I find it interesting when people describe religion as a choice, because for me it wasn’t a choice. And no, I’m not talking about my upbringing where I was never asked if I wanted to be raised Protestant Christian. I mean when I became an atheist, it wasn’t something I wanted to happen. It was the least socially advantageous thing I could have done. At least coming out as bisexual meant I was just a little weird and different and shouldn’t talk about it. Becoming an atheist meant I lost the support of most of my family and friends, and was a very small minority of the heavily religious community in which I had always lived.
I wasn’t even “converted to atheism” by atheist arguments or logic. I actually had been trying to find a more open and accepting Christian church in my community, and stumbled upon a Deist [believe in a non-interventionist god] website which incidentally converted me to atheism. I couldn’t help it – here I was trying to stay Christian, but instead I was compelled by what I saw to be the facts, and followed them to their logical conclusion. In fact, I challenge any ex-religious atheist to tell me that they actually sat down, as a religious person, and purposefully decided to become an atheist because they wanted to.
Does that mean I think nobody can help being their religion… not quite. I think people do make the choice to self-educate or not – to consider alternate viewpoints or to shield one’s thoughts from outside influences. But when we reduce the issue to a binary between “personal choice” and “innate mental property”, we risk erasing all the wide spectrum of human experience that doesn’t conform to those boxes.
Hi
I recepct your though , I love to tell you to compare between the religion
Islam and your religion , read too many resources on the internet
And choose the right one
I found Islam is the best I can trust
May God give you the right way
@cristina – I <3 your video stylez. I'm not sure I'd use any kind of "illness" label for religion. Not that I have a good alternative off the top of my head.
The meme of religion as mental illness is old: I think the first one to articulate it might have been Arthur C. Clarke (in his collection of essays, “Greetings Carbon Based Life Forms” he is explicit about it).
That said. My issue with that description is that it is a subset of what I call adolescent-stye atheism. The kind that you see in high school kids who (in my day, yes I am old) listened to a lot of Depeche Mode and thought that being atheist made them smarter. Well, it doesn’t.
But when you act as though it does you end up being generally kind of a jerk — and the jerkiness affects people in marginalized groups. White Christians don’t have much to worry about. But tell a Lakota or Diné or Chuckchi why her religion is just a bunch of superstitious delusions and why she’d be better off giving it up. We’ll just ignore all that forced acculturation and genocide.
So I am wary of patting oneself on the back too much for not believing in God(s). There are plenty of people for whom hanging on to their belief in their gods was a matter of survival in the face of horrible onslaughts.
religion is a social dictatorship…as a self referencing gob of idiots that vow to help each other get entirely through their lives with out ever once questioning their own sanity….and this is of course precisely why they are insane….
i do not claim to be sane, and i question my own sanity, as well as my own insanity, regularly, and expect others to do the same….Crystal you understand this, i know, and just as well in keeping your health for which i am proud of you..
but sometimes you talk to much and run yourself into a frenzy with your conclusion just a touch off, like a bat pinging for repose….if, while you are here, need i quiet place with one who can do well to calm your wiring mind as set you to a meal and a safe place of rest….
before i urge you to return home again, as i said, and as much wish i could go back with you..
Cristina Rad…. God does not exist. God <> is The Nothing, God is the All. God is the Goddess of your female ancestors, which have vague memory of their existence. God is the immeasurable Eternity. Origen of an Creator Principle divided into two fundamental forces (couple / force sex) that are separated into opposites reconciled in micrometers or microns of second, and for periods short, medium and long term; being created, diversifying into many things, destroying and recreating, cyclically. God is everywhere (even behind the dogmas of religion, as a Symbolic Order) and in all as a crucial spark in both living beings and inanimate objects, and as a mental idea inside the brains of living things evolved that generated self-awareness. To know, we must be in the mental Three Positions: be a believer, an atheist and an agnostic. If there balance between these three positions, you are an initiate or Initiated in plenary knowledge discovery. Feel comfortable being atheist, anyway, religion exist with humanity to the End Times.
forgives my rudimentary Englishman. I am Spanish-speaking.
