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

With God on Our Side

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

The above excerpt from Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side" brings to light an interesting influence of religious belief. If you'll permit me, I am going to refer back to last weeks post, where I attempted to define "God". God, as I see it, refers to any supernatural being, typically with several human-like qualities (e.g. emotion, desire, will, etc.) This is the type of God to which I am categorically opposed. This is the God(s) of Institutionalized religion. And for some people, this is what they mean when they say that they are "spiritual". Now, as I said in my last post, there are a whole category of people who call themselves "spiritual" but whom I would call atheists. These people define "God" as the highest power known in the universe. The "highest" power in the universe, for atheists, is life.

In this way, and if you choose to use the term "God", though I do not, "God" is on OUR side. But it isn't on OUR side against other nations, people, or even creatures. Life is inclusive of all life on earth, and if you will call this "God", then the "will" of "God" is to procreate, and to avoid suffering whilst alive (in that order of importance). Suffering is in fact Nature's way of telling us that we are doing something we shouldn't do (usually). And so to be truly good citizens of our nation, planet, and even universe, we must do everything possible to not cause suffering to ourselves or other beings. Only in the pursuit of that goal, the alleviation of suffering, can we ever claim to have any sort of "God" on our side.