How Life could Develop

This book provides some REALLY interesting insights into a possible process through which complex protein chains and DNA-like life could have developed in the simple environment of early Earth, seemingly by random chance.

A Disturbing Story

My little sister is seven and in first grade (Yes there is a large age gap). The other evening I had a very disturbing conversation with her.

I forget exactly what she was saying, but I overheard her talking about hell, and even though she is seven and innocent and all that, I couldn't help but say to her "Shannon, there is no such thing as hell."

I didn't think this simple comment would create such a problem. I hadn't said anything about God, Heaven, Angels, fairies, Santa Claus, or any of that. I didn't that anything healthy could come out of the concept of a place where one might go to burn for eternity.

My little sister started crying when I told her that.

This goes back to the post I made a few weeks ago about how all children are atheists until they are converted or indoctrinated. Patrick pointed out an obvious flaw in my theory which is that Children, with their vivid imaginations and lack of real-world experience, are more predisposed to soak up any belief systems presented to them. Even I fell victim to this as a child.

But perhaps a bit of background information is necessary at this point. Though technically both Catholic, my parents are pretty atheistic, or at least apatheistic*. I was baptized only at the request of my Catholic grandmother. I was taken to church only on SOME Holidays -- every third Christmas or so. In our household, The Bible did have a place on the bookshelf, but it shared that space with the Bhagavad Gita, The Diamond Sutra (one of many Buddhist teachings), and a dozen or so books about Yoga (my parents were both Yoga teachers at the time).

The point is, in my parent's household, Yahweh is about as holy as Shiva, which is to say, not very.

And yet somehow my little sister has conceived this notion of Hell, and she was convinced that for not believing in it's existence, I would end up there. She stopped crying a little bit to explain this to me.

"If you don't believe, you will just see when you get there." she said.

Disturbing indeed.

I should further point out that my sister lives in Western Massachusetts and goes to a private, secular school. Evangelical Christianity, where hell is most stressed, must be almost non-existent amongst my sister's social networks, and even plain-vanilla Christianity is an uncommon site in the community. At her school, Bible stories are taught. But the stories that are taught have nothing to do with hell or any of the nastier aspects of Institutionalized religion, and they are taught right alongside Norse mythology.

Something is seriously gone wrong if even in such a theoretically secular community, a seven year old is condemning her older brother to hell.

Fortunately, her "faith" in this idea was not deeply held, and over the course of several days I was able to convince her that I was not, in fact, going to burn for an eternity in hell. She even said a few things which surprised me, without my prompting.

"Some people say, 'I've never seen God', and I tell them that they are silly. 'Look in front of you,' I say, 'God is not a person. God is everything. God is the world.'"

This was quite impressive for a seven year old, even my exceptionally intelligent sister (though I may be a bit biased on that count). My guess is that she picked this up from a religious moderate, most likely my Grandmother. These religious moderates are people who are brought up with a particular faith that is so ingrained in their psyche that even when faced with overwhelming evidence, they cannot bear to give it up, and so they "reshape" the faith to fit a more naturalistic world view. They fall under the category of "spiritual theists" as far as I am concerned, and in my previous posts you can read more about this.

But regardless, my little sister is now of the opinion that there is something Divine about the Universe itself, which is a belief that I am not all-too concerned about.

I know that I myself had more steadfast Christian beliefs even at the age of 11-12, and so I have hope for this next generation. I just wish people would stop talking about Hell to other people's children. Whether or not you agree with me that the religious indoctrination of children should be considered child abuse, surely attempts to convert OTHER people's susceptible and innocent children is no more noble than cigarette companies trying to get kids hooked on tobacco.

*Aptatheism is the idea that God's existence is a purely academic concern and of no serious concern. Apatheists are atheists in practice.

American Atheist Interview with Douglas Adams

This is an inspiring interview with one of my childhood heroes and favorite authors of all times, Douglas Adams. He is arguably one of the best writers of our time, if not of all time, and thus he puts forth several of the same arguments that I have put forth here, only much more eloquently.

A Great Way to Read The Bible

This web comic about the bible is a great way to read snippets from the bible every day, and laugh at the absurdities.

Married to the Sea

I thought my readers would really enjoy this comic.

A Challenge to the Theists

This week's post is not for the antitheists, or even for the atheists. This week I shall instead be addressing the theists. I put forth a challenge to all of you who believe in the holiness of any God, as defined in my earlier posts.

All atheists, even though we are part of no congregation, no community, and even though we follow no single teacher or even multiple teachers, share a common "belief" (I put this in quotes because I do not count atheistic belief as actual an actual "belief system"). We "believe" in what we can see, in reason, in logic, and in what there is reasonable evidence to believe without any "leaps of faith".

Obviously, theists share a similar but opposite belief system -- belief in that which requires a leap of faith.

The two systems seem to be symmetrically opposed, but a closer inspection reveals vast differences hidden just beneath the surface.

Once you take a leap of faith in your beliefs, you have stepped away from that which we can all agree upon as human beings. Your beliefs are diverse. You have different Gods with different desires. Many "agnostics" take to the reasoning of Pascal's Wager. Basically, Pascal says, if atheists are wrong, when they die, they will suffer for eternity. If Christians are wrong, when they die, they'll have wasted a little bit of time praying. Obviously, the risks of one far outweigh the risks of the other, and so why not Believe? The complete and utter lack of integrity that this demonstrates non-withstanding, the dilemma comes when you must choose a God. There are hundreds of religions out there which claim to have the keys to heaven, and to have the exclusive path to salvation.

Atheists on the other hand, believe in only that for which there is a community consensus. We all see trees, so trees must exist. If somebody hears voices in their head, that person is not hearing the voice of "God" or "Angels" -- they are crazy. That is the state of the world -- the universe. People do not need to be convinced that trees exist, but they do need to be "convinced" of and converted to the ideas Christianity or any other religion. Thus, religions are stuck with the endless task of trying to convert everybody to their religion, battling against other religions. Meanwhile, Atheism has no need to "spread" or be "evangelized", except only so far as to immunize people against the ridiculous claims of organized religion.

And so I challenge all theists: Come up with a unified system of belief. If you can all come together and form a consensus about what "God" is, and what that "God" figure wants... well... I can't say I'll believe you, but I will be very impressed.

Only atheism offers humanity a chance at unity.

Everybody's an Atheist

Just a quick note for this week.

Everybody is born an atheist. Anybody who isn't probably falls under the category of "clinically insane" and may find that their calling in life is to start a religion. But other than that, we're all born as godless unbelievers.

That is our hope for the downfall of organized religion. Convincing true believers that their "God" is an immaginary friend is time consuming and generally futile. But children are born with the right idea. All we have to do is prevent the god-botherers from getting to them.

Cheers,

Josh