not that i would call myself an atheist, but since i believe all of life is comprised of ancient nano technology of unknown origins, and that other organisms, and more recently Monsanto, can slip coding into other organisms to replace or insinuate it’s origin…
though being if anyone can imagine time stretching out un-ending into the future, they also have to accept the fact that it has always been…..and so maybe this god everyone speaks of is just some sort of art vandal that deserves more to be spat on than praised….
so i might be an atheist, but prefer not to be categorized… but would like ZOMGitsCriss to at least write once in awhile so we know she is ok…..you worry me sick…
my latest piece of overpopulation awareness e-mail bombings…enjoy:
A View From America
are Christions really undercover Muslims ?
let’s examine the facts, ( but as generalizations in establishing hypothesis, not prof, as religious people tend to prefer hypothesis )
they feed the Muslims in exchange for oil.
they breed to excess in dualistic synchronicity, as if one burgeoning mass of the same mind ( claiming not to be, of course, because if they where called the same thing that would be prof, and they don’t like that )
while the Muslims infiltrate Europe and Russia, the Christians fuel expansion elsewhere, and their own expansion, to ensure the is no room at all on the planet for people of European decent who tend to think for them selves as a gratuity to others….myself being one of those people who think for them selves of course because i am neither Muslim or Christian for which i am proposing seem to be the same thing.. as it is from my minds eye, to share in perspective as a gift to others, to go along with the gratuity of thinking for myself….
there just seems to be something terribly wrong…but that is just my opinion.
Crystal, i showed my mother some of your videos as augmentation to the flow of conversation, and was shocked by her enthusiasm…she absolutely adores you…
now this is odd as she has always been very critical of my feminine acquaintances, not that you don’t come off as exceptional, but that no one has ever stuck her as good enough….and so this gives me some hope, whether or not you and i ever meet and begin tentative moment to moment maintenance, is not so much the point for me.
so regardless of outcome, thank you..
it was that i had written you that my mothers assumption leaped forth….she actually became very depressed when i explained that you are extremely popular and had not yet replied, and though i do not perceive you to be the type to tack diseases about, that i don’t expect you ever will…
my good looks and charm are enduring enough not to concern yourself, though they may out last yours to see you someday reading this with thoughts of promise, and if so, and being i am still available, i would consider my mothers reaction pre-approval for us to be wed, ( or for us to engage in an emotionally sensitive business partnership ), as i would put it being not spiritually affiliated in any way..
i am second generation american on my mothers side, from the south, and south east, of the old Austrian Empire….before playing the first video i mentioned you are from Romainia and that your roots at times are left to show authenticity to the region…my ex of 10 years, dissolved relations since 9 years ago this fall, was blond and brutal enough to my mothers senceability to leave a sigma…..so to cushion her, and so perhaps as well the assumption…
i don’t know myself if it was entirely to ensure your points where un-jaded anymore….but i think i like you more than i should, and maybe my moms reasons for her reaction are reflecting just that back to me now in hind sight……or certainly more than could be considered healthy, considering…
OK, since everyone is fessing up. I’ve been an atheist pretty much my entire life. My parents were not Religious, though my mother was mostly cynical about preachers. My father privately called himself an agnostic, but never discussed it with people other than me, I think.
When I was 5 or so, I went to bible study with a next door neighbor. When the teacher started going this and this was the case, I spoke up and said isn’t that just your opinion? She nicely told me to shut up, so I watched he horses outside the window. Since I was rather advanced compared to my peers in school I got used to being told let someone else answer.
I wondered about God in my teens, but came to the conclusion it was all a bunch of stories, especially after reading a book by a catholic scholar, who lost faith and wrote about the history of the Christian Church and the politics of it, and how a lot of passages in the Bible were taken from the Dead Sea scrolls long before Jesus existed.
I am 57, so I no longer care what anyone thinks or worry about it affecting me socially, or career wise. I am pretty open about it now. But there is that look you get from some folks who think they’ve suddenly seen Satan.
The thing I dislike is when Christians try to argue Jesus and God are scientifically provable. There seems to be someone pushing that gobbledy goop lately.
No, I don’t think faith is insane, perhaps poor logic, combined with ignorance, but I don’t get into arguments with people about it except on my facebook page. I try to be considerate of the fact that there is a psychological dependency on the idea of Daddy watching over you. Attacking that will get you no where.
