Godless and Black

Top Fifteen Logical Fallacies of Religious Apologists

2012-01-07T15:44:00.000-08:00

I have been debating with religious apologists for as long as I have been an atheist, some 23 to 24 years. Over that time, I have come to recognize certain common fallacies in their arguments. What follows is a list of the most common logical fallacies committed by religious apologists:

1. Psychogenetic Fallacy. This logical fallacy states that if someone has psychological motivations for putting forth an argument, then he's biased, so his argument must be wrong. For instance: "He was molested by a priest. That's why he thinks there's no God." Psychological motivations give you information about the proponent of the argument, but they tell you nothing about the truth of his proposition. I can hate Christianity because it condoned slavery and because most racist organizations in America are Christian organizations. That does not subtract at all from my legitimate, logical arguments against the plausibility of an all-knowing, all-powerful, omni-benevolent creator.

2. Ad Ignorantiam is an argument from ignorance. The fallacy that a proposition is true simply because it has not been proven false. I'm sure you've all heard theists try to counter the argument that they have no proof in God's existence with "Well, you can't prove he doesn't exist!" This is silly of course because it is nearly impossible to prove a negative. I can't prove that fairies, elves, Leprechauns, vampires, and werewolves don't exist either, but I think we'd all agree that you'd have to be an idiot to believe in any of them because of the improbability of such beliefs.

3. The Teological Argument or Argument from Final Consequences is based on a reversal of cause and effect, because they argue that something is caused by the effect it has, or purpose that is serves. For example: "God must exist, because otherwise life would have no meaning." or "God must exist or else there could be no absolute moral laws." This only demonstrates that the conclusions are distasteful to you, not that they are false. Life may not have an objective absolute meaning or morality outside of that which we ascribe to it. This is not only possible, but plausible. Life's only meaning may be to exist and then cease to exist so that something else may exist. This may be a depressing, unpalatable answer, but it might also be true.

4. Least Plausible Hypothesis. This is a fallacy in which the most reasonable explanations are ignored in favor of a less plausible one. "I was praying for God to help me get this job and that night, the phone rang with a job offer." Obviously, this ignores the more plausible possibility that the prayee was the most qualified applicant.

There is an old rule for deciding which explanation is the most plausible by favoring the one that relies on the least number of unfounded assumptions; the simplest explanation. In essence, it is the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It is most often called "Occam's Razor". To put it another way, just because you smell smoke doesn't mean there are dragons about. This is one of the reasons that I reject the absurd "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" argument. Obviously, liar or lunatic conform much better to the principle of Occam's Razor than "son of an omnipotent, omniscient, creator god, sent to earth to suffer and die for man's sins."

5. Argument from Incredulity or Argument from Astonishment. This is another form of The Argument From Ignorance. It is an intellectually pessimistic argument that says that if I don't know something, then no one else knows, and no one ever will. It confuses "currently unexplained" with "unexplainable". Because we do not currently have an adequate explanation for a phenomenon does not mean that it is forever unexplainable, or that it therefore defies the laws of nature or requires a paranormal explanation. An example of this is the "God of the Gaps" argument of creationists which seeks to label anything we cannot currently explain as "unexplainable" and therefore an act of god. William Lane Craig commits this particular fallacy when he argues for Intelligent Design by stating that the hyper-dense singularity that exploded to create all matter in the universe (The Big Bang) must have exploded for a reason and, since science has yet to come up with a definitive explanation for what caused The Big Bang, it must have been God. Obviously, by that reasoning, we could say: "Since we don't know what caused The Big Bang, it must have been giant cosmic chipmunks or gremlins or leprechauns." Again, this is just idiotic reasoning.

The other issue with the "God of The Gaps" is that as the gaps in our understanding slowly close, God must necessarily become smaller and ultimately disappear. One example of this is the attempt to refute the Theory of Evolution by pointing out the gaps in the fossil record. As those gaps are filled, (and they are being filled consistently year after year) an already weak argument weakens further.

6. False Dichotomy. Arbitrarily reducing a set of many possibilities to only two in order to make the conclusion appear obvious when it is actually far more complex. For example: "Jesus was not a liar, therefore he must have been God." assumes these are the only two possibilities when obviously there are many other possibilities like Jesus being confused, mistaken, or even deliberately manipulated by those around him. The famous "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord" argument is a false trichotomy for the same reasons.

7. Non-Sequitur. In Latin this term translates to "doesn't follow". This refers to an argument in which the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. In other words, a logical connection is implied where none exists i.e. "There is so much beauty in nature. There must be a God."

8. Reductio ad absurdum. In formal logic, the reductio ad absurdum can actually lead to factual conclusions. It follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true it necessarily leads to a ridiculous conclusion therefore one or more premises must be false. The fallacious form of this argument refers to the abuse of it by stretching the logic in order to force an absurd conclusion. Christian Apologists often commit this fallacy by arguing that if I don't believe in anything I haven't seen then I must not believe in Antarctica or The North Pole because I haven't seen either place with my own eyes. This is a false reductio ad absurdum because it ignores other ways that humans acquire knowledge besides personal experience, i.e. the documented and confirmed experiences of others, photographic evidence, and other forms of empirical evidence. I haven't seen Antarctica, but I have seen polar bears and penguins. In short, doubting the existence of God does not lead to the conclusion that one must also reject the existence of The North Pole or Antarctica.

9. Slippery slope fallacy. This logical fallacy is the argument that a position is not consistent or tenable because accepting the position means that the extreme of the position (however ridiculous) must also be accepted, which would inevitably lead to harmful consequences. "If we let two men marry what's to stop a guy from marrying a horse if he wanted to?" Any reasonable adult, outside of the Christian Right, can see the obvious absurdity in this reasoning.

10. Straw Man. Arguing against a position, which you create specifically to be easy to argue against, rather than the position actually held by those who oppose your point of view. My aunt once forwarded an email about an atheist arguing with a Christian that he didn't believe in Jesus because why would Jesus lower himself by consorting with humans and becoming human. It employed some clever metaphor. I believe it was a man trying to get chickens to follow him into a chicken coop by acting like a chicken. All the Christian who read it applauded the witty way in which the protagonist of the tale countered the atheists argument, but it was a ridiculous argument to begin with and no atheist I know would make an argument like that. There are dozens of strong reasons for not believing in the Christian deity and I have never heard an atheist say he didn't believe because God lowered himself to man's level when he became human. It was one of the sillier Straw Man arguments I'd heard.

11. Tautology. A tautology is an argument that utilizes circular reasoning. The conclusion is evidence of its self. As one blogger put it:
"God is Good because the bible says that God is good and the bible was written by God who would not lie because he is good."

12. Argumentum ad populum. This is a fallacy that assumes that if a majority of people hold a certain belief, that belief must be true. It attempts to turn truth into a popularity contest where the conclusion with the most people believing it to be true is therefore true. Obviously, truth is not decided by majority vote. "People all over the world, in many different cultures believe in the existence of God. They can't all be wrong!" Well, of course they can all be wrong. There was a time not long ago when the majority of people believed that demons caused illnesses and the world was flat.

13. Unfalsifiable Hypothesis/ Special Pleading. An unfalsifiable hypothesis is exactly what it sounds like, a theory that cannot be disproven. Ask a theist how they would know if God did not love them, what evidence they would need to prove that God in fact hated them and they could give you no answer because their belief that God loves them is not based on evidence therefore no amount of evidence can refute it. By this reasoning, if they were to become poor, crippled by illness, victimized by criminals, and see their loved ones tortured and murdered before their own eyes, they would still believe that God loved them because their belief in God's love is not based on empirical facts.

14. Argument By Selective Observation. The Argument By Selective Observation "cherry picking" as it is more popularly known, is the enumeration of favorable circumstances while ignoring the unfavorable. "Jesus was the God of Peace! He told Everyone to love thy neighbor as thy self." He also condoned slavery and condemned anyone who did not believe in him to death. But let's ignore that.

15. Ad hominem. An ad hominem attack is an attempt to refute an argument by attacking the argument's proponents, rather than addressing the argument itself. Theists often commit this fallacy, avoiding the arguments of freethinker by accusing them of being "Angry at God" or of "Just wanting to live immoral lives and sin without consequences". Atheists, on the other hand, have also been known to commit this particular fallacy, for example, by calling people who believe in Christ crazy or stupid. I know, I've been known to call believers idiots as well, but I counter their arguments first and don't use "Theists are idiots" as the counter argument.

So there they are, my top fifteen. The next time you argue with a theist, see how many of these fallacies you catch them using. If they're an apologist worth their salt they'll hit every one.

The National Atheist Party African American Committee

2011-12-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

The National Atheist Party is recruiting African Americans to join their Diversity Council.

The African American Committee is the main resource of the Diversity Council for African American information, interpretation, and opinion needed to define Party policy. The African American Diversity Council Committee is a resource of Party membership, providing reports current African American knowledge, ensuring worldviews are respected.

Position Duties
The African American Committee strives to keep the National Atheist Party informed and educated on issues of concern to the African American community both domestic and abroad in both current and past times. Provides the Diversity Committee with information, interpretation, and opinion needed to define Party policy. Reviews language of policies to insure accuracy of terms and respect specifically to the African American Community. Provides information to the membership pertinent to African American issues.

Position Requirements
Each member will be required to -
• Identify with the worldview of the group you are applying to.
• Have experience and knowledge of issues within diversity council group.
• Be passionate and ready to work hard!

Required Proficiencies
No required proficiencies.

If you have the qualifications and the desire to serve in these positions, please express your interest, and we will contact you with more specific details about the responsibilities of the position. You may contact Anthony.Graham@usanap.org, Chair of the Diversity Council, for further information. http://www.usanap.org/available-positions/african-american-committee-member.html/

The Black Church (Part II)

2011-12-11T11:41:00.000-08:00

"Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into commodities.”
—Karl Marx

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”
-Jesus Christ

"Well, you need to hear about money, because you ain't gonna have no love and joy and peace until you get some money!"
-Creflo Dollar, "Praise the Lord". Dated: 20th July 1999

I have mentioned in an earlier post, all the economic scandals that have plagued black mega-churches. The image of the cool, smooth-talking con-man fleecing the gullible of their hard-earned and scarce dollars is not a new one. It is a cultural icon of sorts, a common fixture in the black community, tolerated and accepted. Even the most faithful members of the church are aware that it is often full of such conmen. An objective perusal of the many religious channels on cable would be enough to turn any reasonable man's stomach. Televangelists and mega-churches are temples of excess. They are the gilded symbols of human gullibility and greed.

My grandmother was talking to me yesterday about Creflo Dollar and she said that she listens to him every day but "He's too expensive for me. I won't send him any money." Then went on to complain about his ceaseless calls for tithing. I had to wonder why she would continue to listen to such an obvious charlatan. Why anyone does.

“Money is God in action.”
—Reverend Ike

Since the days of Reverend Ike and Father Divine, the church has been one of the major parasites sucking the economic life out of the black community. I cannot blame the church leaders alone for this. They strike a bargain with their congregations that the faithful willingly agree to, the congregation's money in exchange for the illusions the church leaders feed them, the entertainment, hope (even if it's false hope), love (even if only the illusion of love),and that sense of community I mentioned in previous posts. People pay the church because it makes them feel good to do so. And hey, this is what Capitalism is all about right? The right to make profit by supplying a demand. That being the case, why grant them non-profit status? Why make them tax exempt? You cannot show me a picture of Benny Hin or Creflo Dollar parading around in $4,000 suits and driving around in $100,000 cars, living in million dollar mansions, and tell me they are the heads of non-profit organizations. They run multi-million dollar corporations and should be taxed as such. Pastors and ministers are peddlers of a product every bit as profitable and addictive as alcohol and cigarettes and it should be taxed the same way. It should also be kept away from children.

The church supplies believers with something to believe in and that sense of belonging. I understand it. I just feel bad for the children who are forced to attend and so become church junkies just like their parents. If they were dragging children to the bar or the dopeman and forcing a life long addiction upon then that would stunt their emotional and intellectual growth and drain their incomes then there would be general outrage. We do exactly that with religion yet where is the outrage? My own family members were willing victims to these charlatans and conmen yet I was lucky enough to resist indoctrination. It's only when these conmen inevitably take more than the hundreds of millions the faithful dump into their collection plates that the faithful get up in arms. And, sadly, I'm not talking about pastor's using tithings to buy million dollar mansions and jets, four thousand dollar suits, and hundred thousand dollar cars and jewelry. The black religious community tends to accept and excuse that for some idiotic reason. It takes a sex scandal to get them up in arms. It's only when the pastor starts stealing their wives or fucking their kids that there's a genuine scandal.

Which brings us to Bishop Eddie Long and this whole nonsense about his homosexuality. I Googled "Black Church" for this article and had to read through seventeen pages of stories about Eddie Long's sex scandal. I never made it past all of that to get to any more substantive stories. Yes, Eddie Long is a hypocrite. So are hundreds of child raping priests in the Catholic church. But is what Eddie Long did by harassing that young man worse than what idiots like Creflo Dollar do every Sunday, harassing their congregation for money? Here's a little excerpt from one of his sermons:

"I mean I've thought about for the Dome, fix up some bars and give everybody a little card, they stick it in a computer slot and if they were tithing the music would go off and {sings} Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Well Dome. But, if they were not tithing the bar would lock up and the red light would start going and the siren would go off and a voice would go "I'm tired now. Crook, crook , crook, crook! and security would go and apprehend them. Once we'd got them altogether we could line them up in the front and pass out automatics {?} to the ushers {?} and at the count of three Jesus's we'd shoot them all dead. And then we'd take them out the side door there ... aren't you glad we are under the blood of Jesus. If we were not under the blood of Jesus I would certainly try it. ... If you take time to tithe then tithe correctly, it’s impossible to go to Hell. Cause if you’re doing all of that, man, tithing will keep you in Heaven. It will keep you in the presence of God. ... The tithe is your covenant..."
-Creflo Dollar

My mother listens to this moron. My Grandmother listens to him. Is there any wonder why I say that I am embarrassed by the idea of a Black Christian? Is there any wonder why I think religion is one of the greatest yokes on the backs of the Black man and woman in America? Alcohol, Drugs, crime, obesity, illiteracy, religion. Those are the six major plagues on our culture. In any ghetto in America, you will find this poisonous combination: churches, liquor stores, drug dealers, fast food joints, and not a bookstore in sight. It is sad, because it illustrates the point that the least educated and least fortunate are the ones most afflicted by the insidious disease that is religious faith. The black middle class (what is left of it) illustrates the sad fact that even those who have emerged from these upbringings find it almost impossible to free themselves of these fetters. As long as we continue putting our hard earned dollars into the bloated coffers of conmen and charlatans like Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and their ilk, we will remain mentally enslaved, easily controlled and pacified, always behind.

Just thought this was pretty cool...

2011-12-11T07:15:00.001-08:00

http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2011/12/01/50-top-atheists-in-the-world-today/

The Mediocre Book

2011-11-29T19:28:00.000-08:00

When I think of all the good a book written by a supreme, infinite intelligence might have done for this world, all the centuries of senseless suffering, hatred, and ignorance such a book might have averted, I get really pissed off at the bible. How can anyone pass off this weak collection of fables as such a book? This book filled with no greater wisdom than was common among the people of the age, filled with all the prejudice, racism, misogyny, zenophobia and ignorance of early man.

The bible contains no admonitions against racism, sexism, drug abuse, torture, child abuse, pedophilia, spousal abuse, or the abuse of animals. It contains no cures for any diseases, no scientific breakthroughs, no revolutionary political ideas, nothing. In terms of philosophical content, it is less than what one might expect from a first-year philosophy student. The vaunted "Ten Commandments" are a prime example of the weakness of the bible as either a source of knowledge or morality.

In Christian Mythology, The Ten Commandments are the ten moral laws given to Moses directly from God. They are commonly understood to be:

1.)"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments."

2.)"You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name."

3.)"Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day."

4.)"Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you."

5.)"Thou shall not murder."

6.)"Neither shall you commit adultery."

7.)"Neither shall you steal."

8.)"Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor."

9.)"Neither shall you covet your neighbor's wife."

10.)"Neither shall you desire your neighbor's house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

Let's assume that they are not in order of importance. Let's hope anyway. I'd hate to think people really believed that saying "God-damnit!" is worse than committing murder. The first three are pretty much throw-aways. Most Christians don't even put the same level of importance on keeping the Sabbath holy and not saying the Lord's name in vain as they used to. Most certainly wouldn't stone a man to death for working on Sunday as Moses did in Numbers 15 of the Old Testament. These first three commandments seem to be little more than example's of the jealousy and insecurity typical of the vain, capricious, and emotionally infantile Old Testament Deity. Three testaments out of ten wasted on god's own ego (What a douchebag!) and the remaining commandments still leave much to be desired.

Almost every religion and culture on earth at the time these rules were authored already had laws forbidding, theft, murder, purgery, and slander. There were few cultures that considered disobeying or disrespecting your parents and lusting after your neighbor's wife or possesions a virtue. I can just imagine The Supreme Being with his infinite intellect finally appearing to the world and his sheep looking up to him and asking, "How should we live? What is good and what is evil?" and him answering: "Ummm... well... you shouldn't kill each other. That would definitely be wrong. Oh! And don't steal from each other or fuck each other's wives either. That's not cool."

"Yeah. Thanks, God. We sort of figured that much out already."

I don't know, I would have just expected something a bit more profound from an all-knowing being. For that reason, and in keeping with the idea that the morality of society is constantly evolving towards an ideal in which every individual's success and prosperity is maximized, I have decided to write my own set of commandments for the modern age.

1.) Love and Honor yourself. Do nothing which would pointlessly endanger your mental, physical, or emotional health, or otherwise negatively impact your quality of life unless it is for the larger goal of bettering or preserving the overall quality of life for all humanity or a neccessary risk toward the goal of improving or preserving your own quality of life.

2.) Love and Honor your fellow man. Do nothing which would needlessly cause harm or otherwise inhibit or negatively impact the quality of life of your fellow human beings, unless it is in retailation for or to prevent them doing harm to you or another human being. Yet, always act towards the betterment of humanity.

3.) Cherish, protect, and provide for your family.

4.) Fulfill your potential. Strive always towards the highest possible state of mental, physical, and emotional perfection, whatever that is for you, and strive to help others fulfill their own highest potential as well. Do not willing indulge or abide anything which inhibits your potential.

5.) Live always as if your every action were to become the moral standard for all of humanity and the example you would have all others follow.

6.) Never stop learning, questioning, and examining. Reason is humanity's greatest gift and to inhibit reason or subjugate it to illusion and untested untestable belief is the highest sin. Know as much about yourself and this world and universe as is possible and share what you have learned with as many as possible.

7.) Love and accept the diversity of humanity. Tolerate and cherish differences in races, sex, sexual prefferences, and opinions and never discriminate, prejudge, or oppress on the basis of these differences.

8.) Teach your children with an eye towards the future and encourage them to grow beyond you. Do not indoctrinate them to a rigid belief system but allow them to disagree with your ideas and teach them how to reason and evaluate evidence and think for themselves. Humanity is like fruit and when it ceases to grow it begins to rot.

9.) Value the future of humanity beyond your own lifetime.

10.) Be happy. Life is brief.

It is interesting to note that as basic as these few commandments are and as much as most of modern society would now agree with them, most religions, including Christianity, would consider these sinful. The idea that we were to treat even those who were not members of our same religious groups with love and tolerance or that we were not to oppress members of different races, nationalities, genders, or sexual orientations alone would be unthinkable to the Abrahamic religions like Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. And allowing a child to think for themselves and form their own opinions about religion and philosophy would be heresy.

Many political groups would take issue with these ideas as well. Consider that as the elections draw near. You may call yourself a "Fiscal Conservative" but how much social conservativism and religious based bullshit are you willing to swallow for a few tax cuts? And do you really think the idiots who run their lives via this collection of mediocre fables have the intellectual prowess to balance a budget? History has shown otherwise. I fear for this country as it grows increasingly fundamentalist. This barbarous book of bullshit is one of the most dangerous tomes ever written and any mention of it as the basis of a candidate's ethical ideology should immediately disqualify them from serious consideration in the minds of any self-respecting atheist.

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal

The Big White Rabbit Revisited

2011-11-11T22:12:00.000-08:00

We are a year away from electing a new president and right now it seems likely that the front runner for the most powerful leader in the world is a guy in magic underwear. There are many circles in which I would be lambasted for a statement like that. Criticizing or ridiculing a political candidate's religion is considered as distasteful as ridiculing or criticizing his race. This is ridiculous of course. You choose your religion. You don't choose your race, sex, or sexual preference. Those type of prejudices should be frowned upon and those classes protected. Idiotic beliefs and ideologies should not. Ridiculing religion should be considered a virtue. Let's look at it this way...

Imagine that there was a presidential candidate who claimed to see, speak to, and derive his moral beliefs from a big, white, talking, rabbit that grants wishes. Would you vote for them? Would you feel that this would be a good enough reason not to? Imagine what you would think if a candidate for the most powerful position on the planet were to begin his speech, "I would like to first thank the big, white, talking, rabbit, without whom, none of this would be possible." What would you think? Would you be ready to hand over the keys to the kingdom to such a lunatic? Would you see nothing wrong with making this whackjob the head of the most powerful military force on the planet?

We ought to question our religious leader's beliefs, particularly when those beliefs are nonsensical, racist, homophobic, sexist, classist, or simply illogical. The inability to think logically in regards to existential issues could very well be indicative of a larger problem. The guy who can't see that there's no magic in them thar undies, may not be capable of recognizing other obvious truths, like the fact that "trickle-down economics" has never helped the middle class. The guy who is incapable of thinking beyond the outdated, barbarous morality of the bible, is probably not the guy who should be electing judges to the Supreme Court.

"The big, white, rabbit says that all children should remain ignorant until they reach voting age, therefore I'm withdrawing all funding from public education."

Not outside the realm of possibility. Would you respect a candidate's right to such a moronic belief?

The idea that religious beliefs should be above scrutiny and their adherents beyond question is a bizarre one. These are the beliefs that guide their actions, shape their opinions and their world view. For our worlds leaders, these are the beliefs upon which public policy will be based and laws and constitutional amendments will be drafted. I want to know if a guy's religion once considered women as cattle and black people as evil (and yes, I'm talking about Mormonism.) Of all the beliefs and ideas a candidate holds, their religious beliefs should be the ones most heavily scrutinized.

The reason why it is still legal to discriminate against an entire class of citizens and deny them the same rights as other Americans is because of what some ignorant goat-herders wrote in a book two thousand years ago when people still thought the world was flat, the sky was made of water, and demons caused diseases. If you're a homosexual, you may want to consider that little tidbit when deciding who to vote for. A member of The Evangelical Church is probably not going to protect your rights. If you're black, you may want to look at the Mormon Church's history regarding their darker brethren.

This from one of the prophets of the LDS church, Brigham Young:

"You see some classes of the human family that are BLACK, UNCOUTH, UNCOMELY, DISAGREEABLE and LOW in their habits, WILD, and seemingly DEPRIVED OF NEARLY ALL THE BLESSINGS OF THE INTELLIGENCE that is generally bestowed upon mankind. The first man that committed the odious crime of killing one of his brethren will be cursed the longest of any one of the children of Adam. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been KILLED, and THAT WOULD HAVE PUT A TERMINATION TO THAT LINE OF HUMAN BEINGS. This was not to be, and the Lord put A MARK upon him, which is THE FLAT NOSE AND BLACK SKIN. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same race -- that they should be the "servants of servants;" and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree." LDS "Prophet" Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7, p. 290

"Ham will continue to be servant of servants, as the Lord decreed, until the curse is removed. Will the present struggle [the U.S. civil war] free the slave? No.... Can you destroy the decrees of the Almighty? You cannot." LDS "Prophet" Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 10, p. 250

And what about the ideas and opinions espoused by the founder of the Mormon faith?:

"Not only was Cain called upon to suffer, but because of his wickedness he became THE FATHER OF AN INFERIOR RACE. A curse was placed upon him and that curse has been continued through his lineage and must do so WHILE TIME ENDURES. Millions of souls have come into this world cursed with a BLACK SKIN and have been DENIED THE PRIVILEGE OF PRIESTHOOD and the fulness of the blessings of the Gospel. These are the descendants of Cain. Moreover, they have been made to FEEL THEIR INFERIORITY and have been SEPARATED from the rest of mankind from the beginning. Enoch saw the people of Canaan, descendants of Cain, and he says, 'and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were DESPISED AMONG ALL PEOPLE.'" LDS "Prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection, pp. 101-102

(Quotes courtesy of exmormon.org)

Now, we are asked to leave these racist beliefs unmolested? Yes, the Mormon church has made strides to change their views toward Black people in recent years, but should we not at least broach the subject with a potential world leader? "Do you believe that the two greatest prophets of the faith you claim were wrong in regards to African Americans?" Shouldn't we ask this?

What about the Mormon religion's stance on equal rights for women?

Deborah Laake, who was excommunicated in 1993 for writing Secret Ceremonies, states that "it had been repeatedly impressed on me that if I failed to marry a faithful Mormon man...in a Mormon temple, I would be denied access to the highest level of Mormon heaven" (Laake 4).

According to Laake: "The patriarchal order is of divine origin and will continue throughout time and eternity" (Laake 39).

