious views dictate that I dislike this.”

The really sad thing is that I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a Christian give an honest argument without any form of deceit.  The Christian population should be ashamed of themselves for the silver tongued serpents they have all become.  There is not an honest argument out there for why gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry.  “It will harm traditional marriage!”  Will I have to divorce my wife and marry a man, tow goats and a little boy if gays get the right to marry?  No.  Does ANYONE even WANT that?  No.  “It will harm traditional family values!”  Is there ANY evidence to support that?  No.  Children raised in the homes of same sex couples are just as stable as any other children.  And what the hell are “family values” anyway?  The divorce rate is right around 50%.  How does that fit into the “traditional family”?  And what if I don’t want to follow someone else’s “tradition”?  Why is that anyone’s business?  THIS is EXACTLY what secularism is fighting.  It is fighting the persecution of those not of the prominent religious view, the same reason people came to the American Colonies in the first place.