I read the Bible, the Book of Mormon and several essays on religion
sorry, my climate is similar to Moscow, and this my tenth winter alone…..or with out a close companion i should say, to complete solitude here in my woodland home it has been six years now…..anyway, all the civil population management work of this eleven years has me singing with the crickets it seems…
i sit alone and stare into blank space in disgust as i can almost sense the title wave of human fornication sweep twice across the continent each weekend….a nauseating despair of sorts, like some all powerful force asking more of me than i am capable of….nagging, that i should have fewer than zero children…
anyway, this is one of my favorites of your video works…i am so well tempered to questioning my sanity, then cyclically questioning my insanity, that i am almost over tempered to brittle….i can watch this and is sort of anneals me in a way….thank you.
but while things here may change for the better, or as well for the worse for me, and though i did sign to the draft as was my legal obligation, my sentiment that i do not need to go anywhere to die for my country remains the same…or to say if the united states does not comply to global best interest i expect no other country to spare mercy on my behalf….
being aligned to global best interest myself, so if so, consider it as much a measure of putting me out of my misery…
Oh and Too…..my phone is in-operational at the moment, and i can’t say for sure when i will get around to setting that strait….so if you want to check with me on finer points to a commentary video, or feel you need me to clarify some of my point to a finer degree before proceeding, then my e-mail is best for the immediate future…otherwise, carte blanche.
and yes, life is creepy, i just try my best to be realistic, and to offer perspective i feel may be overlooked…maybe consider a narrower view for the video topics within your comfort and have fun with it, because i wouldn’t want you to if it wasn’t…. if i don’t hear from you i will figure i creeped you out…..so if so ok…i will be quiet now.
Nice work – both the video and the paintings.
I find it interesting when people describe religion as a choice, because for me it wasn’t a choice. And no, I’m not talking about my upbringing where I was never asked if I wanted to be raised Protestant Christian. I mean when I became an atheist, it wasn’t something I wanted to happen. It was the least socially advantageous thing I could have done. At least coming out as bisexual meant I was just a little weird and different and shouldn’t talk about it. Becoming an atheist meant I lost the support of most of my family and friends, and was a very small minority of the heavily religious community in which I had always lived.
I wasn’t even “converted to atheism” by atheist arguments or logic. I actually had been trying to find a more open and accepting Christian church in my community, and stumbled upon a Deist [believe in a non-interventionist god] website which incidentally converted me to atheism. I couldn’t help it – here I was trying to stay Christian, but instead I was compelled by what I saw to be the facts, and followed them to their logical conclusion. In fact, I challenge any ex-religious atheist to tell me that they actually sat down, as a religious person, and purposefully decided to become an atheist because they wanted to.
Does that mean I think nobody can help being their religion… not quite. I think people do make the choice to self-educate or not – to consider alternate viewpoints or to shield one’s thoughts from outside influences. But when we reduce the issue to a binary between “personal choice” and “innate mental property”, we risk erasing all the wide spectrum of human experience that doesn’t conform to those boxes.
Hi
I recepct your though , I love to tell you to compare between the religion
Islam and your religion , read too many resources on the internet
And choose the right one
I found Islam is the best I can trust
May God give you the right way
Religion is great I am catholic born and raised it is my only religion tiff lewis bio momashton m way
@3 – whut.
@cristina – I <3 your video stylez. I'm not sure I'd use any kind of "illness" label for religion. Not that I have a good alternative off the top of my head.
The meme of religion as mental illness is old: I think the first one to articulate it might have been Arthur C. Clarke (in his collection of essays, “Greetings Carbon Based Life Forms” he is explicit about it).
That said. My issue with that description is that it is a subset of what I call adolescent-stye atheism. The kind that you see in high school kids who (in my day, yes I am old) listened to a lot of Depeche Mode and thought that being atheist made them smarter. Well, it doesn’t.
But when you act as though it does you end up being generally kind of a jerk — and the jerkiness affects people in marginalized groups. White Christians don’t have much to worry about. But tell a Lakota or Diné or Chuckchi why her religion is just a bunch of superstitious delusions and why she’d be better off giving it up. We’ll just ignore all that forced acculturation and genocide.