"I'd been conditioned to believe that if I didn't have babies, I wasn't worth much. Having children was what women were made for"

Mitt Romney, once a Bishop in the Mormon church, is credited with having had a "change of heart" in regards to gender politics and the role of women in church and society. Once, as reported by The Salt Lake Tribune in their article "Mitt Romney's Mormon Evolution" (November 22, 2011), Romney held views that paralleled the views of the church. Nancy Dredge, a 67-year-old descendant of Mormon apostle Brigham Young, recalled one instance in which Romney called her into his office to discuss the women’s requests to play a more active role in the church. "He said, ‘I’ve got a great job for you, to write up the notes for the men’s meetings!’ He didn’t get it," she said. "He thought we would be thrilled."

So, should a candidate's big, white, rabbits be left out of the discussion? Should we not consider the impact these fanciful creatures have on a candidate's political agendas? If we were talking about a Muslim, agreement would be almost unanimous. He would be grilled without relent over every aspect of his faith as Obama was. And rightly so. It seems that only popular, "acceptable" religions are afforded these extraordinary protections. Every leader who adheres to "magical thinking" should be interrogated on these beliefs be they Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Scientologist, or Mormon.

Should we take the risk that Christians who believe homosexuals are an abomination might make "laying with a man as with a woman" punishable by death? Should we take the risk that Mormon's who believe all African Americans are decedents of Cain and inherently evil and inferior might rescind or ignore equal rights legislation? Fail to uphold civil rights laws or prosecute civil rights abuses. Should we take the risk that they might fail to prosecute abuses against women or uphold laws meant to prevent gender bias? What about if we discovered that a candidate had a big, white, rabbit that told him America was the new Sodom and Gomorrah and must be destroyed by fire? Is that a belief that we should respect?

Call me prejudice if you will, but the guy in the magic undies probably won't be getting my vote, not unless he can convince me that his faith is a mere personal eccentricity and won't be influencing his politics. In other words, he needs to keep his big, white, rabbit in the closet with other bizarre personal fetishes like the guy who likes to wear diapers and get caned by women in black latex. I have much more respect for that guy then the guy who carries his fetishes up onto the podium with him and puts it into campaign speeches.

He Died For What?

2011-09-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

Often, I have been chastised by believers for turning my back on the "Son of God", "Our Lord and Savior". How dare I reject the one who suffered and died for my sins? The object is to make atheists feel some sort of misguided "obligation' to believe, shaming us into believing by equating not believing in Christ to African Americans not believing in Martin Luther King Jr. or Harriet Tubman or Jews not believing in The Holocaust. Odd when you consider that atheists don't believe that Christ died for anyone's sins, least of all ours. So why would we feel guilty? That creates a bizarre form of circular reasoning. "You should feel guilty for not believing because Jesus died for your sins, but if you don't believe then you wouldn't feel guilty which should make you feel guilty for not believing." It makes no sense.

For the sake of argument, let's agree that two thousand years ago, a guy named Jesus, believing himself to be the living offspring of the one true god (delusional or otherwise), allowed himself to be beaten and crucified for the sins of man. He became, "The Lamb of God". "Lamb" in the sense that lambs and goats were often sacrificial animals. Apparently, deities can create animals but can't eat them unless they are murdered during ceremonial rituals or burnt upon an altar. Or, they just like to watch the beings they created prove their devotion by destroying their own food, goods, and valuables, when really gods have no use for these things. Either way, pretty weird when you think about it. And the ladder is just plain vain and capricious, which of course fits perfectly in line with the other dominant personality traits of the Christian deity. But I digress. If Jesus was or was not the son of God, but believed himself to be in either case, his "sacrifice" was both stupid and unnecessary. How about simply asking daddy to chill out? I don't recall ever reading about Jesus just asking his dad to loosen up before taking such extreme measures. Imagine if your kid sold an organ to buy a bike before ever asking you for the money to buy it. You'd think the kid had lost his mind. The story of Jesus is no less extreme.

Okay, please help me understand this. Jesus is god but yet he had to die in order for his father, who is also him, to forgive the creatures he created for the natures that he authored that led them to commit atrocities he could have prevented so that he wouldn't send them to hell? Did I miss anything? Jesus sacrificed himself to himself in order to save his creations from him? Am I the only one who sees something idiotic in this? Am I the only one who wonders how anyone could believe this nonsense?

Self-sacrifice is one of the highest of human virtues. One person's willingness to sacrifice their happiness, wealth, or well-being, even martyr themselves, for others is a virtue almost without parallel. It's what makes the biblical story of Christ so compelling. "Oh, he didn't get crucified for being a rebellious lunatic who thought he was the son of God. He actually was the son of God and he meant to get himself crucified as a sacrifice to his father so that God would forgive man of all his sins." It's an emotional story. It pulls all the right chords and pushes all the right emotional buttons. After all, who would not feel obligated to someone who sacrificed themselves for you? The only button it doesn't push is the logic and common sense button. Because immediately after telling us that Jesus sacrificed himself to God for us, we are also told that Jesus is God. What the fuck? That doesn't make sense.

Imagine if I were to tell you that I had to torture and murder myself in order to keep myself from torturing and murdering you. It would only make sense if I was psychotic in the true sense of the word, schizophrenic, voices and all. I would have to be bat-shit crazy. And if I did martyr myself in this psychotic way, perhaps you would be grateful to me or fate or luck or the deterministic laws of the cosmos that I sacrificed my life rather than taking yours, but you'd still be rightly freaked out that I was thinking of torturing and killing you in the first place. I'd hardly qualify for sainthood for killing myself rather than murdering you. You certainly would not feel the same gratitude you would have felt if I were interceding to prevent someone else from torturing you by offering myself to be tortured in your place. That would be virtuous, the former is simply twisted. Would any of his victims have worshiped Jeffrey Dahmer if, after luring them to his apartment and drugging them, he tortured and cannibalized himself instead of them? Would they have felt gratitude toward him or would they have just thought, "What a fucking nutjob!" and got the hell out of that apartment as fast as they could? We may never know the answer to that, but I think we have a pretty good fucking idea.

So, when people are horrified that I do not worship or believe in Jesus Christ because he is/was my savior who sacrificed himself for my unending sins, I point out that he must have been nuts to do that. If he was god, he could have simply made the decision to welcome us all into heaven and not send us to hell anymore instead of going through all the theatrics. If Jesus = Lord then what he did was more like some extreme form of masochism rather than self-sacrifice. Lunatics should be medicated, not worshiped and revered.

The Big White Rabbit

2011-06-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

There is a debate going on regarding Richard Dawkins' scale of belief. In The God Delusion, Dawkins formulated a 7-point belief scale from 1 (total belief) to 7 (total non-belief).

1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung: "I do not believe, I know."
2. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. "I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there."
3. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God."
4. Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. "God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable."
5. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. "I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be skeptical."
6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
7. Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung 'knows' there is one."

Dawkins argues that while there appear to be plenty of individuals that would place themselves as "1", no thinking atheist would consider themselves "7", as atheism arises from a lack of evidence and evidence can always change a thinking person's mind. Dawkins considers himself to be a '6'.

The statement that "No thinking atheist would consider themselves a 7" is a rather extreme position and has been the source of much debate.

What if I were to tell you that I had a big white rabbit that talked to me and granted wishes? Would you say the burden of proof was on me to prove that I had a big, invisible, talking, magical, white rabbit or you to prove that I didn't? Where would you fall on Dawkins' scale of disbelief regarding my big white rabbit? Would you say that you were a 6 because you could not prove conclusively that there was no big white rabbit or would the absurdity of my claim be all the proof you needed to go from 99% certainty regarding big white rabbits to 100% absolute certainty that such silliness could not and does not exist? Would you allow for the possibility that some new evidence may arise at some point in the future validating my belief in large, magical, white rabbits or would you find it nearly impossible to keep an open mind about such idiocy? Is the existence of the biblical deity any less absurd then my big white rabbit?

An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, silent, invisible deity that listens to the whispered prayers of 6 billion people at once yet allows 20,000 children a day to die of preventable illnesses and hunger? Isn't this just as nonsensical as magical invisible bunnies? And don't we just say that we believe such a thing might be possible to appear more open minded then we actually are? In reality, are not the majority of atheists no more open minded to the possibility of the biblical deity then we are to talking, invisible, white rabbits? And those who are open to the idea are so because of latent hope, fear, and or guilt left over from their early indoctrination not due to any logical or rational considerations. They are open minded because they once shared the same delusions as theists and vestiges of that delusion still remain.

On talking, invisible, white rabbits I am a non-believer 100%. Now, how would you feel if I did believe in a 6foot, invisible, talking, white rabbit that granted wishes? Would you respect my belief? Would you feel obligated to respect my belief in the big white rabbit? How would you feel if I taught my children to believe in it too? How would you feel if I taught your kids to believe in the big white rabbit, if the gospel of the big white rabbit was taught in schools and the hypothesis that the universe was authored by white rabbits was lent the same validity as the big bang theory? How would you feel if most of the songs played on the radio, the shows and movies on TV and in the theater, all celebrated the belief in the big, white, rabbit. How about if your employment options, community relations, cultural and familial bonds, political aspirations, even your choices in love and marriage were all limited because you didn't believe in the big white rabbit? What about if your kids were bullied in school for not believing? What if every politician trumpeted their belief in the big, white, rabbit, as a reason to vote for them and questioned the moral judgement of anyone who did not share their belief in talking invisible bunnies? Would you still find this belief harmless and think it should be respected? What if wars were being fought over who has the best understanding of the big white rabbits thoughts and deeds? What if people had been tortured and executed for not believing in this invisible rabbit? What if this was still occurring around the globe today? Would you still think this belief was something that should be treated with respect? Would it make a difference if some people were moved to acts of altruism because of their belief in the white rabbit? Would that change your opinion of it? Would that make it any less ridiculous and threatening? Any more worthy of our respect?

Now, what if someone were to tell you that no thinking person would consider themselves a 7 in regards to the existence of magical, invisible, talking, white rabbits? Would you not think this statement absurd? In the cold, sterile, environment of the laboratory, such strict logic is necessary (though even then, not always possible.) In the real world, it is nearly impossible. No one would say that no thinking person would be 100% certain of the non-existence of vampires and gargoyles or that no thinking person would be 100% certain of the non-existence of Daffy Duck or Superman or Mickey Mouse or Godzilla. The idea of such a thing would confound our imagination. We would find it impossible to even contemplate.

Try now to open yourself to the possibility that I have a 6foot, invisible, talking, white rabbit who grants me wishes. Can you do it? No? Then why the fuck would anyone think that I could force myself to entertain the possibility that the universe was created by an invisible, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity that allows all manner of atrocities to befall the beings he professes to love, who is intimately concerned with the sexual habits of his creations, who sentences them to eternal hell for not believing in him when he chooses to remain hidden, and who created a paradise for his creations but yet chose to put them here on earth to suffer rather than letting them live in paradise? Sorry, Mr. Dawkins, but this brotha is a 7.

Is It Elitist To Think Some People Need Religion?

2011-05-30T06:23:00.000-07:00

So, I was reading an article in The Skeptical Inquirer in which Richard Dawkins made the statement that people who think that some people need to believe in God and that it would be cruel to take away their crutch, are elitist. The implication being that we think we are somehow better suited to live lives of reason than others who need faith.

"What patronizing condescension! You, and I, of course, are much too intelligent and well-educated to need religion. But ordinary people, hoi-polloi, the Orwellian proles, the Huxleyian Deltas and Epsilon semi-morons, need religion."

What do you think about that? I happen to be one of those people who think it is okay to leave some people to their misguided beliefs if it makes them happy and if it appears that they are incapable of functioning as well without it. Religion is an addiction and as such this would be no different than giving methadone to a heroine addict. I also think that there are some people who are truly incapable of letting go of their beliefs. The brainwashing has just worked too deeply and for too long.

There are some people, like my mother and grandmother for instance, who have used faith as a crutch for so long that the limbs it supported have atrophied to the point of uselessness. Removing the crutch from them at this point won't make the limb any stronger. It will just cause them to fall flat on their faces. There are some people that are terrified of life without their imaginary friend looking out for them. If science proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that there were no God there would be mass-suicides and large groups of people who would still cling to this belief, incapable of renouncing it. That's just my feeling based, of course on purely anecdotal evidence from my own observations and experiences. What do you think?

I really don't see it as any different than saying some people can't act, play piano or write novels or fight in a boxing ring for that matter. I'm not sure how one would gather evidence of people falling apart because of a lack of religious belief since it is typically the other things in their lives that tear them apart, loneliness, feelings of worthlessness, heartache, various failures, a general sort of existential malaise. Things that one must admit religion does address. That's why AA programs and their ilk push belief in a higher power as part of their cure all. It is a desirable fantasy with a definite narcotic effect. I would say that given the inescapable evidence that there is at least a strong psychological need for religious belief, evidenced by the historical anthropological evidence, we must consider the possibility that there may indeed be some who could not function as well without it after having been absorbed in it for a lifetime.

It almost sounds like I'm defending belief in absurdities. Trust me, I am not. I find the human need to believe the impossible and the illogical rather pathetic and I would love to believe that every one of us was capable of renouncing religion. That's generally how I behave. I'm not typically one to cut believers much slack. I don't really believe in respecting erroneous beliefs. This is a bit different. This is just about letting the incurable continue to medicate themselves until they pass peacefully into oblivion. I know the danger of that tactic is that it might cause us to neglect people who might be capable of shedding their fantasies and living better lives as a result. I do believe we could all be faith-free in as little as one generation. All it would take is for this generation to not pass their disease onto the next. Wishful thinking at this point.

Of course, I would prefer to believe that all drug addicts are better off without the drug, but once the addiction has reached an advanced stage, I'm not sure that's always true or even possible. I have observed in drug addicts who started self-medicating at an early age, that their normal coping mechanisms for stress are almost non-existent. They tend to freak out over the slightest thing because drugs insulated them from having to deal with everyday stress for so long. It is as if their emotional development arrested at the age they started using. I have observed the same thing in faith-addicts. Certainly, there needs to be more research before anyone could make a realistic determination. But I think erring on the side of caution is probably wisest in the interim.

Perhaps everyone is fully capable, even after years of brainwashing and indoctrination, of living without religion. Perhaps it is the initial agony of accepting a world without an all-powerful father figure that I am trying to spare my loved ones out of some misguided sense of mercy. I certainly don't mean to suggest that there would be mass suicides or even homicides as some believers suggest (as if the only thing preventing them from raping and killing is their belief in god.) What I'm suggesting is that those other things that they are currently using religion to cope with i.e. stress, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, loneliness, hopelessness, poverty, etc, would become overwhelming without their beliefs. Surely, most would survive and learn other means of coping with life, but it would be naively optimistic to believe that everyone would. Thousands of people a year commit suicide after getting clean and sober and thousands more run right back to the drugs. There is no question that religion is just as powerful a drug as the pharmaceutical variety and can be just as hard to kick.

The point is that after someone has been taught and thoroughly convinced that they need religion, detoxing from it is often quite painful and depressing and for some even impossible. Is it elitist to think that some people do not have the intellectual and/or emotional courage and strength for such a traumatic experience?

Like all addictive behaviors, there is an emotional dependency linked to a strong psychological need. The euphoria believers experience in church has been likened to a cocaine high. The emotional comfort that some xtians feel believing that the creator of the universe listens to their prayers is one many would kill or die before giving up.

We have all had the experience of arguing a xtian into a corner only to have them ignore every argument and staunchly refuse to disbelieve. It is not uncommon for a Xtian to become combative, violent, tearful, and desperately confused when they run out of arguments and cease to make sense even to themselves, fighting desperately to hold onto their beliefs. Many come out of it okay. Most dig their heels in and refuse to believe a word of what you are saying even though they have no strong counter arguments, simply because they cannot imagine living without their beliefs. We have all witnessed this. I have seen it in my own mother and my wife's mother. I don't believe there is anything on this earth that could wrench them free of their beliefs. No evidence, no arguments, however definitive, that could dissuade them.

I'm sure many of you have gone through a period of malaise and ennui after realizing at last that all this religion crap was a lie. Many of us struggled mightily on our own roads to intellectual freedom. I'm sure we know many others who abandoned the journey unable to handle the stress of a world without the dream of God and heaven. Tolstoy is probably the most famous example of this and nutcases like Kirk Cameron, the most recent. Should we have dragged Tolstoy screaming into the light when he admittedly found the conclusions reason brought him to "Too horrible to contemplate"? Should I drag my mother and grandmother screaming into the light no matter how painful they might find the experience? Or should I leave them in peace and concentrate on those who are perhaps not quite as brainwashed? Who have not been deluded for quite so long? Does suggesting that some people are unable to change make me an elitist?

Pascal's Idiocy, "Wrath's Wager"

2011-03-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

“God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up... Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose... But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is."

That is the crux of Pascal's Wager. Worship God just in case he exists in order to avoid his Wrath. What theists tend to forget when they toss Pascal's Wager into the equation as some sort of spiritual CYA is that to truly cover your ass you would have to worship all the gods that have ever existed, at the very least, the ones that ascribe some sort of punishment for non-worship. The problem is that worshipping one God angers another. In Islam, a sure path to hell is to believe in the divinity of Christ just as not believing in Christ as the son of God will condemn you to hell according to Christianity.

Deuteronomy 13:6-10 (New International Version, ©2010)
"6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death..."

Deuteronomy 13:12-16 (New International Version, ©2010)

"12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you to live in 13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely,[a] both its people and its livestock. 16 You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt..."

Passages like these fill the faithful with fear and trembling. What it should fill them with is disgust and outrage. Who would worship such a vain and spiteful god? Regardless, these passages and others like it from other religions, make the idea of Pascal's Wager moot. Worship anyone but the Christian God and you go to hell according to the bible. Worship Jesus and you go to hell according to Islam. But if you fail to worship all of these gods then you have not properly covered your ass.

Now lets complicate it a bit. According to the Aztecs, not keeping a steady flow of virgin blood trickling down the temple steps by ripping out the heart of a child as a sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli would cause the entire universe to end. But doing so would condemn you to hell according to Christianity. Exodus 22:20 "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed."
What to do? What to do?

The Hawaiian fire goddess Pele' had a particularly nasty temper when not appeased with human sacrifices as did the Tahitian creator/god Ta'aroa and about a thousand other religions around the world throughout history. Trying to play it safe by worshipping any of them would put you in conflict with about a thousand other religions. So how do you cover your metaphysical ass there?

If you don't die on a battlefield or if you die with any of your limbs detached then you can't join Odin in Valhalla. I don't see any of the intellectual infants who think Pascal's Wager makes sense rushing off to war just in case Odin is the true god.

Also, as has been pointed out, you can't force yourself to believe what you suspect to be untrue. So, how then would Pascal's Wager work? If you are pretending to believe wouldn't God know that deep down you thought the whole thing was full of shit? Would he still let you into heaven knowing that you were faking it?

The whole thing is just silly and I feel kind of silly justifying it with a response, but yet I have. You know... just in case. What we ought to do is the same thing we do in every other instance where there is a profound lack of evidence, suspend belief. That is the only intelligent response.

The beauty of "I don't know and neither do you" is that it doesn't take money from your wallet and put it into some charlatan's collection plate. It doesn't cause you to hate other people because their lifestyle doesn't conform to laws written two thousand years ago by sheep-herders. It doesn't cause you to embarrass yourself, bowing and scraping before an illusion, throwing yourself about, possessed by mass delusion while being whipped into a fervor by a man in a two-thousand dollar suit that your tithings paid for. It doesn't impact your ability to reason and leave you pray to other spiritual scam artists like astrologers and tarot card readers. It doesn't cause you to spout nonsense like a man lived in the belly of a big fish or a 600-year-old man built an arc and filled it with two of every animal on earth. It doesn't have the potential side effect of making you a sexist, racist, homophobic, child-abusing, intolerant bigot. It doesn't make you some self-righteous asshole. You will never martyr yourself for atheism. You will never refuse life-saving medical treatment for you or your loved ones because of atheism. You will never pray when you should act because of atheism. You will never place your children in the care of pedophiles because of atheism. Given this, isn't the safer bet non-belief?

Spooks and Spirits

2011-01-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

Atheists that believe in ghosts? Really? There is such a thing? Well, apparently so. There are still atheists who believe in ghosts and spirits and Quija boards and other occult nonsense. I don't get it. If you rejected gods and goddesses because there was no proof how can you then accept spiritualism and the occult?

Ah, but I answered my own question, didn't I? Those "atheists" didn't reject religion because there was no proof. They rejected it because they didn't like those specific religions. They didn't like the Christian or Muslim or Jewish god, the Abrahamic religions. They didn't like Buddhism or Hinduism or Scientology or any of the other religions they've come across, but they would presumably be open to some other type of deity. Perhaps one that loves puppies and kittens and serves chocolates and ice cream on Sundays? The current major religions just didn't fit their personal aesthetic. They are of the "Atheist but still spiritual" ilk. Listen, I'm open to any and all possibilities. I'm open to the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation. Prove it and I'll believe it. Until then, no fucking way. I thought that, at the least, was something we could all agree on.

So let's look at it. In order to believe in ghosts and spirits you have to believe in an afterlife of some sort. You have to accept the idea of a mind/body duality. In other words, you have to ignore all the verifiable, quantifiable facts of the known world. You have to ignore all the advances in Neuroscience in the past century which can positively link consciousness, memory, and even personality to the brain which is perishable. You have to believe in the anecdotal evidence presented by those who have actually "seen" ghosts or experienced ghostly phenomenon despite the fact that any first year law or psychology student knows that eyewitness testimony is the least reliable. Yes, even what you think you've seen with your own eyes is questionable. In other words, in order to continue to believe in ghosts and spirits you have to make the same leap of faith as the religious. Many of them have also seen, heard, or felt Jesus, Mohammed, Krisna, Vishnu, and Buddha. I'm sure people saw Zeus and Apollo once as well. Hell, people have even seen fairies in their garden and we have no problem calling them delusional. How is that any different than seeing a ghost? It isn't. There is no difference. So why are you an atheist again?

If you are an atheist because you have a grudge against the church or against god then please do not call yourself an atheist. We've got enough bad publicity. We don't need you muddying the waters further. If you only reject Christianity or only reject Western Religion then please do not call yourself an atheist. If your disbelief is focused solely on The Bible then please do not call yourself an atheist. Even if the bible was not full of immorality and contradictions it would still be a collection of bullshit for the same reason all the rest of the religions are, because there's no proof for any of it. So, call yourself open-minded, a freethinker, agnostic, a fucking stardancer if that's what floats your boat. Call yourself anything you like, but you are not an atheist.

Let me be clear here. I am not trying to define atheism. There already is a definition for it.

a·the·ism [ey-thee-iz-uhm] –noun 1.the doctrine or belief that there is no god. 2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings. Origin: 1580–90; < Gk áthe ( os ) godless + -ism —Related forms: an·ti·a·the·ism, adjective, noun pro·a·the·ism, noun.

I am merely telling you what it is not and it is not a disbelief in god or goddesses but a belief in ghosts and spirits. There are millions of us to define what atheism is and our beliefs and disbeliefs vary, but the one unifying principle would be the acceptance of logic and science. At this point in time, neither science nor religion supports the belief in ghosts and spirits. When we hold on to these nonsensical beliefs we are guilty of the same silliness theists are guilty of and we deserve the same ridicule we give them.

Why I Still Celebrate Christmas (Originally posted Dec. 2009)

2010-12-26T07:32:00.000-08:00

I originally posted this last year, but I thought it was timely given the holiday season which always brings up questions of this sort:

I know many atheists who no longer celebrate Christmas because of its religious origins. Some, instead, celebrate Winter Solstice or some other psuedo-pagan nonsense. Me? I celebrate a couple days off of work and an excuse to give and recieve gifts from my loved ones the same way I always have. There's a tree with ornaments and lights. There is garland and wreaths and images of Santa Claus and elves and reindeer. I fight the crowds at the malls and toy stores in order to pack presents under the tree and give that annual boost to the economy. No where present is the tortured effigy of Jesus. No where is there any mention of the bible or Christianity. And there never has been. I can go in and out of malls, stores, businesses, and homes all day long and did I not already know that Christmas was supposed to be about the birth of Christ I would find few reminders. This has never been a religious holiday for me. It has always been about giving and receiving presents. The spirit of giving? Maybe? Rampant consumerism and greed? Definitely. And I, like you, am a consumer. Christmas is the ultimate celebration of consumerism. It is a capitalist holiday.

They celebrate Christmas in the least religious countries in the world because it is fun and a great boost for economies. You see Christmas trees in Tokyo and Hong Kong. That doesn't make them Christians. I have heard Christians even attempt to make the argument, as ridiculous as it is, that celebrating Christmas somehow implies that you still believe deep down as does screaming out "Jesus Christ!" when you're angry or "Oh God!" when you're about to bust a nut. I do both of those by the way. I don't feel I need to change the time honored tradition of using the Christian god's name in vain at moments of ecstasy or exasperation just because the guy is a myth. It's not a prayer. It's an exclamation, an expletive. If I yell out "Holy Shit!" that does not somehow imply a belief in the sanctity of excrement. And sticking a star on top of a Chrsitmas tree does not imply that I believe three wise men followed a star to where a virgin had been raped by a diety and had given birth to that diety's bastard child.

I celebrate Easter too. I buy the baskets and fill them with eggs and candy for my kids. I buy them new Easter clothes and guess what? There's no mention of Christ. There's nothing hardly anywhere to suggest that Easter was about anything but chocolate bunnies and colored eggs. Coloring eggs and biting the ears off of marshmallow peeps does not imply a belief that Christ rose from the grave anymore than it implies a belief that a large intelligent bunny runs all over the world filling baskets with eggs and candy. It too is a consumer holiday, another chance for retailers to sell us things in quantities we would not normally buy. Like beer on St. Patty's Day. I ain't Irish either.

So, I don't feel compelled to renounce all things even remotely tainted by religion. I don't even feel the need to co-opt these holidays and pervert them in some way. Capitalism has already done that. I just reap the benefits and have fun playing Santa.

Sex & Atheism

2010-12-07T18:59:00.001-08:00

I read a study a few years ago that concluded that college educated people tended to be more sexually adventurous than non-college educated people. It quoted statistics such as the likelihood to have engaged in oral sex, anal sex, bondage, homosexual activities, S&M, role-playing, threesomes, and group sex, all of which were apparently greater among the college educated. (I can't seem to locate the article now so if anyone stumbles across it please provide me a link.) The study cited influences such as exposure to different types of people, an atmosphere that encourages intellectual and creative freedom and curiosity, and removal from the environments they grew up in and therefore the traditional and cultural restraints that may have existed in those neighborhoods and communities, as possible reasons for this difference. This of course got me to wondering. Are atheists more sexually adventurous? It would certainly make sense. Since most sexual taboos are religious taboos the absence of religion should lead to greater sexual freedom, but has it? What do you think? Are atheists more likely to have engaged in oral sex, anal sex, bondage, homosexual activities, S&M, role-playing, threesomes, and group sex? Or have we shrugged off the trappings of religion while retaining the same puritanical religion-based sexual hang-ups?

I am probably the most open-minded individual I know when it comes to sex. If there's a sex act that I won't do its probably because it doesn't feel good, doesn't taste good, hurts, takes too much planning and preparation, is too difficult, requires too much flexibility, or is illegal. If it feels good and can be done with relative ease, I'll probably give it a shot. I have dated both the pious and the irreligious and I can say that I have definitely noticed a tendency among professed Christians to be more sexually inhibited initially than those who profess no faith and certainly among those who are admitted atheists. That does seem to melt away rather quickly in most cases. The big difference I have seen is in regards to guilt.

Given the means, motive, and opportunity, most people will satisfy their sexual urges in whatever ways provide the most pleasure. What is sad, is that many will punish themselves with needless guilt for it. I don't get that. As a society, we are fond of saying that "Whatever transpires between two consenting adults is okay" however we do not really behave that way. There would not be such a stigma placed on homosexual relationships if this was really how most Americans thought. There would not be such harsh judgement on polyamorous people and relationships. Monogamous, post-marital (or at least after falling deeply in love), heterosexual sex is still held up as the only ethical sexual encounter by the pious and the heathen alike. All else is something dirty that we should feel guilty about. Why?

Even among the non-religious I have noticed some of this latent guilt and these irrational inhibitions. Again I ask, why? This is 2010 yet these Victorian era sexual ideas still persist. Our natural desires are still demonized. It is still demanded that we repress and hide our desires. We still masturbate in darkened corners, hiding our desires from the very people who should be sharing them with us. At a time when every conceivable fetish is available for easy viewing on the Internet and eagerly consumed by the masses, they are just as widely condemned and those who partake of them are made to feel like pariahs and outcasts when, rest assured, they are the majority. Pornography is a multi-billion-dollar industry for a reason.

Well, forgive me if I want something better. Forgive me if I don't always want to make love. Forgive me if I like to fuck. Forgive me if I don't stick to the missionary position. Forgive me if I like to get messy. On second thought, don't forgive me, put down your bibles, drop your antiquated morals, and join me. If you don't believe in the bible anymore let the rest of it go with it. Be the animal you were meant to be in the bedroom and leave the guilt to the Catholics and other Christians. And if you need some help unleashing the beast then pick up a couple of my books.

A Good Christian

2010-11-20T00:24:00.000-08:00

There is an odd conceit among believers, that faith is the strongest foundation for a good relationship. It is an odd conceit because it defies the facts. I know many women, Black women in particular, who are obsessed with their hunt for a "Good Christian Man". Most of them have already married and divorced one such man or have been impregnated and abandoned by one or have been domestically abused by one or cheated on by one, lied to, ripped off, betrayed, but somehow not disillusioned. The illusion of the "Good Christian Man" remains as strong as ever.

When men say they are looking for "A Good Christian Woman", what they usually mean is that they are looking for a woman that is docile, submissive, and subservient. When has Christianity ever been a guarantee of subservience? Most people ignore those misogynistic parts of the bible that command women to obey their husbands as they would the lord. If you want a docile and subservient woman you would be more successful searching BDSM clubs than churches.

Is Christianity a guarantee of fidelity? Is it a guarantee that a man or woman will be honest and hard-working? Is it a guarantee that a man or woman will be a good father or mother? Is it a guarantee that they will be law-abiding citizens? Is it a guarantee that they will be thoughtful and romantic? Is it a guarantee that they will be better lovers? No. No. No. No. No. And hmmm? Let me think about that last one... ummmmm, No. What religion guarantees is the perfect cover under which the unscrupulous can gain the confidences of their fellow believers.

The reality is that there are good men and there are good women and there are bad men and there are bad women and as near as we can tell it is some combination of nature and nurture that makes you turn out one way or the other. It is largely a result of genetics and parenting. No religion can guarantee character. Most people do not even choose their religion. It chooses them and it is indiscriminate. All you need do to become a Christian man or woman is be born to Christian parents and survive to adulthood. Not a very stringent criterion there.

The prisons are filled with good Christian men and women. In this country, being a Christian makes you statistically more likely to be a thief, a rapist, a drug dealer, a child molester, and a murderer. There are more Christians behind bars than any other religion in this country. I'm not suggesting that there is a cause and effect relationship between religion and criminality. I'm just stating the obvious fact that there is no cause and effect relationship between religion and honesty and trustworthiness. Christians commit adultery at the same rate as everyone else. They get divorced at nearly the same rate. They are just as likely to be unemployed, just as likely to be alcoholics, just as likely to be drug addicts and just as likely to sit on the couch playing video games and watching porn.

There is no guarantee that a Christian woman is going to be a good mother. There's no guarantee that she will be a good cook or keep a clean house. There's no guarantee that she will be faithful. That she won't whine and bitch and complain and spend all of your money and want to got out to the clubs every night and hang with her girlfriends and dress like she is waiting for someone to stuff her bra with dollar bills.

Just take a look around you. Christianity is the dominant religion in this country yet we live in one of the most violent and decadent societies on earth. Look at the men and women who attend your local church. Do you see pew after pew of upstanding paragons of virtue or do you see men and women with the same flaws and failings as everyone else?

If you are looking for a good Christian man or woman because you want someone to go to church with and read the bible with, then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It's no different then looking for a mate who shares the same hobby as you like two bird watchers hooking up to share their mutual love of the wonders of the avian world. But if you're looking for a Christian lover because you think that belief in Christianity brings with it some greater moral or ethical virtuousness or because you think it guarantees that they will share your values and act in accordance with those values then you are bound to be disappointed.

The truth is that there are good people and there are bad people in every religion. There are good mothers and fathers who are atheists and agnostics and there are good parents who are Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, etc. There are submissive non-believing women who want nothing more than to clean house, cook meals, have sex at your slightest whim and then fetch you a beer and there are Christian women that are raving bitches and vis versa. There are Christian men who are great fathers and providers and there are atheist men who are good fathers and husbands and some of them will cheat on you. Some of them will beat you. Some of them will use you for sex and then run at the first sign of commitment. Some will abandon you with child. Whether they are Christian or atheist, Muslim or agnostic, people are people. I would suggest that you just try your damnedest to find yourself a good man or woman. That's hard enough.

Coping With Death Without Belief

2010-10-30T07:18:00.001-07:00

I have found myself lately, surrounded by friends and family with near fatal illnesses. My aunt has recently survived a bout of pancreatic cancer which is usually fatal. My father-inlaw had apparently survived mesothelioma. And my wife's sister's mother is still being treated for stage four breast cancer which has spread into her bones. I have therefore been inundated by statements like "They are in my payers." and "I will pray for her or him" along with requests for prayer by their friends and family. My wife has, understandably, stated in no uncertain terms that if her father dies that no one had better come to her and tell her "It was God's will" or "He's in a better place now" or any of the usual vapid religious platitudes. She doesn't care if he's with Jesus and the angels and all of their ancestors. She wants him here with her. She doesn't want him to suffer through lung surgery and chemotherapy only to be "called home to Jesus" and she is a Christian. I hold no such illusions about death so I cannot imagine what I would feel were it my mother going through what Christie's father is going through and I was being bombarded with bullshit.

I know it is well-intentioned bullshit. I know they are stating their sincere and honest beliefs and trying to be consoling and supportive, but the death of a loved-one is really a pretty horrible and distasteful moment to try to foist your beliefs onto someone. I don't think I'd handle it well.

So how do atheists find comfort in moments of sorrow and death? How do we cope with the loss of a loved one or our own impending end? No different than any other tragedy I should think. No different than the loss of a job or a house. We wouldn't say it was God's plan or that it's "all in God's hands" or any such nonsense. We would recognize the unfortunate series of events that led up to this happening and try to figure our way out of it. We would try our best to find cures to employ specialist to find the best treatment and when none of that worked we would resolve ourselves to the reality. We did all we could and now it's over just as the end has come for hundreds of millions of other human beings throughout history. It is the deal we each make with life from the moment we take our first breath, that eventually we will also take our last.

I had a bout with pancreatitis a few years back and the doctors were not certain what was causing it and were not ruling out pancreatic cancer which is often a death sentence. As I was being wheeled into surgery there was a possibility that I might never wake up. The one thought that kept me from panicking was my near certainty that death was the end of all consciousness, all sensation, that I would never experience death since being dead I would not be able to experience anything. The anesthesia would put me under and I would either wake up or I would not. If I didn't I would never know that I didn't because knowing is a condition of the living. Those who do not live do not know. I tend to agree with Epicurus on death:

"Death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. [Death] does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more."

I look at the death of a loved one with the same degree of sorrow (and no more) than when a friend moves away to another state or country and I know that I will never see them again. I am sad that we will no longer share each other's company. I cherish the memories we had and I look back upon those memories with longing from time to time. It is painful but seldom devastating. There is no unique or special sadness reserved for death over other types of loss. If it is a friend who has suffered long than I am happy that he or she is no longer suffering.

My wife often asks me if I will feel the same way when my own mother finally passes and I could not imagine how I could possibly feel otherwise. What is the alternative? I have no God to find solace in or rage against and raging against the laws of nature would be absurd. That would be like being angry at gravity were she to perish in a plane crash. Perhaps there would be anger at the failings and limitations of modern medicine or of my doctor in particular but unless I planned to go to medical school and make it my mission to find a cure for whatever finally took her that anger would subside and I would be left with nothing but acceptance and eventual healing just like everyone else, regardless of belief. Because once all the usual religious blatherings have been uttered the truth is that we all feel the same pain and loss regardless of what we believe. It is disingenuous to say that those who believe in an after-life suffer less at the death of a loved one than those who do not. I was once a believer and I can tell you that this is bullshit. What we grieve is that our time with them on earth has ended. That we will never again have a meal together or reminisce about old times or share a joke. It is the loss of their company that we mourn not whether or not they are going to Nirvana or inferno or non-existence. We cry because we miss them and that loss is universal.

Atheist Community

2010-10-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

Not every atheist is a militant individualist like me. I have always been different, always been an outsider, and I am just fine with that. I never looked to the church for a sense of comfort and belonging even when I was a believer. Church folk always seemed alien to me. But for many, leaving the safety of the herd is a difficult thing. We are, after all, social animals and for many the church satisfied that need to belong.

As I said in earlier posts, if you are black or Latino, it is even harder because our communities are so closely tied to the church and non-believers are very small minorities within these minorities. Black and Latino atheist are often demonized by their communities, scaring non-believers into silence out of fear of rejection and increasing their feeling of isolation. that is why there are so many atheists in the church and even in the pulpit. They are afraid of leaving the safety of the community, afraid of being judged, ridiculed, maligned, and ostracized.

It feels good to say, "Praise Jesus!" or "Praise the Lord!" and have everyone within earshot say "Amen!" Being in agreement feels better than constant dissonance and most people in America would agree with you were you to make any of the hundreds of vapid religious platitudes like "Have a Blessed Day" or "We are all God's children" or "Jesus was on my side" other such nonsense. The minute you contradict such statements with reason you immediately place yourself outside of the herd. You become the outsider and, in some circles, a social pariah.

So tell you something you don't already know right? What do we do about it? How do we reclaim that sense of belonging? Well, let's take a page from the Lesbian Gay Transgender movement. Like homosexuals, it is not always immediately apparent who is a freethinker and like lesbians and gays if we stay hidden we remain alone and easily oppressed. The solution is to be out, to come out of the closet and band together with other non-believers and free-thinkers.

You would be surprised how many of us there truly are. You would be surprised how many believers are sitting on the fence out of fear, afraid that letting go of these childish fantasies would completely isolate them from the communities they love. Well, it may be time for us to isolate ourselves from these communities and form our own. If they can't accept us then fuck 'em. The church is not the only game in town though it may feel that way if that's how you were raised, if the religious community is the only community you have ever known. Seeing other atheists out there living a happy, healthy, religion-free life with strong friendships and relationships and even a supportive community might give those who remain hidden or uncertain the strength they need to finally let the silliness go. And I don't mean just joining an online group, I mean by being outspoken in your daily life, by speaking out when believers publicly bash non-believers or advocate policies that would force their dogma upon us. I mean by banding together with like-minded individuals in your cities and neighborhoods. Be proud and be visible and form new communities to replace the one you lost when left the church. That's the only way. The way out is not to go back but to go through. Let's go through it together.

Adam and Evolution

2010-10-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

Like many religious people, back when I was a Christian, I still believed in evolution. I somehow resolved the falsehoods I knew to be in the story of creation with the facts I had learned in science about the origins of the species. Like so many other Christians I had chosen to view the story of Adam and Eve as a metaphor for something. I just wasn’t sure for what. With so much overwhelming evidence in support of this theory, I was an adult before I realized that there were still people that doubted evolution. There were people who actually believed in the Garden of Eden. I was shocked when I discovered that there were still people who believed that God created man out of dirt and woman from Adam’s rib. I had assumed that this debate had been decided long ago and there was nothing left to argue. Apparently I was wrong.

Creationists have now loaded their clips with a couple new bullets or should I say, the same bullets made from newer alloys with catchier names. One of these newer bullets that modern day creationists have sought to aim at the heart of evolutionary theory is the idea that there is a lack of transitional species, animals in transition from one species to another (i.e. reptiles to birds) and that this perceived absence disproves or at least casts doubt on the theory of evolution. I watched a debate on TV where the actor turned evangelist, Kirk Cameron of “The Way of The Master” debated the founding members of The Rational Response squad. Kirk proceeded to attack evolution with the “absence of transitional species” argument, holding up a picture of what he called a “Croc-a-duck” to great comedic affect. As absurd as it sounded, it gave the Rational Responders pause. They stumbled. I was surprised. This was an absurd argument.

Any first grader who has read a dinosaur book knows that there are indeed transitional species. The most famous of these is the “lobe-finned” fish, Tiktaalik, which is ancestral to all Tetrapods, all animals with four limbs. That’s the fish that is the intermediary between fish and amphibians that you see crawling out of the water in the beginning of every grade school picture book on dinosaurs. I first became acquainted with this fish in first grade when I read my very first book which just happened to be about dinosaurs.

Tiktaalik lived about 375 million years ago, and had characteristics of both fish and amphibians. It had the scales and gills of a fish, and stubby limbs that were intermediate between fish and Tetrapods. It also had lungs for breathing air in addition to its gills.

Transitioning between reptiles and birds, archeologists have found a number of fossils, most notably Archaeopteryx which lived about 150 million years ago. Archaeopteryx had characteristics of both reptiles and birds. It had a similar bone structure to a reptile including a long bony tail. It had feathered, fully-formed, wings like birds though It’s unknown whether Archaeopteryx was actually able to fly the same way that modern birds do. It may have only been able to glide or hop.
Ambulocetus was an amphibious mammal similar to modern whales, which themselves could be considered transitional species between mammals and amphibians or perhaps even mammals and fish. Ambulocetus lived about 50 million years ago and had characteristics of cloven-hoofed mammals from the Artiodactyla family.

So, obviously, the claim that there are no transitional species is pure bullshit. It works on the faithful because they accept it, like every other claim made by their religious leaders, on faith, without evidence and despite all evidence to the contrary. They don’t check the facts and they ignore the obvious facts around them. Evolution has the credibility that Creationism lacks because you can perform experiments with predictable results based on Evolution. You can’t do that with Creationism. Evolution has predictive power. If evolution is true we should have found fossils of animals going back millions of years in increasingly primitive forms. We have. We find new fossils every year that plug more holes in the fossil record. There is also a very clear way to falsify the theory. For instance, if we were to find human fossils in the pre-Cambrian fossil layer. That would completely explode the Theory of Evolution. But that hasn’t happened. Everything we have found, an overwhelming preponderance of evidence visible in museums in cities all over the US and in many countries around the world, supports the theory and nothing so far contradicts it. That makes continuing to believe in the unfounded hypothesis of creation… well… stupid.

Another upgraded, modernized, repacked bullet the creationist has aimed at evolutionary theory is that of Irreducible Complexity. This is the argument that there are some physical features in the animal kingdom that are necessarily complex and therefore cannot be reduced into anything less complex without becoming dysfunctional thereby proving that it must have always been as it is and therefore could not have evolved. This is another form of William Paley’s Watchmaker Argument.

First published in 1802, William Paley’s Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, introduces one of the most famous analogies in the history of creationism, that of the watch.

“ . . when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive. . . that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. . . . the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use.”

Paley argued that living organisms are even more complicated than watches, "in a degree which exceeds all computation." And therefore must likewise have had a maker, an intelligent designer.

You see in this argument, the self same assumptions and unfounded claims as in its modern descendent, Irreducible Complexity. This new version is merely Paley’s Watchmaker Argument by another name. But let’s deal with this.

One of the common examples given by proponents of irreducible complexity are those of a bird’s wing or of the human eye. The argument goes that a wing cannot be reduced into anything simpler and still permit flight nor could an eye be reduced to anything simpler and still permit sight. Half a wing would be useless as would half an eye. A sightless eye or a flightless wing would give you no biological advantage that would cause those animals with half a wing or half an eye to survive and reproduce more successfully than those without and so these physical attributes would not have survived the natural selection process that evolutionary theorists propose in order to evolve into the eyes and wings we see today and therefore they must not have evolved but must have come into existence as they are. They must have therefore had an intelligent designer who saw the benefits of wings and eyes and so this designer lovingly equipped his creations with these features to help them to better survive and flourish.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? The problem is that there are less complex wings and eyes in nature. Obviously, neither William Paley nor the proponents of Irreducible Complexity have ever heard of flying geckos or flying squirrels. They all possess simple, less complex “wings,” some that are little more than flaps of skin with which they glide from tree branch to tree branch allowing them to capture insects and avoid predators, a definite biological advantage over earthbound creatures. Flatworms have less complex eyes than humans. Their eyes see only shadows and vague silhouettes. Just enough to allow them to maneuver around obstacles. It is easy to see how these simple “eyes,” which have a mere fraction of the capabilities of the human eye, gave them advantages over creatures that were completely sightless. Hawks and eagles have more sophisticated eyes than humans. In comparison, we are working with only half an eye and we haven’t done so bad with our weak little primitive eyes that capture so little of the visual spectrum. I haven’t been hit by a bus yet and I can pick out the silicone from the natural breasts at the local strip club. So goes the Irreducible Complexity argument.

Atheist Horror

2010-08-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

In a recent post,"On Christian Horror and Atheist Dread" http://mikeduran.com/?p=9016 author Mike Duran makes the rather broad and erroneous claim that Atheist horror centers around the fear of "The Great Void."

"A world without meaning and purpose is the ultimate horror. A universe that arose by chance, exists without meaning, where lives plummet toward annihilation is the worst kind of horror."

I would, in fact, assert that the fear he describes is at the heart of Christian Horror and in the entire Christian faith if not all faiths. It is what drives the religious screaming to their church pews and confessionals, clutching their bibles to their bosom. It is what makes them cling to faith and stubbornly resist reason. The atheist simply accepts the void as reality and moves on with his or her life.

This was a very detailed and well-written essay that widely missed the mark. When atheists first awaken to the reality that God and Heaven are mere fairytales, there is a fear of non-existence because we have been taught all of our lives that this is something to fear. This fear does not continue for the rest of our lives. We get over it. It doesn't dominate our writing anymore than it dominates our thoughts.

I wrote an entire short story collection, The Book of A Thousand Sins, eleven stories dealing with religion and society from an aggressively atheistic perspective. Only one of the stories dealt with the fear of "The Void". Most dealt with how terrifying it would be if there was a deity with the personality and abilities of the biblical God, a megalomaniacal, insecure, vain, jealous, capricious, mentally unstable, emotional infant that was omniscient and omnipotent. THAT is terrifying. Other stories dealt with the fear of mankind itself under the influence of religion.

Duran cites H.P. Lovecraft's writings as examples of Atheist horror but Lovecraft is not writing today and his work is hardly indicative of atheist writers in the twenty-first century. George Romero would be closer. What atheists today fear are mindless religious fanatics. The zombies of George Romero's day represented Communism. Today, they represent the mindless hordes of unquestioning believers. And, despite the claim that "“Christian horror” provides a way of escape; “Atheist horror” cannot." We, atheist authors, do offer a way out...REASON! That is the bullet to the brain we wish to gift those hordes of marauding brain-eating religious fanatics with, a ballistic projectile of critical thinking fired with marksman-like precision into the skull cavity of every believer. We don't fear the void. We fear the legions of the ignorant and deluded coming to strip away our rights and freedoms in the name of dogmatic adherence to some ridiculous moral code written by sheep-herders who believed the earth was flat and that demons caused disease.

My own writing usually starts by conceding that God exists. It then asks you to look at the world and consider what type of God would allow the atrocities of which the world is everywhere full, because such a deity would be the true horror. If there were a God that allowed 20,000 children a day to die from curable illnesses and diseases, that allowed child prostitution, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, plagues, child soldiers sent into battle by leaders claiming to be doing His will, priests using their "divine authority" to gain access to children so they can molest them, assured that the church will sheild them from prosecution, droughts, famines, slavery, war, the existence of such a malevolent creature would be far more terrifying than non-existence. There is nothing to fear from non-existence because you will never experience it. You cannot experience nothingness. You will never "feel" not being. So what's to fear? Those who would force you, under threat of physical harm, imprisonment, disenfranchisement, and/or social ostracism to conform to their belief system are the great fear that I, as an atheist, am confronted with each day.

After September 11, the fear of religious fanaticism rose to a fever pitch among atheists and agnostics and even quite a few moderate and liberal believers. Almost immediately, the "zombie" surged as a horror icon, filling the bookshelves. The zombie who marches forward with single-minded determination, heedless of damage to its person or even the threat of annihilation was a perfect metaphor for Jihadists and holy crusaders of all types, the morons who bomb abortion clinics, the assholes who hold up protest signs at gay and military funerals, the heartless bastards that called Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, or the Tsunami in South Asia "God's Judgement". Of course Christians appropriated this symbol as well, writing their own stories where good ultimately triumphs and where science is portrayed as the great evil from which religious faith is the only salvation. However, these stories tended to suck to be perfectly honest. I'm sure there are exceptions, some good Christian zombie novels, I just can't think of one.

Unlike the vampire, who was almost inextricable from Christianity with it's fear of crosses and holy water, the zombie is free of such superstitious trappings and bares an uncanny resemblance to Gay marriage protesters and the guys who knock on your door on Sunday mornings pushing religious pamphlets or the guys in the white shirts and blue pants and ties zipping through your neighborhood on ten-speeds spreading the gospel of Joseph Smith. They are the religious zealots with that mindless gleam in their eyes that makes them resistant to logical arguments. They are the living, walking, rotting, flesh-eating embodiment of everything the atheist fears in religion, loss of identity, will, choice. I shudder just thinking about it.

In novels like Succulent Prey and The Resurrectionist, I challenged the morality of a God that would allow the birth of such monsters as serial killers, humans with the overwhelming compulsion to prey on other humans, and then give them the power to torture and kill. In The Book of A Thousand Sins I challenged everything from God's existence to his morality to the morality of those who profess to worship him. Again, it was religion itself that was the evil rather than its absence. The "Void" is only terrifying when you still hold onto the belief that there is some alternative. In other words, it is only terrifying to the religious and those who have been brainwashed by years of heavy indoctrination to believe that there should be something to fear in annihilation. Once the atheist has rid himself of the last vestiges of faith, the reality of death holds no fear. You only fear the light because you have lived so long in darkness. The light of reason illuminates but it seldom burns.

Goodbye Christ by Langston Hughes

2010-05-15T21:50:00.001-07:00

Published in Negro Worker (Nov.-Dec. 1932)
***
Listen, Christ,
You did alright in your day, I reckon—
But that day’s gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
Called it Bible—
But it’s dead now,
The popes and the preachers’ve
Made too much money from it.
They’ve sold you to too many Kings, generals, robbers, and killers—
Even to the Tzar and the Cossacks,
Even to Rockefeller’s Church,
Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.
You ain’t no good no more.
They’ve pawned you
Till you’ve done wore out.
Goodbye,
Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,
Beat it on away from here now.
Make way for a new guy with no religion at all—
A real guy named
Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME—
I said, ME!
Go ahead on now,
You’re getting in the way of things, Lord.
And please take Saint Ghandi with you when you go,
And Saint Pope Pius,
And Saint Aimee McPherson,
And big black Saint Becton
Of the Consecrated Dime.
And step on the gas, Christ!
Move!
Don’t be so slow about movin?
The world is mine from now on—
And nobody’s gonna sell ME
To a king, or a general,
Or a millionaire.