So I am wary of patting oneself on the back too much for not believing in God(s). There are plenty of people for whom hanging on to their belief in their gods was a matter of survival in the face of horrible onslaughts.
religion is a social dictatorship…as a self referencing gob of idiots that vow to help each other get entirely through their lives with out ever once questioning their own sanity….and this is of course precisely why they are insane….
i do not claim to be sane, and i question my own sanity, as well as my own insanity, regularly, and expect others to do the same….Crystal you understand this, i know, and just as well in keeping your health for which i am proud of you..
but sometimes you talk to much and run yourself into a frenzy with your conclusion just a touch off, like a bat pinging for repose….if, while you are here, need i quiet place with one who can do well to calm your wiring mind as set you to a meal and a safe place of rest….
before i urge you to return home again, as i said, and as much wish i could go back with you..
rulgert
Cristina Rad…. God does not exist. God <> is The Nothing, God is the All. God is the Goddess of your female ancestors, which have vague memory of their existence. God is the immeasurable Eternity. Origen of an Creator Principle divided into two fundamental forces (couple / force sex) that are separated into opposites reconciled in micrometers or microns of second, and for periods short, medium and long term; being created, diversifying into many things, destroying and recreating, cyclically. God is everywhere (even behind the dogmas of religion, as a Symbolic Order) and in all as a crucial spark in both living beings and inanimate objects, and as a mental idea inside the brains of living things evolved that generated self-awareness. To know, we must be in the mental Three Positions: be a believer, an atheist and an agnostic. If there balance between these three positions, you are an initiate or Initiated in plenary knowledge discovery. Feel comfortable being atheist, anyway, religion exist with humanity to the End Times.
forgives my rudimentary Englishman. I am Spanish-speaking.
not that i would call myself an atheist, but since i believe all of life is comprised of ancient nano technology of unknown origins, and that other organisms, and more recently Monsanto, can slip coding into other organisms to replace or insinuate it’s origin…
though being if anyone can imagine time stretching out un-ending into the future, they also have to accept the fact that it has always been…..and so maybe this god everyone speaks of is just some sort of art vandal that deserves more to be spat on than praised….
so i might be an atheist, but prefer not to be categorized… but would like ZOMGitsCriss to at least write once in awhile so we know she is ok…..you worry me sick…
my latest piece of overpopulation awareness e-mail bombings…enjoy:
A View From America
are Christions really undercover Muslims ?
let’s examine the facts, ( but as generalizations in establishing hypothesis, not prof, as religious people tend to prefer hypothesis )
they feed the Muslims in exchange for oil.
they breed to excess in dualistic synchronicity, as if one burgeoning mass of the same mind ( claiming not to be, of course, because if they where called the same thing that would be prof, and they don’t like that )
while the Muslims infiltrate Europe and Russia, the Christians fuel expansion elsewhere, and their own expansion, to ensure the is no room at all on the planet for people of European decent who tend to think for them selves as a gratuity to others….myself being one of those people who think for them selves of course because i am neither Muslim or Christian for which i am proposing seem to be the same thing.. as it is from my minds eye, to share in perspective as a gift to others, to go along with the gratuity of thinking for myself….
there just seems to be something terribly wrong…but that is just my opinion.
rulgert
Crystal, i showed my mother some of your videos as augmentation to the flow of conversation, and was shocked by her enthusiasm…she absolutely adores you…
now this is odd as she has always been very critical of my feminine acquaintances, not that you don’t come off as exceptional, but that no one has ever stuck her as good enough….and so this gives me some hope, whether or not you and i ever meet and begin tentative moment to moment maintenance, is not so much the point for me.
so regardless of outcome, thank you..
it was that i had written you that my mothers assumption leaped forth….she actually became very depressed when i explained that you are extremely popular and had not yet replied, and though i do not perceive you to be the type to tack diseases about, that i don’t expect you ever will…
my good looks and charm are enduring enough not to concern yourself, though they may out last yours to see you someday reading this with thoughts of promise, and if so, and being i am still available, i would consider my mothers reaction pre-approval for us to be wed, ( or for us to engage in an emotionally sensitive business partnership ), as i would put it being not spiritually affiliated in any way..