Spirituality

2010-04-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

There are moments in life that make you feel a part of something larger than yourself. Moments that make you feel connected to nature, humanity, the universe, moments that take you outside of yourself. I have felt those moments many times, when lying on the beach staring out across the ocean, jogging in the mountains, just staring up at the heavens, listening to music, viewing an amazing piece of art, having amazing sex, helping someone in need and feeling their sincere gratitude, performing in front of an appreciative crowd, falling in love, watching the birth of a child. These moments have filled me with awe and wonder and joy. My endorphins flowed freely and dopamine flooded my bloodstream causing an immediate sense of euphoria. Some call this euphoric feeling a "spiritual" moment. I'm not so easily deluded. I recognize it as the chemical reaction it is and nothing more.

Others have achieved similar "spiritual" moments by using natural or even man-made chemicals to stimulate or simulate the production of dopamine in the human body. People who consumed hallucinogenic mushrooms believed to be experiencing spiritual moments. Some Native American tribes used peyote. Many people have used opium or LSD. These chemicals all created physical not spiritual reactions, namely intoxication. Moments and experiences of overwhelming beauty can often be as intoxicating as a hit of cocaine but that is not to suggest that they are anymore "spiritual" than snorting coke off a hooker's ass.

There are many people, including many atheists, who claim to be non-religious but to still consider themselves "spiritual". Sam Harris, author of "Letter to A Christian Nation", claims to be a spiritual atheist. But what does that even mean? Does it mean that they believe in the mind/ body duality? That there is a consciousness independent of the physical body that transcends the physical and may even survive its demise? If so then these spiritual individuals are as self-deluded as Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, Mormons, Hindus, snake worshippers, New Age spiritualists, occultists, etc. They are just as in denial of reality. They are just as much victims of their own fears and desires.

If mind and body are one then the entire notion of spirituality is false. Spirituality is just a work-safe term for sensuality. You are having sensual experiences not spiritual ones. That "spiritual" feeling you get when looking out over the Grand Canyon or at the pyramids or The Sistine Chapel is sensory and mental overload also known as awe. That transcendent "spiritual" feeling you get when falling into or making love is just the body releasing dopamine into your bloodstream. It's the same rush of dopamine you get when you use cocaine or amphetamines. You're high not spiritual! It's the same thing that happens when listening to your favorite band or singer or musician. It's the same thing that you feel while walking through the art museum and viewing the works of the masters.

Extreme physical exertion or pain can also cause the release of endorphins. Runner's high is a prime example of this. When I was fighting I felt no pain during the fight because I was high on endorphins. It's the same thing masochists feel when being whipped and paddled, cut and pierced. It's the same thing yogis and monks feel when they pierce and flog themselves or when they display feats of extreme strength and endurance. They are the same chemicals that Zen monks who can take a punch to the gut or throat without flinching or walk on hot coals or hang weights from their nuts experience. They are called endorphins folks! They feel damn good but there's nothing mystical about them. So stop all this nonsense about spirituality and admit that you eat poison mushrooms and suspend yourself from hooks because that dopamine feels damn good not because it brings you closer to God. There are even endorphins that are released during meditation and prayer, the same ones released when you relax in your favorite chair with a cold drink on a hot day. Ancient Indian meditation rituals, Kama Sutra and Tantric rituals for instance, often involved sex because of the obvious endorphin rush and that flood of dopamine you get when properly stimulated. Just like love, it causes a state of euphoria. I should know because I was once addicted to that particular rush.

All those things that people do to create a spiritual experience are all just attempts to get the brain to produce dopamine. You meditate or do Yoga or hike in the woods. I had sex. Others smoke meth, snort Coke, or take LSD. You're not fucking spiritual. You're just an endorphin junkie.

Good Luck

2010-02-28T03:11:00.000-08:00

1st Century Roman Philosopher Seneca described luck as "What happens when preparation meets opportunity." I have yet to hear a better explanation. Bad luck is what happens to those who are unprepared and watch as opportunities pass them by and more evidently to those who make bad choices. This could not be more obvious but yet many, even many atheists, still believe that when something fortunate happens it is because some positive force in the universe has smiled upon them and worse still, that certain meaningless actions might cause them misfortune. Many still hold superstitions that proclaim certain acts, places, items, dates, times, numbers etc. good luck or bad luck. Broken mirrors, black cats, Friday the 13th, telling a handicap joke, laughing when an old lady trips, cheating on a spouse, etc. Some of these things might make you a jerk but they aren't likely to bring you bad luck. Such superstitious silliness is to be expected from theists but from atheists this adolescent view of the cosmos is rather shocking.

I have seen atheists talk about "jinxing" themselves by speaking of some possibly fortuitous event prior to its happening. I don't mean in that tongue-in-cheek sort of ironic way. I mean seriously. As if they truly believed that they didn't get some job or promotion or date because they spoke of it too early.

I have heard those who profess to having no belief in the supernatural speak of "The Secret" as if they really believed that thinking happy thoughts would attract positive things to them and not in the very understandable way that a positive attitude helps you persevere through adversity or makes you more likable and in that way draws more positive people to you but as if they thought the universe itself would realign itself to provide your fondest wishes if only you believed in it enough. Sounds a lot like religious faith doesn't it?

Anyone who has ever had someone screw them over should know from first hand experience that there is no Karma. Yet I have heard many an avowed unbeliever speak of Karma as if it was a natural law. Anyone who watches the news or has lived at all knows that good shit often happens to some really bad people again and again and again. Your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend who cheated on you will probably not get theirs. They will probably go on to have a great life and cheat on many more people and enjoy the hell out of themselves doing it while you and you alone suffer and lament over your tragic relationship. Where's the Karma?

The kid who bullied you in high school might be on welfare right now or in prison or strung out on drugs somewhere or he might have a great life with a great job and a great family. Karma has nothing to do with it. Your good friend who loves everyone and wouldn't hurt a fly leads a shitty life and your other friend who is just mean and nasty and hurts people's feelings for a laugh is on top of the world. That's life. Just like we tell Xtians, lightning bolts strike churches too. You didn't get passed over for a promotion because you slept with your best friend's lover. You didn't get the job because your boss liked someone else better for it. Period. You didn't trip and fall because you made fun of that handicapped person. You busted your ass because you weren't looking where you were going. Good doesn't just befall the good and bad doesn't just befall the bad. So stop with this Karma silliness. It's unbecoming.

Your lucky shirt, socks, underwear, bracelet, necklace, etc.? Sure you were wearing them when you met your soul mate but you were also wearing them when he or she broke your heart. Sure you were wearing them when you hit that home run but you were also wearing them when you struck out. Sure you were wearing them when you landed that dream job or closed that big deal but you were also wearing them when you got laid off or lost that big client. So wash your damn shirt and throw away those old ass socks. They aren't bringing you luck they're just making you look like an idiot and attracting flies.

You want good luck? Study your craft hard whatever it may be. Be confident and positive and fearless. Be prepared when opportunity comes and leap at it. If and when you miss, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, learn from your mistakes, prepare yourself better next time, and stay alert for the next opportunity and the next and the next. If you fall a hundred times, pick yourself up a hundred times and keep moving forward. That is how success comes. That is how you achieve your desires. Either that or you can wear your lucky drawls and your lucky baseball cap and avoid black cats and broken mirrors and bad karma and wait for the stars to align to make all your dreams come true. Good Luck.

A True Tragedy

2010-01-17T22:08:00.000-08:00

Filmmaker Roman Safiullan (sp?) was in Haiti when the earthquake hit and he immediately ran out and began filming the aftermath of the tragedy. What he caught on film were, as he described, images of people "Screaming and praising Jesus." Screaming and praising Jesus? Tens of thousands of people die in a natural disaster and the survivors are praising Jesus? Praising him for what? For killing their neighbors, family members, and loved ones instead of them?

On FOX News they ran a few seconds of his film showing grief-stricken Haitians falling to their knees and collapsing into one another's arms, crying out for their dead loved ones even as they praised Jesus for his goodness and mercy. My stomach turned. How can anyone praise God in the aftermath of such an atrocity? This is not something that even the most skillful religious apologist could blame on man. You can't blame this on freewill. You can't say that the death of nearly a hundred thousand men, women, and innocent children, babies, was anything but an evil of staggering magnitude or the random act of a random universe adrift in the cosmos with no intelligent hand guiding its course. You could not claim that this was anything but "an act of God" if you are a believer. And so, if this was an act of God, what possible justification could God have for killing tens of thousands of little babies, innocent children, that would still allow a sane and rational person to call this being good by any sensible meaningful definition of the word? What possible spin could anyone place on this tragedy that would lead any sane and rational person to praise God? It is absurd. It is disgusting in fact.

Pat Robertson's claim that God was punishing Haiti for making a pact with Satan was the best they could do. It was the only answer that would make sense if you accept the Christian belief system as true. Either God is evil and his destruction of Haiti and murder of countless innocents is to be condemned or the Haitians were evil right down to the smallest child and even the unborn children crushed by falling rubble in their mother's womb and God's punishment of them was just. There is no other way to look at this tragedy. And if you take the position that even those tiny babies crushed beneath collapsing buildings were evil and deserving of God's wrath than you are neither sane nor rational nor moral in any meaningful sense of the word.

The true tragedy here is that the survivors in Haiti who have been left to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake are in many cases blaming themselves. They believe that God's wrath has come upon them. Some even believe Pat Robertson's idiotic claim that their political leaders made a pact with Satan. Some blame other perceived sins, drinking, gambling, fornication, taking the Lord's name in vain, adultery, promiscuity, homosexuality, idolatry, worshipping false gods, witchcraft. According to Fox News, many religious Haitians see the disaster as "God asking for change." Now, I'm not all-knowing but I know that there are better ways of asking for change than slaughtering thousands of innocent people. What would you think of me were I to murder half of my wife's friends and family in order to ask her to change her ways? You'd think me a lunatic. What would my justification be?

"Well, you wouldn't return any of my phone calls."

The news also quoted Rev. Eric Toussaint telling a congregation gathered outside a ruined cathedral that the earthquake "is a sign from God, saying that we must recognize his power." Haitians, he said, "need to reinvent themselves, to find a new path to God."

Religious idiocy. If God was just flexing his muscles so that we would recognize his power than God is a tyrant and a bully and the faithful are all fools and cowards for worshipping him. Others in Haiti's religious community believe the quake was the result of God's anger toward the corruption of the mostly light-skinned political leaders of Haiti. They site the destruction of numerous government buildings as proof of this. Voodoo practitioners believe it was the corruption of the Catholic Church that caused this and point to the numerous churches destroyed by the quake as evidence. But of course it was not just Catholics and light-skinned Haitians who suffered in the quake which, had that been the case, might have given these theories some credibility. All of Haiti suffered, the religious and non-religious, light and dark skinned, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, Agnostic, and Voodun. This was an unpredictable act of nature not some cosmic judgement brought down by a celestial being. But the religious apologists would rather the Haitians believe that this disaster was somehow their fault. That is the only way they can rectify this terrible tragedy with their misguided beliefs. They would blame anything but God. They would do anything but admit the obvious reality that there is no God. That everything about their existence, about all of our existence here on this planet, including this tragedy, is evidence of God's non-existence. That is the tragedy. This is why I call religion an embarrassment. This is why I am embarrassed to see my people blinded and brainwashed by this idiocy. That is why this blog exists.

Why I Still Celebrate Christmas

2009-12-27T09:31:00.000-08:00

I know many atheists who no longer celebrate Christmas because of its religious origins. Some, instead, celebrate Winter Solstice or some other psuedo-pagan nonsense. Me? I celebrate a couple days off of work and an excuse to give and recieve gifts from my loved ones the same way I always have. There's a tree with ornaments and lights. There is garland and wreaths and images of Santa Claus and elves and reindeer. I fight the crowds at the malls and toy stores in order to pack presents under the tree and give that annual boost to the economy. No where present is the tortured effigy of Jesus. No where is there any mention of the bible or Christianity. And there never has been. I can go in and out of malls, stores, businesses, and homes all day long and did I not already know that Christmas was supposed to be about the birth of Christ I would find few reminders. This has never been a religious holiday for me. It has always been about giving and receiving presents. The spirit of giving? Maybe? Rampant consumerism and greed? Definitely. And I, like you, am a consumer. Christmas is the ultimate celebration of consumerism. It is a capitalist holiday.

They celebrate Christmas in the least religious countries in the world because it is fun and a great boost for economies. You see Christmas trees in Tokyo and Hong Kong. That doesn't make them Christians. I have heard Christians even attempt to make the argument, as ridiculous as it is, that celebrating Christmas somehow implies that you still believe deep down as does screaming out "Jesus Christ!" when you're angry or "Oh God!" when you're about to bust a nut. I do both of those by the way. I don't feel I need to change the time honored tradition of using the Christian god's name in vain at moments of ecstasy or exasperation just because the guy is a myth. It's not a prayer. It's an exclamation, an expletive. If I yell out "Holy Shit!" that does not somehow imply a belief in the sanctity of excrement. And sticking a star on top of a Chrsitmas tree does not imply that I believe three wise men followed a star to where a virgin had been raped by a diety and had given birth to that diety's bastard child.

I celebrate Easter too. I buy the baskets and fill them with eggs and candy for my kids. I buy them new Easter clothes and guess what? There's no mention of Christ. There's nothing hardly anywhere to suggest that Easter was about anything but chocolate bunnies and colored eggs. Coloring eggs and biting the ears off of marshmallow peeps does not imply a belief that Christ rose from the grave anymore than it implies a belief that a large intelligent bunny runs all over the world filling baskets with eggs and candy. It too is a consumer holiday, another chance for retailers to sell us things in quantities we would not normally buy. Like beer on St. Patty's Day. I ain't Irish either.

So, I don't feel compelled to renounce all things even remotely tainted by religion. I don't even feel the need to co-opt these holidays and pervert them in some way. Capitalism has already done that. I just reap the benefits and have fun playing Santa.

What Kind Of Parent Would God Be?

2009-10-29T01:16:00.000-07:00

Unconditional love is one of the things we expect of a loving parent. We expect them to love us no matter how badly we fuck up. We do not expect them to abandon us or punish us excessively for our failings. We do not expect them to brutalize and abuse us for our character flaws or even our disobedience. Patience and understanding are two of the qualities we consider to be the primary virtues of a good and loving parent. So what would Jesus do with a disobedient child? What kind of parent would God be?

God condemns his children to eternal torment in hell for disobeying him. He demanded the crucifixion of his own son as some sort of vicarious punishment for the disobedience of his other creations. WTF? What kind of barbaric asshole would torture one child because of the failings of another? What kind of parent would torture any of his children? A very, very bad one. The type that should never have children and should have all of their children immediately removed and themselves sterilized.

When my first child was born I asked myself if I was ready to give of myself unconditionally, expecting nothing in return, not even gratitude. Because gratitude is something that children learn. They aren't born with it. Children think it is your job and your duty as a parent to give them the things they need and want. They will tell you that you aren't their friend anymore because you don't buy them something they wanted. They may even tell you they hate you. But we love them still. That's what a good parent does. But what would God do? What does the bible have to say about unconditional love?

Out of one side of Jesus's mouth he talks about God's love and out of the other his Wrath. God sends you to eternal torment for not loving and worshipping him. He threatens rather than advises. Punishes rather than corrects. And his punsihments are neverending.

If my son or daughter asks me a question I try to answer it to the best of my ability. If they need advice I give it. If they need a shoulder to cry on or just a hug I give it. God is silent. God answers no questions. Gives no hugs or comfort. Says no soothing words. Offers no consolation. Tell me what God has said to you about the guy who cheated on you with your best friend? Tell me what he says about losing your house to foreclosure? About the loss of a job? The death of a loved one? Not what the bible says. What did God say to you personally? What kind of father would I be if my son or daughters wanted my advice or to hear some comforting words from me and I just pointed them to a book without uttering a word?

God is the ultimate absentee father. So why do we call this deadbeat dad perfect? God would have his kids taken away by Child Protective Services were he human. Aren't we the lucky ones that this bum does not exist? That question was rhetorical. I know the answer and so do you.

Tomorrow (First published 10/21/08 on Words of Wrath)

2009-08-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

I have, at long last, discovered the meaning of life. It is not anything as lofty or poetic as living to do the will of some omnipotent deity or to go to paradise after you die. It is not as ideological as living for the betterment of humanity or to build an enduring legacy. It is very simple, very basic, and true of all of us but I will try my best to make it sound poetic and grandiose.

I have often said that we must strive to find the meaning of life because existence demands a toll from us in blood, sweat, and tears, stress and anxiety, sorrow and pain, and therefore we must ask the value of that which we suffer so dearly to maintain. It must be valuable enough to justify all the distress, fear, anxiety, and dissapointment we suffer in order to continue inhaling and exhaling day after day and year after year, struggling to acquire the commodities of existence. I have said this and because of these statements I have exhausted myself in search of some grand prize when all along the answer lay within me. All I had to do was imagine killing myself and think of the very reasons that I resist the notion, the same reasons that we all resist self destruction. Curiosity. Hope. We all want to see tomorrow out of sheer curiosity and hope for a better tomorrow. We are gamblers betting that the next hand will be the jackpot. It is the mystery of what tomorrow may bring that motivates us to keep moving forward. Why do we live? The answer is simple. To see another day. To see tomorrow.

When you imagine terminating your existence you think about how you will miss your friends or your family and how you won't see your kids grow up or your grandkids be born or the results of all your efforts or how the world will change and move on without you. You don't do it because tomorrow might be better than today. Religion fulfills this by giving you hope that there might be other tomorrows in the afterlife. But where there is no curiosity the will to live is defeated. Certainty is the cause of all suicide.

That seems like an extreme statement but look at it objectively. From religious martyrs to the clinically depressed to the hero who lays down his life for his country, without certainty they would find themselves unable to defeat the will to live which, as I have stated, is little more than curiosity about and hope for tomorrow. The suicide believes that tomorrow will be the same or worse than today. They are certain that their pain will never end. That they will never find happiness. There is no curiosity or hope. There is certainty that life is hopeless. The religious martyr is certain of heaven. He is certain that he will enter paradise, spend eternity with God, get his 72 virgins. The hero who faces death without fear is certain that his story will be told. He is certain that his legend will endure or that he too will go to heaven. He is certain that without his sacrifice the war would be lost and his loved ones would suffer. True, many heroes die in battle without martyring themselves and they are no less heroes but I am not talking about those who expect to survive and die fighting for their last breath. I am talking about those who willing throw themselves on the grenade certain that their sacrifice will not be in vain.

I, like all of you, wake up every day hoping for a better day and often fearful that the day will be worse, but as long as there is hope that the day will be better, that the future will be brighter, I have to keep going. I want to write the next book and see if this will be the one that wins awards and becomes a bestseller. I want to see if I ever attain that spark of entrepeneurial genius that will make me independently wealthy. I want to see if my son and my daughters will grow up to be happy, healthy, and successful. I want to see the culmination of all of my efforts. I want to live to see new scientific discoveries and the advancement of technology. I want to see how far society progresses, if we solve global warming, world hunger, world peace, renewable energy. I want to hear the new music trends, see the new fashion trends. Hell, I want to see who wins the next big prize-fight. I want to see tomorrow and that's the reason I suffer and struggle through vexations and dissapointments and boredom and pain to see the sun rise each morning. That's why we all live, for that one simple reason, to see tomorrow.

That Loving Feeling ( First posted 11/29/08 on Words of Wrath)

2009-08-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

Faith is a very emotional thing. Despite the attempts by Christian apologists to do so, it really cannot be logically defended. The practice of believing without evidence and against all contradictory evidence, really is the antithesis of scientific investigation based on logic, reason, and empirical evidence. In that regard, it is very similar to other often irrational emotional responses like trust and love. As such, it is just as easily misled, just as easily twisted and deceived and abused, and just as often wrong. Still, for many, the answer to the question of "Why do you believe?" is a simple one.

Because I can feel God's love. I know God is there because I have felt his presence in my life.

In the end, after all the arguments have been made, all the evidence and clever analogies presented, and all the counter-arguments refuted, many believers will fall back on the one thing it is believed that logic cannot assail, their own subjective feelings and experiences,

I know there is a God because I have felt him there when I needed him. I have felt God's love when I was at my lowest and it gave me the strength to survive.

I'm sure we have all heard some version of this argument. Usually, the discussion ends right there. This is the part of the discussion over which logic and reason are assumed to hold no sway. How can you argue with some one's feelings? But don't we do just that all the time? Don't we argue with the woman who feels that her abusive husband really loves her? Wouldn't we argue with the child who felt in his heart that he was worthless and would never amount to anything? Wouldn't we argue with the aging fighter who had already begun to slur his words, suffering the first signs of pugilistic dementia, who still believed with all his heart and soul that he could be champion again? Would we accept as evidence of truth, the feelings of a teen aged couple who believed that they were destined to be in love for ever because they could feel the love burning in their chests more powerfully and passionately than even the most pious and devout believer? Or would we instead believe that they were mistaken, that their feelings were wrong, that they would fall in and out of love many times in their lives and that what they were feeling now was no evidence of anything real or eternal. Wouldn't we argue with and eventually seek therapy for a person if they believed that a celebrity they had never met was secretly in love with them and that they had a personal relationship with this celebrity, a bond that no one else would understand, because they could feel this celebrity's love so powerfully they knew it had to be real? Why are their feelings any less real or valid than the person who believes that they have a personal relationship with God because they can feel God's love?

In any church you will find cynical men and women who have lost all faith in romantic love and have instead turned to the love of God to replace what they could not find in their fellow human beings. It is surprising that those very same individuals who have grown the most skeptical of human love still embrace this nebulous feeling of "Divine love" with absolute unquestioning certainty. It is so surprising because we find so many reasons, and often rightly so, to doubt the love of those physically present in our lives.

We question the love of the women who bare us children, cook our meals, help us pay the bills and sometimes support us financially when we are unable to support ourselves or leave the work place to take care of our homes, nurse us when we are sick, embrace us when we are sad, reassure us when we are uncertain, laughs with us and makes love to us. Yet the God who has never held us in his arms, who has never spoken kind words to us and reassured us when we were feeling weak and uncertain, whose voice we have never even heard, his love goes unquestioned. Does this make sense?

Often, we find that we were correct to question the love of the women in our lives. We find that the love we thought we had, had long died, or been taken by another, or had never been present at all. Despite the love we thought we felt coming from them, it had all been a lie.

Women question the love of the man who physically protects and provides for them and their children, who pledges that he would die for them, who listens to their woes and provides them a strong shoulder to cry on and a few words of assurance, who struggles beside them and for them, removing obstacles from their path, and often they are right for being cautious and suspicious. This same loving man often reveals himself to be unfaithful, abusive, lazy, selfish, and unloving.

How often has a woman believed that a man loved them who was only after casual sex? If you asked them they would swear that the man really loved them right up until the phone stopped ringing or they caught him with other women. When they cry to you about him, how often do they tell you how clearly they had felt his love, and how they had felt certain that the two of them would be together forever?

How often has a man believed that a woman loved him who was only after his money? Believed it with all his heart until the day he lost his job and his money and found himself abandoned? So, if the love of someone that you can see, touch, and hear, who clearly demonstrates their love to you again and again is not certain and can be merely an illusion, how much less certain should be the love of a being that you can not see, hear, touch, or smell, who has never caressed you, held you in his arms, nursed you when you were sick or wounded, fed you when you were hungry, protected you, kissed the tears from your eyes, whose voice you have never heard actually say the words "I love you", whose eyes you have never seen fill with love as those words passed from their lips?

How often has a woman been harassed by a man who swore that she loved him and just didn't know it because he could feel her love? How often has a man been plagued by some woman he considered little more than a booty-call who swore that he really loved her because she could feel it when they made love, she could feel it when he looked in her eyes, when they kissed? I've been there many times myself. It ain't pretty. The fanatacism of women like that is the same as religious fanatacism. Isn't that the very definition of a stalker? Someone who feels with absolute certainty a love that does not exist?

I won't rehash my entire argument against miracles except to say that for every time you believe that you could not have survived but for the presence of Jesus in your life, you should look around you at all those non-believers like myself who have survived the same and worse. You should think about all those non-believers who have survived brushes with death or rescued themselves or been rescued from hardships without appeal to any higher power. Then think of all those who were not rescued, both faithful and faithless alike. Think about the thousands of believers who died in 911, Katrina, the Tsunami, the young children all around the world who are dying as we speak with prayers on their tongues. Think of all those times you were not rescued, when you have fallen victim to tragedy, hardship, injury, and despair. Where was God's love then?

So what can we say about this loving feeling? What can we say about that feeling deep in your heart and soul that God loves and cares for you? I would say that, that feeling means absolutely nothing. It is evidence of nothing in reality and says nothing about the world around you but only speaks to your own fears and desires. Just as we demonstrated with the feeling of human love, our emotions are easily fooled. Fear and desire, religion's most powerful tools, are also the tools of pimps, players, gold-diggers, conmen, magicians, marketing advertisement execs, and all manner of tricksters. Our senses can be easily deceived by these emotions. We want something so badly that we believe it exists. We begin to feel that it exists. It is no different then the dehydrated traveler seeing an oasis in the desert or a lonely man fantasizing that he is a relationship with a pop-star or a child believing that the father who abandoned him will be coming home any day now because he can feel it in the core of his being or the feelings we used to get at Christmas when we were young and believed that Santa was coming, that feeling that our parents told us was the spirit of Christmas but was little more than the desire for toys. But for the individuals experiencing them these emotional experiences seem unquestioningly real. Still, an objective evaluation of the situation would clearly reveal them to be delusional. That is why reason, evidence, and logical arguments, must guide our beliefs and ideas rather than irrational unverifiable feelings and emotions which are the most unreliable and easily confused and misled so-called sources of knowledge. Think about those thousands of talentless hacks who show up for the American Idol auditions season after season convinced that they are going to be the next pop icon because they can feel it in their souls and then tell me what credibility any sane person could possibly give to emotions.

Recovering from Religion

2009-08-04T22:56:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I attended a discussion on the ways that religion insinuates itself into our minds and procreates itself by infecting others. The seminar was conducted by Darrel W. Ray, author of the The God Virus. Darrel Ray runs a website called RecoveringReligionist.com that helps people to deprogram from religious brainwashing. The following is from their "Purpose and Principles".

Preamble

Having awakened our ability to think clearly and logically, we wish to apply the principles of rational thinking and the scientific method to our lives. Religion was often given to us as children, by well meaning parents, before we had the conscious tools to question or resist. We may also have been religiously infected during times of stress when seeking social support. Our purpose is to provide support to each other as we uncover myths and superstitions that have governed so much of our past thinking and behavior. Our purpose is NOT to convert anyone to any organization or group, but to question superstition and irrational ideas when we encounter them. To that end, we propose these ten guiding principles for RR.

1. We recognize that we have the power to identify and eliminate irrational ideas and that our lives are manageable without religion and superstition.

2.We experience the power of rational thinking and recognize that the scientific method can help us reduce and eliminate supernatural ideas and religious infection. We are our own “myth busters.”

3. We are ready and willing to pursue lives based on reason, truth, self examination and integrity.

4. We have made an analytic inventory of our ideas and beliefs and dispensed with those that were based upon superstition and myth.

5. We have admitted to ourselves and to each other that we have been prisoners of myth, superstition, and prejudice born out of religion.

6. We have made a list of all persons we hurt (through judgement or condemnation) because we disapproved of their religious beliefs or their lack of beliefs. We have made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

7. We will work tirelessly to keep religious prejudice from infecting our judgments of people and the world.

8. We will examine the sources of our feelings of guilt and determine if they come from inappropriate religious training. If so, we will strive to eliminate them.

9.We will seek through rational discussion and debate to improve our relationships with all people, believers, non-believers, and unbelievers.

10. We will live by an ethic that values humanity and human relationships above dogma and superstition.

The same religious "virus" that Mr. Ray identifies has infected our people and continues to replicate itself in generation after generate with all the virulence of Diabetes, AIDS, or Heart Disease. This religious mania is as much an addiction as crack, heroine, or alcohol and affects our community in much the same way as these mind-numbing agents. With so many of our people still infected with this curse we need a recovery program. We need an exit strategy. In the next few months I will be working on just that. Stay tuned.

Not Every Head Shall Bow

2009-06-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

Were I the smartest man in the world, the sexiest man, the best athlete, the most creative and most successful, and yet I demanded that all of my friends and loved ones continually tell me how smart, sexy, athletic, and talented I was, observers would immediately spot the flaw in my character. My weakness would be glaringly apparent. Such Narcissism would immediately indicate issues of insecurity and low self-esteem. Most people would consider such behaviors pathetic and find me intolerable to be around. The demand for constant praise and reassurance is a sign of doubt and weakness and we recognize it as such except when it comes to our imaginary deities. Such a flaw is pitiful and obnoxious enough in a man but in a god?

The idea that an omnipotent creator would require its inferior creations to constantly praise and fawn over him, write hymns and prayers celebrating his virtues, build shrines and temples and perform complex rituals in celebration of his omnipotence is a silly one. It is ridiculous. It is near definitive proof that religion is man made, a reflection of man's own insecurities. Why would a being that dwarfs the universe care if you prostrated yourself before him every night? Why would an all-powerful being care if you repeated prerehearsed compliments in concert with a few dozen acquaintances at the same time every week? Why would he require that you continually reaffirm how great he is and how flawed and unworthy you are and reward those who were the most flattering and self-effacing, those who debased and degraded themselves the most, those who showed the lowest self-esteem? Why would such a being need his ego stroked? And what self-respecting person would give in to such egotistical demands? What type of submissive slave would so willingly prostrate themselves before such an egomaniac? What degree of cowardice and self-loathing must this take?

The idea of worship and God's seemingly fetishistic need for it should discount any notion of God's perfection. This is a great and obvious character flaw. It is God wearing his insecurities on his sleeve.

The demand for subservience and submission that seems to be a prerequisite of all religions is more indicative of a totalitarian regime than of an ideology of love and peace. These are the egoistic mandates of a dictator, a fascist, not of a loving father. These are the demands of the master to his slave or pet. The idea that any Black person in America would so willing submit to this type of slavery, so willingly bow to even a benevolent master, is surprising and, quite frankly, embarrasing. It makes my stomach turn to see my people on their knees begging and groveling before their imaginary overseer. It is the very definition of the happy slave. It is Uncle Tom smiling and tap-dancing to please his massa.

A loved one dies and the faithful praise God for his mercy. They lose their jobs, their homes, their savings, catch debilitating diseases, suffer any number of tragedies both minor and major and still this imaginary deity demands that they flatter and thank him for not making them suffer even greater tragedies and the faithful eagerly comply, cowering and quivering in fear, drooling in adoration of their abusive parent-figure like whipped dogs that kiss the hand that smacks them. This is the very definition of tyranny, yet rather than resistance which would be considered the honorable response to any earthly despot, it is expected that you would respond to this fanciful creation with praise? It is considered a virtue to bow to this tyrant and evil to question even the most amoral and absurd of the biblical laws. Again, what coward would consider such a response virtuous? Who but the biggest pussy on earth would, after even a momentary examination of what this great overseer above demands of his slaves would respond with anything but scorn and rebellion?

"Tell me again how wonderful I am. Tell me I'm great. Tell me about how pathetic, wretched and worthless you are and how magnanimous I am to even tolerate your existence."

Great guy this God. Well, here's my answer to this imaginary tyrant, this man-made overseer. FUCK YOU! I don't bow to anyone. Stroke your own damn ego. Even if God were more than simply the manifestation of man's fears and desires, even were he a living being and every word of the bible true, the act of worship would still be unjustified, unwarranted, and pathetic. It would still be pitiful,cowardly and disgusting and any deity that would demand this of their creations would be anything but benevolent. The act of worship would still be beneath me and should be beneath all of us, especially my Black brothers and sisters who struggled for so many centuries to free themselves of their masters but now so wretchedly grovel at the feet of a master who is little more than a myth, a lie, a sham. We ought to be ashamed. We ought to be embarrased. I hope to see the day when every knee finally unbends, when every head is finally held high and every man and woman learns to stand on their own without need of illusions. When mankind emerges from its emotional and intellectual infancy and finally shrugs off its dependence on imaginary gods and accepts that humanity alone is responsible for its own destiny. When we can accept that there are no all-powerful puppet masters pulling our strings and understand and acknowledge the cause and affect relationships between our own choices and decisions and their consequences and not look to imaginary beings to rescue us when we fuck up. When we can accept that God is a creation of man and not the other way around and finally sacrifice this myth to the good of humanity after millenia of humanity sacrificing itself to imaginary god's. Wake up. Wake the fuck up!

Faithless

2009-06-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

It has been said recently by believers and even, surprisingly, a few agnostics, that everyone has faith. A recent acquaintance made this remark "... I, personally, don't believe there is such a thing as atheism--but more agnostic[s]. Atheism means without faith, correct? But everyone has faith and belief! Whether it's in God, or [themselves], or faith and belief that if they drop something-it will fall... " This seems to be an increasingly popular opinion. My good friend and ideological antithesis, Maurice Broaddus has expressed a similar opinion saying "We are both men of faith in our ways" and my friend and mentor in the writing business, Brian Keene, during a panel on "religious and secular influences in horror" made an almost identical statement about me having faith which allows me to enter the ring and fight.

This word "faith" has been expanded to encompass more than the word was ever intended to in an effort to justify itself. Faith is belief without evidence. Merriam-Webster describes it as:

1 a: allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1): fidelity to one's promises (2): sincerity of intentions 2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust 3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs

None of these definitions describe what allows me to enter the ring confident of a win or what allows me to believe that if I drop something that it will fall. A firm belief in something for which there is no proof would not move me to fight another 250lb man using knees, elbows, punches, and kicks. Hard training and a history of knocking opponents on their asses in the gym, the street, and in the ring is the only thing that could make me agree to take such a fight.

There is a difference between faith, inductive reasoning, hope, and calculated risks. Let me start by defining inductive reasoning so that you can see how greatly it differs from the wishful, magical thinking that is faith.

Inductive reasoning is defined as the inference of a generalized conclusion based on a series of particular instances. It is drawing probable conclusions based on statistical evidence. To apply this to my fighting career, when I walk into the ring it is not faith that instills me with the confidence that I will probably win but the fact that I have won numerous times in the past. An 18 and 6 record with 15 knockouts means that there is a high statistical probability that I will knockout my next opponent but this is not a certainty and I know this. I have lost on six occasions. That means that there is a statistical possibility even though less of a probability of me losing again and I know this. I have no delusions. Unlike the faithful, I am aware of the possibility that I could be wrong, that I might lose despite all of my hard training and past accomplishments. The fact that I have trained hard, done my roadwork, my bag work, my pad work, crushed one sparring partner after another makes me confident of my chances but I am still aware of the fact that my opponent has likely trained just as hard and also believes himself to have a good chance of victory based on his own past accomplishments. I hold no delusions of a guaranteed victory unlike the faithful and when I win I do not thank God or Allah or Buddha or Krishna. I thank my trainers and sparring partners and maybe even the fans and judges.

This is also true of the Law of Gravity. My belief in gravity is not faith. That's a rather curious and absurd accusation. The belief that one might break the Laws of Gravity would require faith but believing in something that conforms to all the known facts and everything else in my experience requires no faith. As I said, it would require faith not to believe in it. The fact that everything in my experience, with the exception of things like helium balloons which are lighter than air, has fallen when dropped gives me more than a statistical probability but near certainty that if I drop something which is not lighter than air that it will also fall. It is simple inductive reasoning. Everything that I have dropped has fallen therefore if I drop this object it will also fall. There is no faith involved in this conclusion.

A calculated risk is a chance taken after careful estimation of the probable outcome. Last year, at the age of 37, I entered the ring again after a four-year retirement. The day before my fight I caught a cold. I knew very little about my opponent. Some may say that my choice to fight him anyway despite all the obstacle against me, age, inactivity, a chest cold, was an act of faith, faith in myself. This was not faith but a calculated risk. I was counting on the fact that I would have retained some of my former talent, enough to win. I was thinking of those 17 past victories. I was thinking of those 15 opponents that I had previously rendered unconscious. I was thinking about how I looked in sparring and counting on my skill, my experience, and my physical strength to win the day. I weighed the evidence for and against the chances of me winning and I took the risk. My calculated risk paid off and I won every round against an overmatched opponent. Had it ended differently I would have simply smiled, shook my opponent's hand and said, "Oh well, I tried my best." I would have accepted the loss for what it was not the judgement of the divine or of fate but my own failing.

When I get into my car and take it on the freeway at 70 miles an hour I am taking a calculated risk based on the fairly low statistical probability of me getting into a fatal accident based on the relatively few such accidents when compared with the millions of drivers on the road and the fact that of the thousands of times that I have driven on the freeway I have had no high-speed collisions. I make the same reassuring mental calculations when getting on airplanes and rollercoasters. No faith involved. If it did, in fact, require faith to get onto airplanes, rollercoasters, and America's freeways because there was no evidence at all that such actions were safe then I would simply not do them. That's why I don't shoot heroine or smoke cigarettes. Because all evidence indicates that these practices are unsafe. Doing these things despite this evidence would require either faith or stupidity which by all accounts are nearly synonymous.

In March of last year I decided to take another fight. I knew that I had been much slower in my comeback fight earlier that year but I chalked it up to being 9 or 10 pounds above my ideal weight and being rusty from inactivity. So, I dropped down to 229 pounds and fought in Chuck Norris's World Combat League. I was hoping that I still had it. I had no faith just a burning desire to return to the speed and athleticism of my youth. I was, of course, aware of the possibility that it had not been my weight or the inactivity that had slowed my reflexes in my previous fight but rather my age. Still I had hope and courage. I wanted to believe that I still had it but I was only slightly surprised when I missed a left hook in the opening seconds of the first round and ate a perfectly timed right hand that dropped me onto my back. These things happen. Anyone who enters the ring knows that there is the possibility of serious injury, contusions, lacerations, broken bones, concussions, and even death. It is the price we pay to do what we love, for that chance of victory, fame, and glory. We all know that we, even the best of us, can be knocked out at anytime.

Some people play the lottery because they hope that they will win even knowing the staggering odds against it. Others play it convinced that they will win, seemingly unmindful of the odds against them. These are usually the ones who tell you that they read it in their horoscope or tarot cards or had a dream or that God told them they would win. The former are merely hopeful while the ladder are faithful. Faith is belief without evidence and against all contradictory evidence. Common sense made my old ass retire again after my loss, saving me much future embarrassment and perhaps irreparable physical damage. Faith keeps an old and vastly diminished Evander Hollyfield still climbing in the ring for fights convinced that God has proclaimed that he will be the undisputed world heavyweight champion again. Faith will undoubtedly turn his story into a tragedy.

The faithful do not accept the possibility that their God may at any time be proven false. They do not accept the possibility that their bible may at any moment be proven to be a piecemeal collection of conflicting and often contradictory myths and fairytales from the illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious. They do not accept the possibility that their prayers may be vain words spoken to empty air, little more than, as Bill Maher once said "wishing it were so". They do not accept the possibility that they have been brainwashed and deluded since birth by their parents, families, culture and society to believe in the nonsensical. Their beliefs are not based on statistical probabilities. They are not based on facts. They are not calculated risks. They are not merely hopes. These are the blind unsubstantiated convictions of the willfully ignorant. Faith, like romantic love, is blind. It is irrational. It requires no evidence and none can refute it. And just like love, faith is most often misguided and wrong. The faithful, like the infatuated, are often so overcome with emotion that they cannot see the obvious. They are heedless of the evidence against their belief and are defensive and hostile toward any attempt to point out the errors in their convictions. The very fact that any hypothesis requires faith as a neccessary condition of its belief should be proof enough of its falsehood.

So, do we all act on faith? Not I. Does everyone have faith? Again, I at the very least, do not and it would appear that many many others also do not have faith whether it is in imaginary megalomaniacal sky fathers or witches or unicorns or winning lottery numbers or the perfect man or woman. Some of us rely on evidence to form our opinions and in the absence of evidence we hope and take calculated risks and often fail but accept and learn from those failures and alter our opinions accordingly.

Coming Out

2009-05-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

Letting go of the myth of God is difficult in itself. Many of us grew up in the church. We grew up praying to God daily, confessing our sins, asking for guidance, and praying for strength. We kept a running monologue going on in our heads only we thought of it as more of a conversation, a conversation with a very quite and attentive listener who just let us ramble on without interrupting. Like a therapist who just sat back, encouraging us to talk and work out our problems for ourselves. But we always believed that there was someone listening. Realizing that there was no one on the other end of the prayer phone was hard enough for most of us, accepting that there was no grand puppetmaster controlling our lives, that the universe had no great plan for us, was painful for many of us. Accepting that we had to create our own meaning for our lives, that our successes and failures were our own, the product of our own decisions was terrifying but not nearly as terrifying as telling our family about our new epiphanies.

I didn't so much come out of the closet as I came out of the cage, roaring like a lion, determined to spill the blood of religion and rend the flesh from the bones of faith. I was a self-proclaimed militant atheist.

I had lost my faith two years before I had the proper words to express it. It was 1988, the year I graduated from high school that I became an atheist but I had no idea what that meant. I felt lost and forlorn and was desperately searching for some faith to replace my lost belief in the Christian God. I started hanging out with punk rockers on the streets of Philadelphia. They were all atheists as well so I assumed that they must have had some insight into what one did when they stopped believing in God. I was wrong of course. It wasn't until I left for college and met philosophy students who had been studying these questions that I began to get some understanding of what it meant to give up my faith, the world of wonder that opened up when you stopped believing and began to question.

Two philosophy students at Antioch College, Gustave Shultz and Chris Dimatto, were the first to introduce me to critical thinking and philosophical speculation. The next year I switched from a Creative Writing major to a Philosophy major and began to read the writings of Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Kierkegaard, Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Rene' Descartes. I read everything I could get my hands on from Socrates and Plato to Herman Hesse and Buddha. It was then that I began to realize that I was not alone in my confusion. It was apparent that after more than two thousand years of inquiry no one had yet come up with the answers. The meaning of life remained a mystery and all the religions, philosophies, and ideologies that professed to the possession of some knowledge in regards to the meaning of life were all full of shit.

I was outraged by this realization. I was angry. How could they not know? How could no one in the history of man have answered these questions? All those libraries, all those books, all those professors with their PHDs and, worst of all, all of those priests, pastors, preachers, and spiritual leaders, none of them knew any more than I did. They were all clueless. How could this be? I looked at all those religious zealots with their faith and certainty and I wanted to wake them all up. I wanted to tell them all what I now knew. Because to me, they were all the problem. The reason no one had found the answers was because there were so few of us looking. Most people were content to remain ignorant. They were content to believe what was written in their so-called holy books even if it made no sense and conflicted with all the known facts of the universe. They had to be woken up and so I made it my mission. I called my mother almost every night and we argued about religion. I argued with everyone I could find. I was angry at the world's stupidity and I wanted to drag them all out into the sunshine of reason even if the sunlight burned their fragile skin and caused them to spontaneously combust like vampires.

It wasn't until I went home for Christmas that year, full of fight, that I realized what my new awareness had gained me. I could no longer relate to my own family. They were all tucked comfortably inside their illusions. I looked at my grandmother and all the comfort she took in her faith and I did not have the heart to tell her. I even eased up off my mother. A few years later, my mother called my sister and I and announced that she wanted to become a minister. To this day I often wonder if it was debating with me about religion that drove my mother back to the church. She had always believed but had never been very serious about Christianity. I wonder if my attempts to take God away from her entirely is what sent her screaming into the arms of her imaginary father. I hardly know her now. She knows exactly how I feel about her religion and her faith. We just don't discuss it anymore. I don't discuss it with any of my relatives. I leave them to their illusions. They don't preach to me and I don't preach to them.

So what's your story? How did you come out to your family about your lack of belief? What was the result? Share your tales with us and perhaps it will help others who are still lurking in the shadows to find their voices and declare their unbelief. Let's hear from you.

Atheism Sermon

2009-05-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I participated in a religious discussion at Trinity church in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was to give a sermon on atheism followed by a sermon on Christianity by my good friend, author and pastor, Maurice Broaddus. Originally billed as a debate, after the head pastor withdrew it became more of a "This I believe". I was more than a little surprised by the overwhelmingly positive response. What follows is my entire unabridged speech.

Good afternoon, my friends. I’d like to first thank Maurice for inviting me here and thank you all for welcoming me. My name is Wrath James White and I am a humanist, an atheist. As Maurice’ll tell you, I am about as passionate in my disbelief as he is in his belief.
Let me begin by explaining what atheism is. Atheism, simply put, means not believing in any god or gods. There’s a quote made popular by Richard Dawkins: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” We are all atheists when it comes to believing in Zeus or Odin or RA. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
But, so what? I don’t believe. You do. Who cares? And if there was a way to keep these two viewpoints from coming into conflict with one another I wouldn’t care. But I believe in many things that are threatened by the church.
I believe in euthanasia. I believe that people should have the right to choose when and how they die. I believe they have the right to a dignified end. But because of the dominant religious beliefs in this country, if I became paralyzed with some crippling, agonizing illness that deteriorated my quality of life to the point that I no longer wanted to live, I do not have the legal right to end my life. That pisses me off a little. I believe in same-sex marriage. I believe that society benefits from people being in committed relationships. It serves a stabilizing function by encouraging people to settle down, get a job, raise children in a stable loving environment, buy a house, and pay taxes. But once again, because of the dominant religious beliefs in this country many loving couples are not able to enjoy the same rights as every other American. And that pisses me off. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I don’t believe it benefits this society and, in fact, it does great harm to bring unwanted children into a world already straining beneath the weight of overpopulation, crime, and poverty. But the dominant religion in this country is constantly trying to curtail that right.
I believe that people should be judged by their abilities, their morality, and their actions rather than by their religious beliefs or lack thereof. But yet, in this country atheists are the minorities least likely to be elected to public office. And yeah, that pisses me off. When asked who you would like your son or daughter to marry, once again, an atheist is at the bottom of the list. Despite the fact that atheists are most likely to be college educated, least likely to go to prison, and least likely to get divorced. And finally, I believe in reason. I believe that the practice of believing without evidence is demonstrably dangerous and has historically led to abominable acts of intolerance and cruelty. As Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
I don’t think it‘s a coincidence that nearly all the racist organizations in this country are religious organizations. When you don’t need evidence for your beliefs you can believe anything and that tendency can be easily exploited by the corrupt and the unscrupulous.
Atheism is not a belief system. There are no dogmas attached to it. No mores. No rituals. There are no Ten Commandments of atheism. It is simply the absence of belief.
I’m sure you have been told and many of you perhaps believe that atheists hold science up like a religion. That we have faith in it the same way believers have faith in their religions, but there’s no such thing as scientific faith. Science is the study of evidence whereas faith is belief without evidence and often in spite of all evidence. They are the antithesis of each other. There are no scientific beliefs that are sacrosanct. If a scientist could disprove evolution or gravity or relativity he would be famous. He’d be almost guaranteed a Nobel Prize.
“… my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming.”
That was Richard Dawkins who said that. He is about as close to a fundamentalist atheist as they come. And that is why there is no such thing as a fundamentalist atheist, because if there were scientific evidence that God existed there would be no atheists. I know exactly what it would take to convince me of God’s existence, verifiable evidence, facts.
I don’t have, and never had, the ability to suspend my disbelief and natural skepticism. Not even when I was a believer. I always questioned and doubted. That’s just who I am. I can’t believe just to satisfy anxieties about death or my place in the universe. I can’t believe simply because a particular belief system is popular. Truth isn’t decided by majority vote. I can’t be persuaded just because some priest or minister talks real pretty. I know they are just men like me. I talk pretty too. That doesn’t mean I’m not full of crap sometimes. I can’t just choose to believe because I don’t trust my own moral compass and fear that I wouldn’t be a good person without the threat of damnation and the promise of paradise. I cannot believe just to fit in, for that safe, comfortable, sense of community. I cannot believe just because everyone in my family, culture, or country believes and it has become a custom or a tradition. My mind just does not work that way. I am not terribly skilled at the art of self-deception.
I can only believe in any religion or ideology when I know it to be true, when it can be verified by empirical facts, by experiments that produce predictable results that can be duplicated. That’s the basic standard of proof we use for everything except our religious beliefs. If someone were selling me a TV set and they said “You can’t turn it on. You just have to have faith that it works. You can only turn it on after you’re dead.” I’d think they were crazy. And hopefully, so would you. But religion doesn’t allow you to turn it on and try it out before you buy it. You don’t know if religion works until you’re dead. Now, I’m just a kid from the ghetto so to me, that sounds like a con.
When I was growing up on the streets of Philadelphia, I
learned the hard way not to blindly trust in pretty words and beautiful fantasies spun by charismatic individuals no matter how desirable the fantasies were, no matter how well they fit my personal aesthetic, my personal vision of how things ought to be, no matter how much they flattered my ego or calmed my fears. I learned to question everything. I wasn’t fooled by the pimps, hustlers, conmen, and drug dealers because I questioned every lie that came out of their mouths and I demanded proof. I demanded evidence. I saw what a crack addict looked like and so I never fell for the lies of the crack dealer. I saw the drunks and winos. That’s why I never drank when I was young no matter how much peer pressure there was to get drunk and party. I never smoked cigarettes. I never smoked weed. No matter how many of “the cool kids” were doing it. I never got into crime. I saw the end results of the drug dealer’s life, the pimp’s life, the gangster’s life, and so I was never impressed with their temporary wealth and ghetto fame.
Likewise, I heard the preacher telling us that “Jesus Saves” and then I saw my friends and neighbors gunned down in the street by drug dealers. I saw them in welfare lines and unemployment lines. I saw them get sick with cancers and diseases and die in agony. I saw crack babies born into abusive homes. I saw the socio-economic oppression of my people, crushed beneath the weight of racism and poverty and it was hard to rectify that with anything the preacher was saying. I read in the bible, Mathew 7:8 , where Jesus said “For everyone who asketh receiveth; he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?” It floored me, because I had been asking for bread for as long as I could recall and had usually received stones and serpents. My own life proved the lie in this statement and it called everything else into question. As I looked around at my neighbors I saw that most of them had likewise learned to subsist on stones from heaven. The bible was obviously wrong. And so, like the lies of the pimps, drug dealers, gang bangers, and conmen, I learned not to trust it. Just as it had on the streets, being a skeptic kept me from being a fool and a victim.
Atheism, for me, is not a statement of any knowledge concerning the origins of the universe or of life. It is not saying, “I know for a fact that there is no God.” What it says is simply, “I don’t know if there is a God and neither do you. And because I don’t know I can’t believe.”
I didn’t become an atheist because I was mad at God. You can’t be mad at someone that doesn’t exist. I didn’t become an atheist because some tragedy befell me that made me turn my back on religion and deny the existence of God like some sort of grudge. If I was mad at God I wouldn’t deny his existence because if God doesn’t exist than he’s not responsible for anything. God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist. That would be like denying the existence of Hitler because I was pissed off at him over the Holocaust. It wouldn’t make sense. I’m not an atheist because I find Christian morality too hard to live up to and I want to just sin freely without repercussions. There are always repercussions for your actions in this life.
There’s no need for a heaven or a hell because we get them both right here, right now and it isn’t as simple as good befalling the good and bad befalling the bad. You can be the most loving and giving person and still make bad decisions that you ultimately suffer for. The morality I subscribed to, in my opinion, holds me to a much higher standard because it requires me to be more than simply good, it requires me to be smart. It doesn’t allow me to hate someone for no other reason than because some book says I should.
I became an atheist when I realized that the only reason I had ever believed was because that’s how I had been raised. I had been a Christian only because my family and everyone else I knew were Christians. That was it. That was my only reason. It had nothing to do with proof. If I had been raised by Hindus I would have been Hindu. If I had been raised by Muslims I would have been Muslim.
When I realized this I was embarrassed. To me, it was the most random, the most arbitrary, the most ridiculous reason I could think of to believe in anything. And that’s the way most people adopt their religious beliefs, it is simply handed down to them like a used sweater and we put it on before we are old enough to question it. Most people go their entire lives without ever questioning why they’re wearing it, if they need it, or whether they would be better off without it.
I didn’t have any proof that anything in the bible was true and once I read the bible, I realized that I didn’t believe half of the things in it and that neither did most of the people I knew. Yet somehow they still called themselves Christians. Most of the people I knew didn’t believe in Adam and Eve. They didn’t believe that Jonah lived inside a whale’s belly for days. They didn’t believe that Noah put two of every animal onto a boat for thirty days and thirty nights and that somehow every animal on earth lived within walking distance of Noah’s house, several million species of insects, thousands of birds and rodents that would have taken several lifetimes to collect. They didn’t believe that women should be silent and subservient. They didn’t believe in slavery. They didn’t believe that if someone worked on Sunday or cheated on their husband or didn’t obey their parents they should be stoned to death. They didn’t believe that it was a sin to eat crab or lobster or rabbit. Most of the Christians I knew had never even read the entire bible. They accepted this ideology and didn’t even know what the book really said. I became an atheist when I realized that I had no logical reason for being a Christian.
When I first began to question religion I assumed that I would find answers to my questions and that nothing would change. I assumed that the failing was in me and not in the bible. I thought that if anything, my belief would be stronger in the end. Instead, the more I read, the more I questioned, the more doubts I acquired and the harder it became to hold on to my beliefs. I found falsehoods. I found contradictions. I found immorality. I found that all the things I had believed made no sense and those things that I believed that did make sense were not even really in the bible or else were actively contradicted by other passages in the bible. That so much of what was written in its pages flew in the face of reason and morality. At that point, I would have had to deny all logic in order to believe and I just could not do that.
Isaac Asimov said, that when “Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived.” That’s why those who know the bible the best and follow it the most literally look crazy to most people. Even moderate and liberal Christians think fundamentalists are crazy. Because the passages that most sane and reasonable people completely ignore or choose to interpret symbolically or metaphorically, they believe. So we call them extremists and zealots when what they really are, are true believers. When the church was burning infidels at the stake and sending armed missionary soldiers abroad to slaughter or convert entire cultures, they were following the bible. Today’s fundamentalists don’t even follow the bible 100%. They can’t. If anyone was to follow every command in the bible 100% they would be a criminal and a murderer. They would be a thoroughly reprehensible human being—a racist, sexist, homophobic, wife beating, gay bashing, child abusing, slave trader. But the bible was written to be followed 100%. There’s nothing in there that says or even suggests that certain parts were to be ignored or taken lightly. When Jesus said, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling." He didn’t wink afterwards. He didn’t laugh. In Titus 2:9 when it says "Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect." Afterwards it doesn’t have a little note in parentheses that says “just kiddin’”. He meant that literally.
In order to keep Christian beliefs in line with modern morality you have to reinterpret passages that are relatively black and white or else disregard them entirely because so much of it runs contrary to commonsense morality. To be a good person and continue to believe you have to cherry-pick the good stuff and disregard all that slavery, homophobia, and misogynism stuff.
So, after reading the bible, I decided to reevaluate all of my beliefs. I abandoned everything I had believed for which there was no evidence and I started over, putting my beliefs back together piece by piece and only including the things I could logically support and defend.
I realized that the first step in achieving true knowledge was admitting my own ignorance. Not going in already committed to a conclusion and just looking for facts to justify the conclusions I had already reached. If I had begun asking questions when I was already one hundred percent emotionally committed to a conclusion those questions would have been worthless. So I let all these emotional convictions go and it was like a great weight had been lifted. The scales had fallen from my eyes and I could finally see the world as it was rather than how I had been conditioned to believe it was. My mind was now opened by wonder rather than closed by faith.
History has shown us again and again that the closed mind created by faith is fertile ground for hatred and prejudice, not to mention that it has often been an impediment to both moral and scientific progress. To quote Blaise Pascal, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” That alone would be enough for me to reject faith. This irrational illogical thought process, to me, contradicts the very definition of a human being, the rational animal. We were given these great big brains in order to allow us to answer questions and find true knowledge. Filling in the gaps between what we know and what we don't know with beliefs that we lend the same weight as knowledge ensures that true knowledge will have a hard time ever finding fertile ground upon which to grow.
The virtue of ignorance is that it allows for knowledge. The sin of faith is that it does not. If you believe before you know and are committed to that belief you will NEVER know. Your belief has taken the place of knowledge. Why would you search for truth if you believe in your heart that you have already found it? Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you from asking the questions and that alone is enough reason for me to reject it. You cannot fill a vessel that is already full and that is the problem with faith. That alone is reason enough to be an atheist. Not because I have anything against any one religion but because of the foundation of faith upon which all religions rest. That is why I am and will always be a skeptic.
The reality is that when it comes to creation and the existence or non-existence of a creator we just don't know. Anyone who says he does know is either deluded or disingenuous. We don't know. There is no shame in admitting that we don't know. There is no dishonor in admitting our obvious ignorance. The dishonor is in resigning ourselves to remaining ignorant. Not just belief without evidence but belief against all contradictory evidence. That type of willful ignorance is a sin against all the potential within human nature. An open mind that leads to the pursuit of knowledge is the very definition of what it means to be human and as such is the highest virtue.
Thank you.