rulgert
i am second generation american on my mothers side, from the south, and south east, of the old Austrian Empire….before playing the first video i mentioned you are from Romainia and that your roots at times are left to show authenticity to the region…my ex of 10 years, dissolved relations since 9 years ago this fall, was blond and brutal enough to my mothers senceability to leave a sigma…..so to cushion her, and so perhaps as well the assumption…
i don’t know myself if it was entirely to ensure your points where un-jaded anymore….but i think i like you more than i should, and maybe my moms reasons for her reaction are reflecting just that back to me now in hind sight……or certainly more than could be considered healthy, considering…
sorry,
rulg
Oh this is where you went! Took me a while to figure that out. I’ve been following PZ for a while.
OK, since everyone is fessing up. I’ve been an atheist pretty much my entire life. My parents were not Religious, though my mother was mostly cynical about preachers. My father privately called himself an agnostic, but never discussed it with people other than me, I think.
When I was 5 or so, I went to bible study with a next door neighbor. When the teacher started going this and this was the case, I spoke up and said isn’t that just your opinion? She nicely told me to shut up, so I watched he horses outside the window. Since I was rather advanced compared to my peers in school I got used to being told let someone else answer.
I wondered about God in my teens, but came to the conclusion it was all a bunch of stories, especially after reading a book by a catholic scholar, who lost faith and wrote about the history of the Christian Church and the politics of it, and how a lot of passages in the Bible were taken from the Dead Sea scrolls long before Jesus existed.
I am 57, so I no longer care what anyone thinks or worry about it affecting me socially, or career wise. I am pretty open about it now. But there is that look you get from some folks who think they’ve suddenly seen Satan.
The thing I dislike is when Christians try to argue Jesus and God are scientifically provable. There seems to be someone pushing that gobbledy goop lately.
No, I don’t think faith is insane, perhaps poor logic, combined with ignorance, but I don’t get into arguments with people about it except on my facebook page. I try to be considerate of the fact that there is a psychological dependency on the idea of Daddy watching over you. Attacking that will get you no where.
I read the Bible, the Book of Mormon and several essays on religion
Oh great there is a word limit.
Bwahahaha!
Awesome video Cristina.
The internet was missing you. =)
Are you in the US for an extended period, or simply temporarily?
sorry, my climate is similar to Moscow, and this my tenth winter alone…..or with out a close companion i should say, to complete solitude here in my woodland home it has been six years now…..anyway, all the civil population management work of this eleven years has me singing with the crickets it seems…
i sit alone and stare into blank space in disgust as i can almost sense the title wave of human fornication sweep twice across the continent each weekend….a nauseating despair of sorts, like some all powerful force asking more of me than i am capable of….nagging, that i should have fewer than zero children…
rulgert
anyway, this is one of my favorites of your video works…i am so well tempered to questioning my sanity, then cyclically questioning my insanity, that i am almost over tempered to brittle….i can watch this and is sort of anneals me in a way….thank you.
rulg
one last sorry to trouble,
but while things here may change for the better, or as well for the worse for me, and though i did sign to the draft as was my legal obligation, my sentiment that i do not need to go anywhere to die for my country remains the same…or to say if the united states does not comply to global best interest i expect no other country to spare mercy on my behalf….
being aligned to global best interest myself, so if so, consider it as much a measure of putting me out of my misery…
rulgert.
and here, a link to my local work in commentary at population balance in MPS/STP
http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Population-Balance/153832064665635?ref=profile
Oh and Too…..my phone is in-operational at the moment, and i can’t say for sure when i will get around to setting that strait….so if you want to check with me on finer points to a commentary video, or feel you need me to clarify some of my point to a finer degree before proceeding, then my e-mail is best for the immediate future…otherwise, carte blanche.
and yes, life is creepy, i just try my best to be realistic, and to offer perspective i feel may be overlooked…maybe consider a narrower view for the video topics within your comfort and have fun with it, because i wouldn’t want you to if it wasn’t…. if i don’t hear from you i will figure i creeped you out…..so if so ok…i will be quiet now.
rulgert