Islam Is Not The Black Man's Religion

2009-05-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

Ever since The Honorable Elijah Muhammed came to America, Islam has been linked to Blackness in America. Black Nationalists shed their Christian names and replaced it with an X until they could make the pilgrimage to Mecca to take Islamic names. Names like Abdul, Khareem, and Raashid became associated in our culture with large Black men with shoulder width Afros. The name of Allah in America, until 9/11, was linked more with The Nation of Islam than Middle Easterners or terrorism. It conjured up images of well-groomed Black men in suits and bow ties selling bean pies on the corner of Martin Luther King Blvd along with the latest edition of Final Call. But Islam is no more the Black man's religion than Christianity is.

Arab traders and travelers came to northern Africa sometime during the mid-seventh century A.D., only a few decades after the Prophet Muhammad moved with his followers from Mecca to Medina, and began to spread the Islamic religion along the eastern coast of Africa and to the western and central Sudan between the eighth and ninth centuries. Islam spread throughout Africa gradually bringing with it the art of writing, Arab architectural techniques, and the Arab language which eventually merged with the Bantu languages to form Swahili. Conversion into Islam by Black African chieftains was used to gain political support from Arab leaders and to establish trade relationships. Among the the common people it was used to avoid being sold into slavery.

Eight centuries before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade began, Arab slave traders invaded Africa in search of slaves and concubines. While the Trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted 300 years the Trans-Saharan slave trade lasted nearly 1400 years continuing into the Twentieth century. By the time of the Ottoman Empire, the majority of slaves in Islamic countries were obtained by raiding Africa. These raids of African countries were directly responsible for the rapid expansion of Islam across North Africa.

Slavery continued in Saudi Arabia until as late as 1962. While Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad were in America demonizing the White man for slavery, Islamics in Saudi Arabia still owned African slaves. Even today, African women are kidnapped as sex slaves to be sold into prostitution. As horrific as slavery was in Europe and the Americas the Islamic slave trade was as bad or worse. Mortality rates for slaves being transported across the Sahara desert to the Islamic empire have been estimated to be as high as ninety percent.

Eunuchs were especially prized for bodyguards and confidential servants and so fetched higher prices than other males, encouraging the castration of slaves at the borders of the Islamic Empire before being exported. This was done outside Islamic borders since Islamic law did not permit the mutilation of slaves. Women were used as concubines since Islamic law entitled Muslim men to use slaves for sexual pleasure. If they became pregnant their children were usually killed. Unlike slaves in the Americas, in Islamic countries slaves were not allowed to marry other slaves and raise families. Most of the male slaves were castrated and were either used as soldiers or as harem guards while the women were almost exclusively used as sex slaves and concubines unlike America where African slaves were mostly purchased for agricultural work and as domestics servants.

This is how Islam became an African religion. It was forced upon us by slave traders hunting for Black flesh for sexual exploitation, to swell the ranks of their armies, and for use as bodyguards to secure their harems of stolen African women. Just as Christianity was forced upon Africans at the end of a gun, Islam came on the point of a sword. Why then do so many Black people believe Islam to be the true religion of African people when it is not an indigenous religion but rather one adopted by African leaders in order to increase their profit and power and forced upon poor Africans by Arab raiders?

The proliferation of Islam in Africa, just like that of Christianity among Black Americans, is yet another example of the conquered adopting the religion of their conquerors. Just as with Christianity, had Africans not fallen prey to Arab slave traders, had Arabs never acquired a taste for Nubian slaves, far fewer of the millions of devout Muslims in Africa would be Muslims today.

The same absurdities and immorality inherent in the Christian bible are also present in The Koran. This comes as little surprise since Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all evolved from the same Abrahamic text. The same ridiculous creation myths exist in Islam as in Christianity and Judaism. The same reliance on faith over reason, dogma over empirical evidence. Sexism and homophobia are even greater under Islam. Islam, like Christianity, relies on fear and intimidation. "Love me or suffer eternal torment!" said God. It has the same insecure god-figure that requires constant praise and adoration from beings that are supposed to be like gnats in comparison to it in terms of intellect. Personally, I could give less than a fuck whether or not I was worshipped by gnats but then, I'm a pretty secure brotha. It has the same inexplicable dilemma of how an all-powerful, all-knowing, good and loving God could produce a creation so full of misery and suffering. The same problem of explaining why God intervened two thousand years ago to lead the Jews out of Egypt but allowed African Americans to suffer slavery and oppression for four hundred years in Europe and America and over a millennia in the Middle East. In terms of logic, morality, and overall efficacy, it is no better than Christianity.

The Black Church

2009-04-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

There has undoubtedly been much good done by Black Christians in this country and the many different denominations of the Black Christian Church. There has been much good done by White Christians and Jews on behalf of Black people in this country as well. There has also been much evil done in the name of Christianity in more than equal number.

True, the Civil Rights Movement was largely spearheaded by the Black Church and Churches of many ethnicities and denominations. It was also just as vehemently opposed by the Black Church and churches of every hue all over the country who preferred that we all keep quite and wait rather than protest and march and fight for our rights. In the antebellum south and even in so-called "free states" the number of churches with an abolitionist bent were outnumbered more than 2 to 1 by those who equated abolitionism with atheism because Jesus expressly commanded slaves to honor and obey their masters as they would Christ and, in the Old Testament, the rules for the treatment of slaves (including when it was permissible to kill one) were laid out in detail. I don't think anyone would claim that Christianity was given to the slaves as a tool for them to use to gain their freedom. It was clearly forced upon us as a means of pacification. That the church was ultimately used as a tool of freedom was more a testament to the tenacity and ingenuity of those African slaves than anything liberating in the bible or in religion itself.

Slave masters used the bible to justify slavery. Slaves were often told that they were the cursed children of Ham whose duty under God was to serve the White man and their only hope of salvation was to accept Jesus Christ as their savior so that they would inherit heaven when they died. In this way Christian missionaries attempted to persuade the slave that his life here on earth was insignificant and that they should bear their burdens without complaint in order to receive their reward in heaven. The dichotomy of "love thy neighbor" and the enslavement of strangers was not lost on some slaves who secretly used this hypocrisy to prove that slavery was "Un-Christian". The fact that this hypocrisy existed not just in the slave masters but in the bible itself was obviously ignored and since the church was the only place where slaves could legally congregate it soon became a center for the abolitionist movement creating a historic legacy of community leadership that continued through the Civil Rights Movement up to today.

As a means of organizing large groups of people toward a uniform goal, religion is hard to beat. Of course, the problem with this is that the uniform goal need not be positive and often was not positive. Listening to Frederick Douglas describe the sale of slaves to fund the church one can only imagine the feeling of betrayal.

“The church and the slave prison stand next to each other; the groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotions of his religious master. The church-going bell and the auctioneer’s bell chime in with each other; the pulpit and the auctioneers’s block stand in the same neighbourhood; while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy Bibles and communion services for the churches.”

For every antebellum church led by a Black preacher using the religious community in order to galvanize slaves into action and organize slave revolts and help guide runaways through the underground railroad there were those led by White and Black preachers alike whose sole purpose was to pacify the slaves with fantasies of an afterlife where all their suffering would be repaid and the meek would inherit the earth. In 1860, at the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, Rev. Benjamin Palmer told the gathered faithful that:

“The Abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic, The demon which erected its throne upon the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which abolished the Sabbath and worshipped reason in the person of a harlot, yet survives to work other horrors, of which those of the French Revolution are but the type. Among a people so generally religious as the American, a disguise must be worn; but it is the same old threadbare disguise of the advocacy of human rights. From a thousand Jacobin Clubs here, as in France, the decree has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and law. . . . This spirit of atheism, which knows no God who tolerates evil, no Bible which sanctions law, and no conscience that can be bound by oaths and covenants, has selected us for its victims, and slavery for its issue. . .”

This was a common sentiment of the time. Far more widespread were ideas like these then those shared by abolitionists. From this foundation sprang the church that my people now cling so desperately to.

When we look at reports from eyewitnesses to the treatment of African Americans by the early Christian Church it hardly casts it in a favorable light. In a speech by Frederick Douglas Friday, May 22, 1846 he makes his impression of the Christian Church plainly clear:

“I have to inform you that the religion of the southern states, at this time, is the great supporter, the great sanctioner of the bloody atrocities to which I have referred. While America is printing tracts and Bibles; sending missionaries abroad to convert the heathen; expending her money in various ways for the promotion of the Gospel in foreign lands, the slave not only lies forgotten--uncared for, but is trampled under foot by the very churches of the land. What have we in America? Why we have slavery made part of the religion of the land. Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender of this cursed institution, as it is called.”

And again in this speech:

“This I conceive to be the darkest feature of slavery and the most difficult to attack, because it is identified with religion, and exposes those who denounce it to the charge of infidelity. Yes, those with whom I have been labouring, namely, the old organization Anti-Slavery Society of America, have been again and again stigmatized as infidels, and for what reason? Why, solely in consequence of the faithfulness of their attacks upon the slave-holding religion of the southern states, and the northern religion that sympathizes with it.."

For every Black pastor who marched for civil rights there were pastors telling us to wait and pray and not to push things too fast. For every church that gives back to the community and helps the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, and the sick there are even more preying on the same and leeching off the Black community.

Black Christians as a group tend to demonstrate a terrifying amount of superstition and gullibility as well as a disturbing homophobia and a tendency towards a literal interpretation of the bible. All things which aid in keeping the Black community in the intellectual Dark Ages. We, as a community, are more likely to believe in psuedoscientific scams like psychics, astrologists, and faith healers. We are more likely to give money to a church that prays for a loved one suffering an incurable illness than a medical foundation struggling to find the cure. We are more likely to give money to a church that prays for an end to poverty than a charitable organization that actively combats it. We are more likely to contribute to the church "building fund" than neighborhood restoration. We are quicker to put money into a church collection plate than our own children's college fund. Don't you think there's something fundamentally wrong with this way of thinking? Or do you believe that I am stretching the truth or outright lying? Look at how your own religious commitment compares to your social and political ones and those of your friends and tell me I'm wrong. Look at your family and the commitment they show to their church versus the commitment they show to the Black community as a whole and tell me I am wrong. Results from a recent poll from the Barna Research Group revealed that the number 1 goal as indicated by 94% of African-Americans was "to have a personal relationship with God" above health, education, family, social or economic equality, political status, or business opportunity. Telling results indeed.

Many people give to the church because it makes them feel good and so it is no different then paying to go see a play or a movie or a music concert and many churches provide both theater and music to entertain their congregations. I'm cool with that. But be honest with yourselves. Are you really paying for the entertainment or for the promise of salvation? If you knew that there was no God and that the theatrics were all there was to it would you still go? Would you still pay your tithings?

Some of you go for that sense of community. Since the dark days of slavery the church has been the place where the Black community could congregate in safety and gossip about your neighbors. Some of you think of the church as a community center and your tithings are simply a donation to keep that community center going. But the head of the local community center isn't wearing a platinum Rolex and driving a Bentley and he would be fired and imprisoned for embezzlement if he was. The head of the local community center doesn't stand up every Sunday and tell us how we should live our lives and dictate morality to us from a two thousand year old book written by sheep-herders who believed that women should be silent and subservient. The head of the local community center isn't on a pulpit condemning homosexuals and telling you who you should vote for. Besides, what most people are talking about when they say they go to church for that "sense of community" is not just that pleasant feeling of belonging but peer group pressure. "If you don't go to church then you are not one of us!" They feel coerced into their amens and hallelujahs under threat of alienation. That's why there are so many hypocrites in the church because most of the people there would rather be elsewhere. They don't believe or intend to follow half the things coming out of the preacher's mouth. They are just there so that no one will notice their absence. They are there because their neighbors, friends, and family are there and they don't want to feel left out. And there is of course the very real fact that you cannot gain any political power in the Black community without the support of the church. You cannot even make any substantive changes in the Black community without the support of the church. All power in the Black community lies in the hands of the congregation and so alienating yourself from the church means being outside the entire Black community. It is one more form of peer pressure.

I know that many of you will say that you give to the church because it is a charitable organization that helps the community and some of you would be right. Many of you would be dead wrong. What's worse is that many of you know it. many of you know that the churches you belong to don't put a dime back into the community and yet you still attend, you still give them your hard earned money. Many of you have embezzlement and corruption scandals going on in your church right now. Many of you faithfully watch televangelists who are mired in scandal and corruption as we speak and yet you continue to give them your tithings.

Scandals repeatedly rock Mega-churches and so-called "Prosperity Preachers" like Benny Hinn, Reverend Ike, Robert Tilton, and Creflo Dollar. Ministers who drive around in hundred thousand dollar cars, wearing two thousand dollar suits, and sporting gold and platinum jewelry all paid for with the hard-earned money of a largely impoverished Black community. This is yet another form of Black-on-Black crime. Only this victimization of the Black community would not be possible without faith. Hallelujah!

Creflo Dollar, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "... drives a Rolls Royce, flies around the globe in a private jet, and has a 1 million dollar house in an upscale Atlanta neighborhood." All this provided by a congregation largely composed of the poor, elderly, and uneducated. But Dollar and Hinn, as immoral as their behavior may appear, are not the worst of them. They are at least transparent. When their largely Black followers send them money they do so while knowing that these charlatans are lining their pockets with it. How could they not when these "prosperity preachers" so brazenly and arrogantly display their wealth? But then there are evangelists who, not content with the millions they con from their congregations under the protection of the US Constitution, resort to outright criminality.

The former leader of the National Baptist Convention, Rev. Henry Lyons, embezzled more than 4 million dollars from the church coffers. Oklahoma evangelist Lames Roy Whitby was not only charged with selling 4 million dollars in worthless Gospel Outreach Bonds but was also convicted of swindling $25,000 from an eighty-three year old widow. Leroy Jenkins, a faith healer in South Carolina, was pulling in over 3 million a year selling miracle water, prayer cloths, and healing T-shirts. I remember, when I was a kid, seeing my mother and grandparents send money to Reverend Ike for "prayer cloths". Our house was littered with the worthless little red squares and Rev. Ike's pockets were bursting with the dollars my family and thousands of others had sent to him in exchange for them. This should be an embarrassment to us but somehow it continues. According to Donald R. Barbera's exhaustively researched book, "Black and Not Baptist", The Reverend Hakeem Abdul Rasheed once operated a $20 million dollar a year church in Oakland where he was later convicted of mail fraud. "The Rev. Robert Carr of Durham, N.C., was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking pay checks,food stamps, and welfare checks from members of his Church of God and True Holiness In Chicago. The Rev. Roland Gray was convicted of theft, fraud and conspiracy and served two years in prison after falsely collecting $43,000 in welfare checks and food stamps... Bishop Lucius Cartwright and Pastor Slbert Hamrick were sent to jail for embezzling $250,000 while administering food stamp distribution." Food stamps and welfare checks? Can you get much lower than that? Disability checks maybe? Yet again it is religious faith in lieu of critical thinking that makes these crimes possible. It is the religious mindset that keeps the sellers of healing water and prayer candles and cloths in business. It is this ignorance and superstition that keeps the astrologer and the faith healer and the psychic reader operating, that keeps the televangelist rich.

Still, it is true that the Black church in all its various denominations plays an important role in Black culture and society. Estimates of Black church attendance show attendance at the typical Black church to be 70% higher than at the typical white church and for the services to be nearly 70% longer. 50% of American Blacks attend church on Sunday which is 5 to 10 percent higher than the norm for most other Americans. So they must be getting something out of it or is it just fear and guilt alone that keeps them going? Fear of damnation? Alienation? Guilt at not following the family traditions? Perhaps it is that age old winning combination of fear and desire? Desire for the afterlife, for God's blessing in the form of health, wealth, and love, for that sense of community? I'm sure it is all those things but would you still go if you knew that both damnation and salvation were lies? Or would you spend your time and money on your family and community making genuine change? One hand working is worth more than a million clasped in prayer.

One of the things that I find most disturbing are statistics that show that African Americans, by a three fourths majority, consider their church leaders to be their community leaders and spokesman. I can't name another race that, whenever an issue comes up that affects them, the press go not to their elected officials but to their church leaders for the perspective of that race or Nationality. I have never seen a reporter go to a minister or priest to get the White, Latino, or Asian perspective on issues ranging from political appointees, to legislature, to hate crimes. There is something backwards in this. I'm sorry, but neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton have the authority to speak for me.

I think the Black Church does a lot of good for the Black community and arguably more good then harm. Perhaps all the good the church does excuses the pastor slipping a few extra dollars into his pocket to spend on hookers and diamond rings. Perhaps it excuses the exorbitant amounts of money the church extracts from our community that could have gone to build schools and hospitals. Take a peek at the nearest mega church and just imagine how much better our community might have been served if we had spent that money on a new school. But maybe the good the church does outweighs that loss. What it does not outweigh is the loss of the critical mind. I listen to my brothers and sisters sometimes just flabbergasted by the stream of superstition and prejudice that comes out of their mouths and most of it is being parroted from the mouth of a preacher. The lack of educational funding in our communities coupled with this deluge of ignorance and superstition stunts the mental development of our youth before it can even begin. We are creating a Third-World mentality for our youth with our overwhelming advocacy of faith over reason, stunting their intellectual development, and making them ill-equipped to compete in the global marketplace.

Perhaps it would not be so bad if education in our communities was better. But it is not. Perhaps it would be more benign if there wasn't the drugs and the violence in our communities but there is. And before you think that the church is any cure for that, check the stats at your nearest penitentiary. It is filled overwhelmingly with Christians. Most gangsters, mobsters, drug dealers, rapists, and murderers in this country are Christians. If we were to look at the stats, you are more than ten times more likely to commit murder if you are a Christian. I'm not saying that there's any connection between the two. I'm just saying that Christ ain't the cure. Teaching our kids to believe rather than to think is not the cure. Teaching them how to pray rather than how to reason is not the cure. Teaching them biblical thinking instead of critical thinking is not the cure and may be part of the problem. If we spent as much time dragging our kids to school as we do dragging them to church, if we spent two or three hours every Sunday sitting down with our kids with a textbook in their hands instead of the bible, if we poured as much money into building schools and libraries in our communities as we do building churches, then we would eliminate the educational and thereby the economic disparity between Blacks and Whites in this country in a single generation. When Obama said that small town people cling to their guns and bibles and hostility toward other races he could have just as easily been talking about us. Go to any Black neighborhood and count the number of churches, gun stores, bars, and fast food restaurants and tell me you don't see a problem.

I Ain't Mad Atcha

2009-03-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

One of the more annoying accusations believers often level at atheists is "You're just angry at God." Whenever I present the Evidential Argument from Evil this inevitably comes up often in the form of "You just want to blame everything on God and not take any responsibility yourself." Funny that this accusation is launched so often since being a humanist/atheist is the very act of taking all responsibility for all that goes right or wrong in one's life onto the individual or individuals themselves and not on supernatural beings that we do not believe exist. The Argument from Evil merely points out the obvious fact that if you do believe that a God exists than God would be responsible for all the evil in the world just as the faithful believe that he is responsible for all the good in the world. Since atheists do not believe that God exists we do not believe that God is responsible for either good or evil. We believe that man is. We cannot be angry at God because we do not believe in the existence of God.

This seems like an obvious point and I almost feel silly elaborating further on it since it would seem to need no further explanation but you really would not believe how often this comes up. I am still surprised every time it does. I find this accusation obvious proof that faith not only does not require logic but directly impedes it.

If an atheist were truly angry with God he would not be an atheist. Seems obvious doesn't it? You cannot be angry at something you do not believe exists. That would be like being angry at unicorns or talking snowmen. And if the claim is that someone became an atheist because they were angry at God then that would be equally absurd because denying the existence of God would let God off the hook. Being an atheist means excepting that there are no supernatural forces at work in your life. It means that you accept that your choices and yours alone decide your fate. It means that you cannot get angry because you prayed to God and no miracles came. It means that you accept that only your own actions and the actions of others can bring about good or evil in the world. If you believed that God was the cause of all the evil in the world and you were angry at him then becoming an atheist would not make sense. That would be like someone denying the existence of Hitler because they were pissed off about the holocaust. It would be absurd. If you are angry at God becoming a satanist would make more sense then becoming an atheist.

So then why do atheists always point out all the bad things in the world and in the bible when they talk about why they don't believe in God? It is because they want those who do believe to see the absurdity and the contradiction inherent in the belief in a good and perfect all-powerful creator and a creation that is flawed and corrupted. It is not because we believe in an a good and perfect all-powerful creator and are just angry at him. Frankly, that's just stupid. We point out the evil in the world to show you the utter impossibility of an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent creator given the obvious and undeniable existence of evil in the world. We point it out to show you the absurdity of blaming all the good in the world on God and all the evil on man. We point it out to show you that freewill does not answer the question and the ridiculous claim that you can have an all-knowing and all-powerful creator and still have freewill, still have a creation that is responsible for its own actions and decisions, is just not possible. Omniscience and omnipotence in a creator negates the possibility of freewill in the creation. The two concepts are antithetical. We are not trying to free ourselves of responsibility and blame everything on God. We already took all the responsibility and blame off of God when we realized that there was no such being. We already accepted all the blame and responsibility for our lives when we accepted that God did not exist. It is only when you believe in God that blaming him is possible. And there in lies the true joy and beauty, the seductiveness, of faith. If God exists then and only then is man truly blameless. If you accept that there is no God then and only then must you take full responsibility for your life. Which then is the more honorable and courageous stance?

The Cosmological Argument and Intelligent Design

2009-03-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God takes several different forms. There really is no one Cosmological Argument but many. At their core, however is one basic argument that is essentially:

A. Things exist.

B. It is possible for those things to not exist.

C. Whatever has the possibility of non existence, yet exists, has been caused to exist.

D. Something cannot bring itself into existence, since it must exist to bring itself into existence, which is illogical.

E. There cannot be an infinite number of causes to bring something into existence.

F. An infinite regression of causes ultimately has no initial cause, which means there is no cause of existence.

G. Since the universe exists, it must have a cause.

H. Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause of all things.

Conclusion= The uncaused cause must be God.

There is a flaw right at the very beginning of this argument in that it rests on the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and the assumption that it is possible for things not to exist. It is certainly possible for things not to exist in their current forms but there is no evidence that it is possible for "nothing to exist". In fact there is so much verifiable empirical evidence to the contrary that it is considered a law and not merely a theory. Everything we know about the universe leads to the conclusion that "something" must necessarily exist. Implicit in the question "Why does something exist" is the unfounded assumption that "Nothing" is the natural state of being, the default state as it were. This is quite an extraordinary supposition since we have no experience of nothingness. There is nothing in our experience of the world and our knowledge of the universe that would suggest that complete nothingness is even possible. In fact the First Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy, states that matter and energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. I repeat. It cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another. A universe created from nothing would defy this law. A universe that has always existed in one form or another would fit perfectly with the known facts of the universe.

The second flaw is the final assumption that "since the universe exists it must have a cause and therefore there must be an uncaused cause of all causes". Did you see it? I'll state it again. "Since the universe exists it must have a cause and therefore there must be an uncaused cause of all causes." Do you see the built in contradiction in that statement? If the universe must have a cause than the cause must have a cause. If there can be an "uncaused cause of all causes" why could that not be the universe itself? This premise makes no sense. It is a contradiction.

Another more common form of this argument is commonly referred to as The Teological Argument or The Watchmaker Argument. The idea that a watch implies a watchmaker because a watch is too complicated a thing to have come into existence by itself. Accordingly, a universe implies a universe maker since a universe is too complicated a thing to have come into existence by itself. The problem is that if the universe is too complicated to have come into existence by itself than so would the universe maker be too complicated to have authored it's own existence or to have spontaneously emerged. So the universe maker would require a maker who would require a maker who would require a maker. The very premise of this argument is self-defeating. If the universe maker could have always existed or come into existence spontaneously than there is no reason to assume the universe itself could not have done the same. The conclusion that all complicated things require a maker but the maker, a more complicated thing, does not require a maker is a conclusion that negates its own premise. It is a ridiculous argument.

The other problem with the Teological or Watchmaker argument is that it is not simply the complication of the watch that implies a maker but that it was obviously designed with a purpose. It is a tool with an obvious use and that is why we assume it must have had a maker. Because it was made for an obvious task. Life has no such obvious use. The universe itself has no such obvious purpose. The meaning of life has been pondered for centuries with no satisfactory answer. The meaning of watches has not.

Intelligent Design attempts to prove the final premise in the basic Cosmological Argument. Namely that the "uncaused cause" or "first cause" of the universe must be God. Even if we assume that there must have been a first cause which is far from a given and in fact would seem to be a needless and unfounded assumption, there is no necessary conclusion that can be drawn from this premise that this first cause must be intelligent and certainly nothing that would lead to the conclusion that this first cause or uncaused cause must be the Judeo-Christian or Muslim God or any other God for that matter. The assumption that it could not have had more than one cause is also faulty. There is nothing that would preclude multiple creative forces working in concert. So even if someone were to find proof of Intelligent Design that would do little to prove the case for God or Gods as opposed to merely intelligent but far from omnipotent extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings. Again, the argument fails to prove its premises.

One of the more daunting questions in the Intelligent Design Argument is the question of how the universe could have emerged in so perfect a way (particularly given the increasing evidence in support of the Big Bang theory) that it did not overheat, it did not collapse back in on itself, and it did not accelerate too quickly and fly apart. It is almost unfathomable to imagine that the universe could have accidentally cooled to just the right temperatures to allow for matter and gravity without which there could be no life. That it could have emerged in so perfect a way to allow for the eventual evolution of life seems to defy the widely accepted methodological principle of Ocham's Razor. Namely that when multiple competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions is most likely to be true. Stated more simply as the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I think calling Intelligent Design equal to other theories on the origins of the universe is a stretch but still it seems the odds for the universe arising accidentally are almost as improbable as the odds of it being created by an intelligent entity. The odds of the universe as we know and experience it today emerging from a single hyper-dense singularity that exploded outward billions of years ago is perhaps one in a hundred billion. Staggering odds until you consider the infinity of time. Given an infinite amount of time and space it becomes increasingly probable. If you accept possibilities like multi-verses or the universe constantly expanding and contracting in an infinite series of Big Bangs each creating a new universe then our current universe begins to look less improbable and more and more inevitable. In the infinity of time it would seem increasingly probable that a universe like the one we currently reside in would eventually evolve particularly considering that it has. It is hard to call something improbable that has already occurred.

The idea that the universe was created by an intelligent being that came into existence by itself, hears the prayers of billions of people in whose lives he is intimately concerned, is a very complicated and fantastic idea. Far more complicated and fantastic than even the most bizarre or outlandish hypothesis posited by science. Still, the biggest problem with the Cosmological Argument is that it rests on too many assumptions for which there is no proof. The most egregious being the assumptions that the universe could not have always existed, that it must have had a cause and that this cause must be God who himself is allowed to defy the premise that everything that exists requires something else that must have caused it to exist. It is a hypothesis that contradicts itself. It is little wonder that believing such a fantastic hypothesis requires a leap of faith.

The Biblical Bias Against Strong Black Women

2009-03-02T22:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, the title of this essay is a bit misleading. The bible is not just biased against strong Black women. It is biased against independent and assertive women of all races equally. According to the bible a woman should have no rights accept those allowed her by her father or husband. A woman should be completely submissive and subservient and otherwise silent and the punishment for disobedience to these misogynistic biblical edicts is corporal punishment and often death. Will I piss a lot of women off if I were to say that you must be blind, stupid, or crazy to worship this God? I'm sure that I will but it is nonetheless true. I challenge any woman to show me a hero and role model that they respect and strive to emulate who follows these biblical rules? And what are some of these rules?

1 Corinthians 11:7-9:"For a man...is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head."

In other words, the woman is merely a derivative product of man (remember, you came from Adam's rib) and as a result you should always defer to man's authority as man does to God.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35: "...women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says, If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

Church ladies of the world take heed. The life blood of the Black church is its women folk. I would dare say that the church would whither and die without them. My own mother is a minister who is very active in the church. Yet, according to the bible, they are all in defiance of the word of God who believes that women have nothing to contribute to man's glorious salvation.

Ephesians 5:22-24: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife...wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

That's right sistas, every time you argue with your husbands, every time you refuse him, you are blaspheming against God. Those male chauvinist pigs that you hate are absolutely correct if the bible is to be believed. Your strength and independence, is an affront to the good book. The cultural legacy of strong black women who run their households, often single-handedly, is, according to the bible, contrary to all that is holy.

1 Timothy 2:11-15:"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent..."

Sooo, when your sons reach the age of adulthood (age 13 according to the bible) you should relinquish your authority over him and submit to his will. You can no longer teach him and he no longer needs to obey you. In fact, female teachers in high school and especially in college should be forbidden to teach their male students according to the one true God who in his infinite wisdom has proclaimed that females have nothing of worth to contribute to the education of a man.

Titus 2:4: "...train the younger women...to be subject to their husbands."

That's right, if you are teaching your daughters to stand up for themselves and to be self-sufficient, out-spoken, and independent, not to depend on men for their happiness, financial security, or their well-being then you are a sinner and an infidel. You should be teaching them to obey even the most lazy, ignorant, abusive, good-for-nothing asshole of a man, to be submissive to him, and to remain silent in his presence. Now how many Black women do you know like this?

No woman would have any respect for a woman who behaved this way. You wouldn't vote for such a woman. If Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton were that type of woman and fervently believed in these ideas, women would be outraged by the very suggestion that they might hold public office and be in a position to make decisions on behalf of all women, that they would be helping to shape public policy. None of the women from Amelia Earhardt to Harriet Tubman to Rosa Parks to Angela Davis, Shirley Chisolm, and Coretta Scott King to Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, none of them would be considered godly according to the word of God. They would all be considered sinners. Female politicians and heads of state are all sinners. Female managers, supervisors, and CEOs, sinners. Female ministers, preachers, and religious leaders, are all rebels against the one true god. If you are a true Christian woman, your heroes should be the women who stay with abusive husbands, the women who silently endure sexual harassment from their male employers, the women who allow their adult sons to curse at them and disrespect them, the women who never aspire to be anything more than wives and mothers, who don't speak unless spoken to, barefoot and pregnant, mere receptacles for a man's seed. It was Martin Luther himself who coined the phrase "A woman's place is in the home".

If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)

So, If a man rapes an unmarried virgin and they are found, then the man must pay the father fifty shekels of silver and marry her. The woman gets raped and then has to marry the very man who violated her. A woman forced to marry her rapist with her father's consent. This is the biblical idea of justice. This shows that Christian women are very much considered property. The woman belongs to the father and thus the transgression is against him, not the woman. Since he has taken her virginity, she is of no value anymore (except perhaps if the father wishes to sell her into slavery, as the Bible explicitly permits).

If the woman has sex willingly or if she doesn't tell anyone about the rape and hides the fact that she has had sex. If she then marries another man, she will be stoned to death for not being a virgin on her wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). The only way a woman who is raped can avoid either death or betrothal to her rapist is if she is married at the time of the rape and it occurs in a field (Deuteronomy 22:25).

From matricide to rape to domestic violence to the overall inferiority of women, the bible gives women ample reason to reject it. Yet all over the world you find strong, independent, intelligent women still clinging stubbornly to this misogynistic collection of hateful lies. How can my strong, beautiful, Black women abide such atrocities? How could any modern woman buy this bunch of bullshit? The answer, of course, is that they don't. Like all the other hateful, disgusting, ignorant, contradictory, and just plain wrong things in the bible, when the faithful discover them, their response is simply to ignore them. Those are the parts that man must have put in there. Those are the parts that were meant to be taken symbolically. Those are the biases and prejudices of a bygone age. The rest of it is the divinely inspired perfect word of an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent deity. Yeah. Right.

Escaping The Overseer (How I learned to doubt) originally published 7/28/08

2008-12-28T16:31:00.000-08:00

I am neither a scientist nor a theologian. I have no doctorate in anything. I am no different than millions of other Black men in America. I was once a Christian. I once bowed and scraped and prayed as I had been taught by my parents and grandparents as they had been taught by their parents and grandparents who had been taught by their ancestors who had been taught by their slavemasters.

I accepted Christian dogma and mythology without question as I had been conditioned to do. I accepted both the authority of the church and the efficacy of prayers with the blind trust and faith of all young children. I felt it no more possible to question the existence of God than that of the sun or the moon. I internalized guilt as I had been taught to do and worried incessantly about which of the many sins I had already committed and were still likely to commit in the future would be the one that would ultimately damn me to eternal torment. No matter how wretched my living conditions or those of the other Black people around me, no matter the sting of racism nor the burning shame of poverty, no matter how many times I was robbed or beaten or teased or bullied, no matter how many prayers went unanswered, I never questioned God’s goodness or his wisdom or his love. I never questioned that all was in accordance with his plan. I was seventeen before the illusion finally shattered.

There is an old cliche' that everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. I was perhaps the exception to that rule. I was anxious to die and go to heaven and the wait was killing me. I didn't understand what the purpose of life was. Why did I have to suffer here on earth if God ultimately wanted everyone to join him in heaven? Why couldn't I just kill myself and go join him? I began studying the bible trying to find a loophole that would allow me to kill myself without going to hell. I read the bible over and over again with a critical eye, rejecting everything everyone had told me about it, determined to find the answers myself by going in with a completely open mind, free of all preconceived ideas. This was relatively easy because I had never found it easy to rectify the reality of the streets with what my parents and pastor had told me about the bible. It had never made sense to me, so I had always formed my own opinions about it but I had been doing it from a point of total ignorance, never having read the bible before. When I finally did sit down to read it, what I found horrified me. But more of that later.

I grew up struggling for the meager commodities of happiness available to me on the streets of Philadelphia at a time when designer jeans were a mandatory fashion accessory, when expensive sneakers and sunglasses first became symbols of social status and excessive amounts of gold jewelry the measure of a Black man’s worth, which is to say, at one of the most materialistic times in American History. Crack cocaine was the currency of the street and it was worth more than human life.

I could not afford designer clothes or sneakers or a neck full of gold necklaces. It was against my morals to use or sell drugs. Even amongst other poor people this made me an outcast and often an object of pity and disgust. My sense of humor was my saving grace and the one thing that allowed me to eventually overcome my social obstacles. Still, poverty was not my only handicap.

Prince, Michael Jackson, Ray Parker Junior, sallow-skinned androgynous mega-stars whose racial composition was as ambiguous as their sexual preferences were the standards of beauty for African American males at that time. I was neither light complexioned nor androgynous. By ‘80s pop-cultural standards, I was ugly. Too black. Too strong. This, along with my conspicuous poverty was enough fuel to feed years of ridicule, scorn, and abuse from other young kids. Every day I was teased and bullied and picked on. Every day I fought either in the streets or in the schoolyard and sometimes both and every night I wept, praying to God to make it all better and though Jesus had said “All that you ask for in my name shall be granted.” My prayers went unanswered and my suffering unabated.

Like most young kids I began to speculate on my condition and the condition of the other Black people around me, trying to rectify it with my faith in god. Having not read the bible yet, I began to form my own opinions about why there was so much suffering among my people. I speculated that perhaps I had been some horrible person in a past life for which I was now being punished in this one. Obviously, I was unaware that Christianity had no belief in any sort of reincarnation. I further speculated that perhaps all Black people were reincarnated sinners.

I wondered if perhaps earth was really hell and we were all suffering in eternal torment for sins we had committed while alive and just did not know it. I listened to preachers talk about freewill and accepted that God was perhaps powerless to predict what people would do even though at that young age I already found most human beings to be fairly predictable. I accepted that perhaps God was just not as smart as I was or perhaps, with so many different people to keep track of, it was too difficult for him to predict what all 6 billion of them would do. I accepted this despite what the preacher in the church had said about God being all-powerful and all-knowing.

As I grew older, I began to think that perhaps God was like a scientist and we were all just an experiment in a lab somewhere and that God was just out there watching it, amused by it but not particularly interested in the individual lives of his creations, merely fascinated by it all the way we would be fascinated by an ant farm or bacteria growing in a petrie dish. I even began to suspect that God had been there at the very beginning of the universe to set the ball in motion and then had left to pursue other, more interesting things and perhaps had not thought about us since. Perhaps the entire universe was sitting on a dusty old shelf in his closet like the toys I had long ago grown tired of playing with or perhaps tucked away in his closet. I wondered if perhaps God had simply forgotten about us or grown bored with us or perhaps this was a toy that he didn’t even like and wished he had never made, after all, he had tried to destroy it once with a great flood. Perhaps he had died after creating the universe. In a sense, I had never really been a Christian. I had always been more of a Deist, believing in God as more of a first cause and nothing more.

I learned fairly early on that a God who answered your prayers was pretty much a fairytale right up there with Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. I think I had stopped believing in a God that intervened on man's behalf even before I had stopped believing in Santa Clause. I had more empirical evidence for the existence of Santa than for Christ. At least Santa did leave presents and drink the milk and cookies I left for him. Jesus had done nothing to make his presence known unless you count a nightmare I once had in which the rosary that hung on my mirror turned into a vampire bat.

Everyone I knew prayed to Jesus Christ and none of them were doing any better than I was. When I was twelve or thirteen and there was a rapist terrorizing our neighborhood, I was pretty sure that all the women he had raped prayed too. But God hadn’t intervened to strike down their rapist before he could attack any of them. My friend Ed had a mother who was a drug addict who had a string of abusive boyfriends who often abused him as well. I was fairly certain that he prayed to god every night to help his mother but still black-eyes and fat lips were fairly common sights on both of them.

So, the possibility of us living in hell or having been reincarnated into these horrific lives to pay for the sins of a previous life, or God having died or forgotten about us all, made infinitely more sense to me than the things the preacher was saying about God. I could not, even then, force myself to believe in a being who was all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving and all-good, who still allowed my people to go hungry and homeless, die of diseases and addictions, get murdered in the streets, enslaved and then oppressed, robbed and beaten, denied adequate education, adequate healthcare, adequate housing, equal job opportunities, and equal treatment before the law.

It made more sense than the idea that God has the power to change all of this but doesn’t because that’s just not part of his plan. His plan was for me to have to fight much older and bigger kids every other day and sometimes three or four at a time? His plan was for me to get robbed at knife point twice by age twelve? His plan was for me to watch my mother get beaten every night by her boyfriend when I was only five-years old and too young to defend her? His plan had been for my father to abandon the family when I was born because he was too lazy to get a job and for my mother to have to do it all on her own? His plan was for me to have to hear my mother cry every night because the bills were piling up and she wasn’t sure she could make it? It was much easier to think that God had just died or forgotten about us completely than that he was up there controlling all of this and the oppression, rape, murder, and enslavement of Black people for the last 400 years and my own suffering was somehow part of his plan.

I was enraged at the preacher's suggestion that God would put the Black man through such torture merely to test the depths of our love. If God is all knowing then why would he need to test anyone? He would already know who would pass and who would fail. It seemed cruel, capricious, self-centered, egotistical. This God that everyone loved so much seemed to possess some of the most reprehensible human qualities. I began to question every notion I’d ever had about God. I began to wonder if God really loved us after all.

I couldn’t understand why we gave thanks to the overseer that kept us enslaved. Why we thanked him for the strength to endure the whip. I thought about all the times I’d heard my Grandma say how blessed we were to have food on the table and wondered if we were then damned on the many nights when we went hungry. I wondered if we were blessed on the nights we laid awake listening to the big sewer rats rumbling through the cracked and water-stained walls and ceilings, afraid to let our hands or feet dangle off the side of the bed at night for fear that one of them might gnaw off a finger or toe while we slept. Afraid the entire ceiling might come crashing down on top of us from where the floor joists had warped and rotted from the leaky toilet above that was constantly overflowing. I wondered if we were blessed when we couldn’t find a single piece of food in the cupboard that wasn’t infested with roaches. I wondered if I was blessed all those times I was teased for wearing hand-me-down clothes that barely fit. It made no sense that we would praise God when things went well or when we merely survived when things went bad but not condemn him for the many evils of the world. Why would we thank God for giving us the strength to survive horrible atrocities we should have never been asked to endure? It seemed ridiculous, meek and cowardly and reminded me of the happy slave mentality of house niggers. I was shamed and embarrassed by it.

These were my thoughts as I grew up on the streets of Philadelphia trying to make sense of my life. This was the climate under which my own understanding of man’s place in the universe was being formed. I was eight years old when I realized one evening, as I lay crying myself to sleep, that I could not remember a single day that had not ended in tears. That evening I decided to keep track of how many good days I had each year and by good days I meant simply one in which no one purposely set out to hurt my feelings. It would take another six years before I would have my first good day.

By age ten (two years without a single good day) I resolved to murder myself if life ever grew too painful to bear. Knowing that I could end it at anytime and go to heaven was the one thing that made life tolerable. I sat up nights trying to decide how best to terminate my existence when the day inevitably came that it no longer made sense to live. Then one night, I was watching a late night movie on TV, an old black and white flick from the forties or fifties. The movie was about a man who had reached the end of his rope and was contemplating suicide. He was standing on the rooftop of some old tenement building when an angel came to him. The angel tried to convince him not to end it all, first by telling him that suicide was an unforgivable sin for which he would burn in hell. I still remember how I shot upright in my bed, astonished by what I’d heard. Burn in hell for committing suicide? That couldn’t be possible. I suddenly felt trapped. I felt as if I had no way out. I looked around the ghetto and saw it finally for what it was, a dungeon, a torture chamber from which there was no escape, not even death.

This was what first drove me to pick up the bible and read it. I was just searching for a loophole. I read about God creating the earth and the universe and all the animals and finally man in some six days after I’d already read about dinosaurs that had existed hundreds of thousands of years before the first man. I read about how God called his creation good and then later flooded the entire thing in a fit of rage after deciding that it wasn’t as good as he had first thought. God’s startling idiocy in putting Adam and Eve in proximity to the forbidden and then his childish tantrum when the curiosity he’d imbued them with quite predictably led them to eat of the forbidden fruit. I read about how he then capriciously condemned generations of man for what was quite clearly his own error. I read passages in which the bible condoned the enslavement of strangers and their children and even the brutal beating and murdering of those slaves so long as they did not die immediately of their injuries. I read about God’s hatred of homosexuals, the subjugation, dehumanization, and humiliation of women, the beating and murdering of children by their parents, all gleefully condoned in the bible. My mind reeled. This was not the God of love and mercy I had been told about in church. This was a childish, insecure, unstable, mentally defective monster! Is this the God my people had so foolishly worshipped since their enslavement? Still, I found nothing that would have allowed me to escape hell were I to flee this world which was so clearly flawed and imperfect yet had been supposedly created by a perfect deity.

In desperation, I turned to the New Testament. God may have been a lunatic but Jesus had at least come to save us from his insanity. Yet at every turn I read of Jesus condoning his father’s behavior and exalting and holding him up as an icon of peace and virtue. I could understand a son’s love for his father, but even at that young age I could distinguish the failings in my own mother and the man who I’d once thought to be my father and no matter how much I loved them I knew when they were full of shit. Yet apparently Jesus was little more than an apologist for a father who was clearly self-centered and abusive even to the point of demanding the life of his own child, watching as Jesus was tortured and murdered in order for him to change his mind about sending all of us to hell for our sins. This didn’t jive at all with what I’d been told up to that point. If Jesus was God, as my pastor had told us all then what was the crucifixion all about? God sacrificed himself to himself in order to convince himself to change his mind about sending all of us sinners to hell thereby saving us from him? It made no sense. Then, there were the many false promises and outright lies. To me, only an asshole would offer hope to a suffering people and then fail to deliver.

Mathew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock. and it shall be opened unto you.

Mathew 7:8 For everyone who asketh receiveth; he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.

Mathew 7:9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

Mathew 7:10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?

Mathew 7:11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?”

It floored me, because I had been asking for bread for as long as I could recall and had usually received stones and serpents. As I looked around at my people I saw that most of them had likewise learned to subsist on stones from heaven.

As I grew older and read more and more of the bible, my perspective on God and race began to change, seriously eroding my belief. I saw Black preachers driving brand new Cadillacs while their congregations walked, car-pooled, or arrived on public transportation. I heard them echo Jesus’ words about praying for relief and receiving it when every day I saw even the most devout Christians crushed beneath the weight of racism and poverty. I began to wonder if we were all cursed by God. I wondered what type of God would allow the horrors I saw everyday perpetrated against my people. What had we done? And what type of God would hold an entire race accountable for the actions of a few? What type of God would damn an entire race for the sins of generations long past? None of it made sense.

I began to read the bible more and more critically, shocked and appalled by what I was uncovering about our supposed savior. I tried to forget about all the things people had always told me about God and read it with a completely open mind. I wanted to see what the Bible was really saying and not what others said it was saying. Every word I read shook my faith further. Worst of all was the bible’s condoning of the institution of slavery.

“…And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. Genesis 25:23”

I thought of all those white power groups that used the bible to justify their prejudice and was shocked to find that again and again the bible does just that. It blatantly stated that Christians should make slaves of the heathen races. It was absurd to me that black people, who had suffered these fates, should worship the God that engineered it all. I could not help but to lose some respect for my own race. It was like they were all blind.

Despite all the begging and praying black folks did and all the millions of dollars they dumped into collection plates, God seemed to avoid the ghetto like the plague. Children got killed every day, and every day the pious were drained of wealth yet none of that ever seemed to shake their faith one iota and not once did I see any of them rewarded with a single oxen let alone a thousand the way Job had been. No sheep. No camel. Nothing. Yet still they believed. It was like God had better things to do than to fuck around in the ghetto with a bunch of poor helpless niggers. He was too busy smiling and tap dancing for the white folks who lived in the nice clean neighborhoods with white picket fences and brand new BMWs. In my mind, God took on the persona of every other criminal and con-man in the ghetto getting fat off the desperate hope and naivety of the under-class.

The story of Job haunted me more than any other. I kept hearing Job’s impossible declaration: “…Though he slayed me yet will I trust him.” How? Why? Why would God persecute someone who loved him so dearly just to prove to Satan how much he loved him? How could he merely replace all the wealth and children he destroyed with twice what he had before and think it excused the senseless suffering he needlessly allowed Job to endure? It seemed so cruel and insensitive to me to kill someone’s children and then say, “Oh, don’t trip. I’ll make sure you have twice as many kids to replace those.” I wondered if that’s what God thought when he saw little black kids gunned down in the street? But when Black kids were murdered, when our wealth and our health was blown away by the wind, despite our refusal to curse his name, we didn’t get so much as forty acres and a mule.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I cried myself to sleep wondering what we had done to make God hate us so?

I envisioned God as one of those white business men looking down on the ghetto from one of those towering office buildings downtown, aloof and immune, wondering how he can suck more profit from our misery. In my young mind, God was white and powerful and he hated us just like I believed all white folks did. I later learned that not all White people were prejudice and out to keep the Black man down. I wasn't so sure about God.

My Mom started dating this Muslim brother that tried to tell me that God was Black. I laughed in his face at first but he persisted. He said that we were all God’s chosen people descended from the tribe of Shabazz. He was trying to make me feel better, I know. But all he did was piss me off even more. If God was black than why the hell wasn’t he doing anything to help Black people?

I thought about all the bourgie Blacks I knew: the doctors, lawyers,
businessmen, and politicians, who talked a good game to gain black support and achieve their positions and then promptly turned their backs on us once they achieved their desired status. They would put as much distance as they could between themselves and the people who helped to make them what they were. I thought of all the big-time players and pimps, the hustlers and gangstas who leeched off the black community and exploited their own brothers and sisters worst than any white man ever had. If God was Black then he was just another bourgie nigga who got large and forgot where he came from. Somehow the idea of a sell-out, house-nigga god, was worse than the idea of a racist white one.

I was eighteen years old before I finally accepted that the God I had heard about all of my life had in fact been as much of a myth as Santa Clause. What did it for me was the simple realization that I had no actual reasons, evidence or arguments to support my belief. I had believed simply because my mother had believed and her mother before her and her mother before her and everyone else that I knew believed. It seemed then the most ridiculous reason to believe in anything. I was ashamed of myself and embarrassed by my faith. I felt like a fool. So I decided to start over.
I decided to abandon every belief I had held up to that point that I had never questioned. Every belief that I had accepted solely on the authority of my parents, grandparents, and church leaders, every idea that I had accepted because of the overwhelming popularity of it and the pressure to believe placed on me by my peers. I examined every moral claim from murder to thievery to incest. I examined every scientific claim and every religious claim and while most of my moral views remained intact. I found that I could not find a single justification for any of the religious beliefs I had held all of my life. I realized that I had asked more questions and been more skeptical buying my last BMX bike then I had when I adopted Christianity, when I took on an entire way of life. True, like most religious adherents, I had only been a child when I had been indoctrinated into the Christian faith and had lacked the cognitive resources to question what I was being told and resist the efforts of my family and friends to convince me of their beliefs, but it still embarrassed me that I had held these beliefs so fervently and for so long. I had once told my best friend that his mother was going to hell because she did not believe in Christ. I had condemned and ridiculed homosexuals because the bible had called men who lay with men as with women abominations. I was ashamed of myself.
For all the freedom I felt being rid of such an oppressive ideology, I also felt a great sense of loss. I went through a period of great existential malaise. In my mind, if God did not exist then life was completely without meaning and thus all of my suffering and all the suffering of my people, unjustified. I sank into a deep depression. I began to read anything I could find about the meaning of life. I read everything from the Greek philosophers to the Existentialists. I picked up book after book trying to find something with which to replace my lost faith in the Christian god. I found a lot of very strong arguments against the existence of God in the writings of Bertrand Russell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Schopenhauer, and even Voltaire and Thomas Paine. None of them went quite far enough for me though and I was always left with questions the author had either not anticipated, did not have answers for or often appeared to not have the courage to ask himself. So, I began answering these question on my own. Recently, my quest for answers has been aided by modern day atheist thinkers such as Daniel Dennet, Victor J. Stenger, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris who have had the courage to take on religious thinking head-on without apology and without shying away from unpleasant or unpopular conclusions. Their books have reinforced many of the conclusions I had already reached on my own and sparked even more questions, particularly in regards to the arguments against Intelligent Design. Now, my goal is to bring the things I have learned to others and help them to answer the questions I have found answers to and to enlist their aid in finding solutions to the mysteries that still remain unsolved. My goal is to be that Underground Railroad my people so desperately need. To help them to finally escape the great overseer in their minds as I have.

The Problem With Miracles (originally published 5/23/07)

2008-12-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

More than twenty years ago my mother was diagnosed with cancer in her vertebrae. She underwent several months of chemotherapy and then decided not to continue with the chemo and to try to control it with diet and exercise and the power of positive thought. The cancer went into remission. At that time no one had ever seen cancer shrink before and so they called it a miracle. To this day my mother believes God intervened on her behalf. This is probably one of the many things that led her to become a minister. Today, however, cases of cancer going into remission are commonplace, far from miraculous. That's one of the reasons we shouldn't be so quick to label something we don't understand an act of God. At one time birth itself was considered an act of God before we understood how a sperm cell interacts with an ovum. Lightning, solar and lunar eclipses, child prodigies, the placebo effect in patients with chronic pain and other illnesses, anyone who survived any type of injury or illness whatsoever, were all attributed to some type of deus ex machina. As human knowledge expands we have taken the mystery out of many of the things we once believed to be miraculous. You'd think we would learn not to rush to judgement and label any gaps in our understanding as "miraculous events" yet the "God of the Gaps" remains and the faithful are still quick to label anything we can't readily explain as a miracle. You'd think they would be more cautious with this approach since, as human knowledge continues to increase, their God of the gaps will disappear more and more. The more explanations man is able to uncover the more God's territory will shrink as there will be less unexplained phenomenon for him to lay claim to.

In Richard Dawkins' bestseller "The God Delusion"(and I hate quoting Richard Dawkins but he doies make a point) he makes this telling observation:

"...One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding...Admission of ignorance and temporary mystification are vital to good science."

One thing I've never talked to my mother about regarding her cancer is the existence of cancer itself and the many millions of people who have not recovered from it and have died of cancer. Was God just looking the other way when they were suffering? Were they not worthy of any divine intervention? Does God have an annual miracle quota? Every time someone thanks God when they win a fight, or a game, or a war, or when they get the promotion or the girl, I always wonder if they believe that God chooses sides? If they think the other guy in the boxing ring deserved a miracle less than they did? If they think God was betting against the other team? If they think that the other guy who was up for the promotion or the girl didn't have enough faith and therefore hadn't earned God's favor? So, if they're the one who's cancer goes into remission, and meanwhile there's some terminally ill young girl who dies in agony in the next bed, how do they rectify that with their faith? When they are the other guy who didn't win the fight or the game, or the war, or the promotion, or the girl, do they think that God wasn't on their side that day? As a friend of mine is fond of pointing out, "You always hear people thanking God when they win. Why don't you ever hear anyone blame God when they loose? I'd love to hear a post-fight interview where someone says, 'I blame Jesus for this loss'". Giving God the credit for a win but blaming yourself for the loss is like taking all the credit when you win a fight and blaming your trainer when you loose. Credit and blame have to go hand in hand.

These "miracles" seem to be extremely arbitrary. As Victor J. Stenger repeatedly points out in his book "God:The Failed Hypothesis", "The world looks just as it would be expected to look were there no God." In fact, as I have pointed out often myself, it is only when you add God into the equation that everything ceases to make sense. Why some people die and others live, why some people suffer and others don't, why some people prosper while others fail, while evil befalls the good and good befalls the evil, these all cease to make sense once you introduce and intelligent creator. Then you have to say things like "God works in mysterious ways" and "Our finite mortal minds are incapable of understanding the infinite mind of God." In other words, God's ways make no sense. For example, in Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:

"Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"

So, we pray when we or our loved ones suffer or lay dying and wonder what went wrong when they don't improve because in the bible it says that anything you ask for in the name of the lord Jesus Christ will be given to you yet still our loved ones perish despite our prayers. So we pray for understanding. Yet, were you to eliminate the idea that there is some omnipotent loving father figure who answered prayers with miracles, it would all make sense.

"Of course no one answered my prayers, because there is no God."

"Of course good people suffer sometimes and bad people prosper sometimes, because the universe has no morality and makes no moral judgements. Man does."

"Of course some people die while others live. It's all arbitrary with no one guiding it all."

Makes sense.Add God with his miraculous interventions into it and it gets all confusing and leaves us crying in church pews screaming out "Why?" to the listless heavens.

In the much discussed STEP project (Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer) which included six medical centers, including Harvard and the Mayo Clinic, 1,802 patients were prayed for over a fourteen-day period starting the night before receiving coronary bypass graft surgery.

The patients were randomly and blindly divided into three groups. 604 received intercessory prayers after being informed they might or might not receive such prayers, 597 did not receive prayers after being told that they might or might not receive such prayers, and 601 received intercessory prayers after being told they definitely would be prayed for. None of the doctors knew who was being prayed for in the first two groups. The published results showed that in the two groups uncertain about receiving intercessory prayers, complications occurred in 52 percent of patients who received prayers versus 51 percent of patients who did not. However complications occurred in 59 percent of those patient certain that they were being prayed for. Major complications and thirty-day mortality rates were similar across the board. The authors of the study concluded that intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery. Again, these results are consistent with what you would expect to find if there were no God. Trying to fit God into this scenario requires some intellectual sleight of hand.

As the hilariously named yet thought-provoking article "Why Won't God Heal Amputees?" points out, wherever a case exists where an irrefutable miracle is possible it has not occurred. There would be no rational explanation for the spontaneous regeneration of a limb. This would be an incontestably miraculous event yet:
"Prayer does not restore the severed limbs of amputees. You can electronically search through all the medical journals ever written -- there is no documented case of an amputated leg being restored spontaneously."

In fact, if the STEP project had worked and been duplicated with the same results over and over again, that would have been irrifutable evidence in miracles. Yet it didn't and so no such evidence exists. As the author points out, whenever there is no possibility of ambiguity no miracles ever occur.

"...By looking at amputees, we can see that something is wrong. Jesus is not telling the truth. God never answers prayers to spontaneously restore lost limbs, despite Jesus' statements in the Bible....Let's imagine that you have cancer, you pray to God to cure the cancer, and the cancer actually does go away. The interesting thing to recognize is that there is ambiguity in your cure. God might have miraculously cured the disease, as many people believe. But God might also be imaginary, and the chemotherapy drugs and surgery are the things that cured your cancer. Or your body might have cured the cancer itself. The human body does have a powerful immune system, and this immune system has the ability to eliminate cancer in many cases. When your tumor dissappeared, it might be a coincidence that you happened to pray. Drugs, an immune response or a combination of the two might have been the thing the cured you.

How can we determine whether it is God or coincidence that worked the cure? One way is to eliminate the ambiguity. In a non-ambiguous situation, there is no potential for coincidence... When we pray to God to restore an amputated limb, there is only one way for the limb to regenerate. God must exist and God must answer prayers. What we find is that whenever we create a non-ambiguous situation like this and look at the results of prayer, prayer never works. God never answers prayers if there is no possibility of coincidence."

So what am I trying to say? That there is no such thing as miracles? No. I'm trying to say that given the lack of any credible evidence for miraculous events, given the very real evidence that loved ones perish despite prayers and that a great many things that were once considered miraculous are now easily explained and that what we call miracles seem to happen arbitrarily at best with no correlation to the amount of faith a person has or how much he is prayed for or how good a life he has led, given the fact that lightning bolts strike churches as often as strip clubs and bars, miracles are highly improbable and belief in them is entirely illogical and unwarranted. So, am I then saying that God does not exist? No. What I am saying is that given that there seems to be no morality either in nature or the universe itself, given that theories exist to explain much of what we once attributed to God and that there is no reason to assume that everything we now consider to be miraculous will not one day be scientifically explainable, given that events that we call good and events that we call evil seem to occur randomly and without any intelligent guidance behind it, given that these events seem to make less sense when seen through the eyes of religion rather than through science, the belief in a God is illogical and not warranted by the evidence. It is highly improbable that a God who hears the prayers of man and responds with miracles exists though it cannot be said that such a God is impossible.

So should we abandon belief in miracles and stop praying? That's for you to decide. If you are just looking for something to do that makes you feel less helpless in the face of tragic events over which you have no control then it is probably harmless and to that I would simply say: "If it feels good. Do it!" If you are praying in lieu of working to find a solution with the expectation that your prayer will solve the problem on it's own, then I would just ask you to imagine what the world would be like if physicians had not looked for viruses and infections and antibiotics and vaccines to cure them but rather relied on prayer instead. Imagine what the world would look like if everyone turned to faith in God rather than the surgeon or the Pharmacologist. Imagine what it would look like if faith governed the course of human progress rather than science. But first turn off your computer. No miracle created that either. Science did that.

The Myth of The Afterlife

2008-12-18T03:30:00.001-08:00

Life after death. It seems such an obvious contradiction when written out in simple words. Living after you have ceased to live. Seems as if it shouldn't even require discussion. Yet billions of people across the globe from hundreds of different cultures and religions believe in just such a thing. Our senses reveal to us the evidence of life's cessation. We see the heart stop beating, the lungs stop inhaling and exhaling. We can measure brain activity as it dwindles to a halt. Yet we still believe that life continues. We believe without any evidence to support this belief. Those who do believe this seemingly unbelievable idea say that no one really knows for sure. All we have is our faith to show us the way. Is that really all we have? I beg to differ. They point to the lack of evidence against an afterlife. Lack of evidence? Really? I would suggest to you that there is now and has been for several centuries enough evidence to completely debunk the myth of the afterlife. If you have anything close to an analytical mind and you are at all open-minded and you wish to maintain your illusions than do yourself a favor and read no further. Consider this like a movie thread with spoilers in it. Because I intend to tell you exactly how this movie will end and I don't want to ruin it for those who need their illusions. I am well aware that for many many people their faith is necessary to them, something they could not imagine living without. I am not so cruel as to wish to snatch the life preserver from a drowning man. But those of you of strong faith who are already one-hundred percent committed to the conclusions you have reached through faith, who are well-skilled in the art of believing without evidence and against all contradictory evidence may well enjoy this journey and since faith has always been an effective weapon against knowledge I'm sure you will come through this unscathed. Those of you who are truly open minded and not committed to any one conclusion, but are open to all ideas may find this helpful in figuring out your own life philosophy.

First we must agree on exactly what we mean by life after death. Obviously we are not talking about the heart pumping, lungs breathing, growing and reproducing, type of life as it is defined on this planet as we can all safely agree that this does come to an end. For the purposes of this argument we will agree that we mean consciousness after death. Consciousness after the body has been annihilated, brain and all. This theory rests on the belief that the brain is not the seat of consciousness but rather the "soul" is that part of ourselves from which all of our drives, desires, instincts, emotions, and awareness originate and where our memories and personalities are stored. This soul is said to be something non-physical which cannot be physically unmade thus allowing for the consciousness to continue after the destruction of the flesh. If we can agree on that than we have a place to start and here's the first question you must ask yourself:

"How is consciousness achieved? How are you conscious of these words on this screen, the keyboard at your fingertips?"

Of course the answer is because you can see this screen. You can feel the keyboard beneath your hands, hear the click of the keys as you strike them. You can perhaps even smell the plastic from which your keyboard and much of your computer is composed. Baring these senses you could even taste the metals and plastics to confirm the existence of your computer. You are conscious of this computer the same way you are conscious of all things, because you can taste, touch, see, feel, and hear it. Consciousness is a product of the senses, senses which are all destroyed when your flesh decays and rots from the bone.

You can't see without eyes. You can't hear without ears. You can't taste without a tongue. You can't feel without nerves and skin and flesh. All of these things will rot away with the rest of your body and then what will you see with? What will you smell with? What will you hear, feel, taste with? How will you be conscious then? Extra sensory perception perhaps? Maybe there's some mysterious sixth sense that will somehow materialize after you die? Yet, we find no evidence of a sixth sense anywhere. Even those people who claim to have it, speak of it in terms of their five senses. They have visions. I can assure you that people who have never seen before have no visions. They cannot even imagine what the world truly looks like, just as you cannot imagine a color that you've never seen before or a sound that you've never heard. The blind do not have visions and the deaf do not hear voices. At best, any sixth sense would be merely an augmentation of your existing senses, which being dead, you would no longer possess.

So there you would be, alive but unconscious of anything outside your own mind (if we allow that the mind is non-physical, which I'll address soon), a vegetable of sorts. Oh, but perhaps this afterlife is like some of the Eastern religions believe, an eternal dream state? But see, the problem with dreams is that they require memories and you wouldn't have any. Did I forget to mention that? You see, when you die, your brain rots and everyone knows that that's where your memory is housed. That's why a blow to the head, a high fever, consciousness altering drugs, can all screw up your memory. Severe brain damage, we know can delete your memory and your entire personality forever. It can render you unconscious for the remainder of your life as well. Now, how could that be possible if the consciousness where some non-physical spirit? How can you physically affect the non-physical? How could a blow to the head render you unconscious and even wipe out your memory if the soul, and not the brain, were the seat of consciousness? Why is it that we can link the damaging of brain cells to the loss of both memory and consciousness if the brain were not a necessary and vital part of your consciousness? We can infact pinpoint the exact area of the brain where memories are stored and we can directly link the destruction of brain cells in that area to the permanent loss of memory. What do you think would happen to your memory if your entire brain were to disintegrate in your skull and leak out of your ears? If a blow to the head, drugs, or a high fever can render you unconscious what do you think would happen to your consciousness when your entire brain decomposed? Obviously, when your brain goes, so goes your memory and all other type of consciousness.

I knew a guy who was sitting in a coffeeshop when he runs into an ex-girlfriend. I remember the story so well, because he wrote a poem about it. He approached the girl and said hello, smiling from ear to ear. She smiled back and asked him if he knew her. His smile faltered as he replied, "Yes, of course I know you."

"Than who am I?"

She had been in a car accident a few years previous and had total amnesia. They sat down and talked and she began asking him questions about herself.

"I like sports now. Did I always like sports?"

"No, defintely not. You hated sports."

"I'm a lesbian now. Was I always a lesbian?"

"Uh, No."

She blushed realizing that they must have been lovers.

"I paint now. Was I an artist before?"

"No. You weren't."

As they talked he realized that he was talking to an entirely different person in his former grilfriend's body. There was nothing the same. Even her pattern of speech was different, he said. I saw a show on TV about a kid who was a college football star who had an accident, got amnesia, and now hates football and thinks it's stupid, iss shy around girls, is completely opposite of the kid he used to be. His parents say that they had to bury their old kid and treat their son as if he were an entirely new child because he was. So, obviously even with our same bodies our memories go along way into deciding the type of people we will be. So, again I ask you to imagine what it would be like to wake up in a new body with no memories of ever having been anything else. How the hell do you think that "You" by any reasonable definition of the self would continue to exist? Your self would be no more.

So, let's look at this afterlife of yours. You are a disembodied spirit without the ability to see, feel, taste, smell, or hear, no way at all to experience anything new and no memory of ever having experienced anything in the past. You are as unconscious as a stone and you can't even dream. Remember what I said about not being able to imagine a shape or color or taste you'd never experienced? What if you'd never seen or experienced anything? If you had no memory of any shape, any color, any taste, any cutaneous or kinesthetic sensations, how could you dream then? Dreams of an eternal blackness without form or substance or sensation? Does that sound like heaven to you? That is no afterlife.

But maybe those New Age religions are correct and life is just this eternal energy that's a part of everything and last forever. That could very well be possible, but so what? That energy is not you. That sounds like that mindless disembodied spirit with no memory and no consciousness. But maybe those Eastern religions that believe in reincarnation are correct and this energy is transfered into other living things after you die? In fact, considering what we know of matter and energy, reincarnation is probably closest to the truth. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed but merely transformed from one form to another. But I doubt we are talking about reincarnation the way it is presented in most religions as your life force being reborn whole and intact in another form, but rather your life force disintegrating, reintegrating with the earth, and then being recylced in many different forms much like the process your flesh goes through. But even if we allowed for the possibility of your memoryless lifeforce being reborn whole and intact in another form, again, so what? Whatever new form this energy is converted into it will not be you. Your self is created by your perceptions of the world, shaped by your own unique perspective and the experiences that shape your personality compiled in your memories. The fact that you are a certain height, a certain weight, a certain race, a certain nationality, a certain sex, that you grew up in a certain area under certain circumstances, all go into shaping your identity. If I were to remove all of that, would you still be you? Think how drastically your perception of the world and your sense of self would change if I were to put your consciousness into my body. How long do you think you'd still retain your identity? Now what if I were to remove all of your memories and then put your consciousness into my body? Would you still be you? Even if I was to remove all memory of you ever having been anyone else? Would you still be the same person or would your entire identity, your entire self, be destroyed? Now imagine I were to take your unconscious memoryless "life-energy" and place it into an animal or a tree or a bird or, more likely, combine pieces of it with other disembodied life forces and disperse it among many different types of life forms? Think your identity would still somehow remain intact? Think you'd retain your sense of self with no memory of ever having been anything but the myriad creatures your soul is now scattered amongst? Would you still be you with your essence broken down and scattered amongst many different creatures? Nope, uh uh, all that you are, all the lessons you learned throughout your life, all the memories and experiences you suffered for and now cherish would be lost forever. You by any reasonable definition of yourself would cease to be.

Now, how about if I didn't put your mind into another body but just set it adrift in the ether without memory and without senses, without consciousness, essentially without you, as dead and lifeless as a stone? Would that mindless, deaf, dumb, and blind thing still be you? Or would you be gone forever? And that's only if you buy into the very unlikely idea that there is some type of life energy that exists independent of the body. More than likely the energy of life is just a chemical reaction caused in the body that ceases once the body ceases to function. It is highly unlikely that this energy exists as some integrated whole even as it lies in your body now. Still, this is a far more likely scenario than your life force exiting the body with all of its senses and memories intact to run off to heaven and continue its existence. I think I've pretty much proven that that ain't happening regardless of what the various biblical texts may lead you to believe.

But what about becoming one with the infinite, uniting with the all, becoming one with the universe? That is like that reincarnation I was speaking about, your life force suffering the same fate as the flesh, being broken down and integrated with the larger body along with Billions of other life forces. Like a drop of ink in an ocean. Pretty nice cozy way to describe the extinction of the self. You become part of the all! Digested by the earth or the universe to be recreated as new things that, of course, would not be you. See, you are more than just some nebulous energy or force. You are a specific thing with a specific definition, specific hopes, specific dreams, specific memories and experiences, a specific way of perceiving the world and interpreting those perceptions. Without a body, without a consciousness and without a memory, you would not be you, but something entirely separate and unique from you. What you are describing is akin to melting down a shiny new Ford and making silverware out of it and still trying to call it a car. Sure, all the same material is there, but that car is gone. Man is more than just the sum of his parts and I assure you that while all the chemicals and minerals and perhaps even the spark of life that animated you shall continue on, it will continue on without you. All that you are shall cease to be. That's what happens when you die. That's why no animal on earth has any desire to shrug off this mortal coil except for man, who alone has the imagination capable of self-delusion. And that's what we all have to look forward to. That's how the movie ends.

So, when someone asks me why I write, this is the long answer. I write because I value all the memories and experiences I have suffered and struggled to acquire. I value them if for no other reason than that they have cost me. Every lesson I have learned in my life has a corresponding physical or emotional scar and it offends me that these should be scattered on the wind and lost forever when my empty, memoryless, unconscious life energy vacates my rotting carcass. So I preserve them through you, the reader. You extend my life. As long as there are readers to discover my thoughts and carry them on in their own heads than my thoughts will not be dead until the last of my readers perish. That is the only afterlife we can hope for.

Why Godless and Black?

2008-12-18T02:46:00.000-08:00

Felling the need to separate them from my political ramblings and my writings about love, family, and the horror genre, I have decided to create a forum solely for my atheist writings. I am planning on slowly importing past posts from my blog Words of Wrath onto this one as well as newer blogs. If you are new to my writing then welcome. Sit back and enjoy.