Why I am an atheist – Pris

I was born in Austria to Roman Catholic parents the summer of 1983 and baptised in autumn. We moved to Germany when I was one. I still live there.

We didn’t practice religion at home.

I received the standard Bavarian religious education, which is very thorough.

I went to first communion and confirmation, even became an altar girl and stayed one for years.

Despite all this I’m an atheist. What happened?

Indoctrination failure.

When I was little, god existed for me on the same level as creatures from fairy tales. When I got a bit older I learned that god was this all powerful being that made everything. For some time I even prayed regularly because due to horrible teachers my live at school was terrible. Praying didn’t help.

I always watched the news with my parents, and there are always a lot of bad things happening in the world. I started wondering about how this could happen if god was all powerful and good. Later I learned that this problem was called theodicy.

Another big problem was the existence of hell. If god forgives everything, what does hell exist for?

And don’t get me started on Pascal’s wager.

The older I got, the more inconsistencies I found.

My parents raised me to respect every human being and taught me that there was nothing wrong with being different from the norm in any way. All religious doctrine I ever met went against that.

When I got interested in politics and human rights, all respect for religion went out the window. According to most religious doctrine I’m a second class human or not human at all. Just a mobile incubator.

When I turned eighteen I went to the city hall and left the church. That’s how you have to do it in Germany. I received a letter from the local parish asking me to reconsider, which I ignored.

These days I see myself as a humanist. I follow Kant’s categorical imperative. ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.’ That is all you need to be good.

To all those reading my ramblings:

Study philosophy, you don’t need to do it in depth, but you will see that religion isn’t needed to be good.

Study history. Pick one region and see how religion influenced conflicts and daily life. Take a hard look at the ‘divine right to rule’.

Study your religion, its history and its philosophy.

The most important thing I ever learned was this:

Think for yourself. Don’t accept anything at face value. Always ask questions.

Pris
Germany

Anti-caturday post

There is actually a cat in this video. Notice, though, that it only appears briefly in the beginning, looks bored, and apathetically wanders off screen. Why? Because the rest of the video features something far more exciting and bizarre than a mere cat: it’s all about zombie fish, their brains infected with trematode parasites. The cat knows that it cannot compete, unless it goes off and gets its brain tainted with some freaky strange parasite to give it some character.

Another interesting thing about it is that this video is an attempt to get funding for science research. If you feel like promoting more research into how to infect brains and make zombies, donate!

(Also on FtB)

Why I am an atheist – Dave H.

I am an atheist because I started outside religion, and I have never found a reason to go inside. Religion was a non-issue during my formative years, and over those same years and beyond I have never heard an argument for religion that ultimately did not reduce to “Because I/he/they said so” or something similar.

Those “profound” rituals that form a central part of so many people’s lives are only confusing or ridiculous to those of us looking in from the outside, just as the rituals of one religion look ridiculous to the followers of another. The “sense of community” that people find in their religious groups, I have found in my peers, coworkers, friends, and humanity at large. I have never found a need for religion in my life; I do not need nor want an imaginary friend in my life, I have enough real ones.

Finally, the petty tribalism that religion engenders, defining “us” and “them” based on what and how you worship, is a divisive force that our collective society, already shot through with divisions both real and imaginary, doesn’t need. If we truly seek cooperation instead of conflict between all the diverse members of humanity, we need to tear down or fill in every boundary we can. We need to act in this world, not waste our time in pointless pursuit of some imaginary next one.

Dave H.
Canada

Anti-caturday post

There is actually a cat in this video. Notice, though, that it only appears briefly in the beginning, looks bored, and apathetically wanders off screen. Why? Because the rest of the video features something far more exciting and bizarre than a mere cat: it’s all about zombie fish, their brains infected with trematode parasites. The cat knows that it cannot compete, unless it goes off and gets its brain tainted with some freaky strange parasite to give it some character.

Another interesting thing about it is that this video is an attempt to get funding for science research. If you feel like promoting more research into how to infect brains and make zombies, donate!

(Also on FtB)

ZOMBIE INVASION!

And they’re the worst kind of zombie: they have no brains, so shooting them in the head doesn’t work! AAAAAAAAH! What good are horror movie rules if they don’t apply to real life?

At least something is explained: recall that I mentioned I’d received a small flurry of creationist emails about Hovind? It seems Eric Hovind has been coordinating something: this afternoon, a small collection of new goons all speaking the same phrases has invaded this thread. They aren’t really discussing anything, they’re just throwing out smug one-liners and bible quotes that they seem to think will be persuasive.

They’re not. They look like mindless idiots.

Their primary approach is to assert that because logic exists, god exists, and therefore any attempt to apply reason to a problem is evidence for god. They are unable to justify their premise, however, so it’s a silly game they’re playing — there is no reason to assume an anthropic being was necessary to conjure logic into existence or even that any kind of intelligence was required, any more than we could argue that intelligence is required to start an avalanche. Small fluctuations can lead to large scale changes in that example, so there’s no logical barrier to the idea that unintelligent processes seed universes that expand with internally consistent rules (and universes seeded with illogical rules, if that were possible, wouldn’t exist and definitely wouldn’t be populated with intelligent beings contemplating the laws of their universe).

So how do they know a god created the laws of the universe. They’ve obligingly answered that.

He told us.

See? Utterly brainless.

I was amused by this question.

If you knew that God exists, would you worship Him?

If your god were shown to exist, I would fall into despair, because it means we’re living in a universe dominated by an insane cosmic tyrant. I would not worship such a horrible creature. I don’t know whether I’d collapse in futility, or whether I’d be able to fight him somehow — that omniscience and omnipotence thing is rather daunting.

But no, I’d never worship that thing. I find it disgusting that the Hovindites would so hate humanity that they’d throw themselves into servitude to an alien monster.

Speaking of bullying…

One natural place for bullies to end up is the military, where a strict hierarchy can put them in positions of safety. One such example: Major Jonathan Dowty, who has a blog called the “Christian Fighter Pilot” and belongs to the Officer’s Christian Fellowship, where privileged thugs can gather and plot to proselytize to the lower ranks. Or simply to attack the helpless.

As a devout Christian officer, Major Dowty has made it a practice to publicly attack and defame atheist and other non-Christian enlisted service members by name, knowing that they can’t respond to defend themselves because he’s an active duty officer, so it would be insubordinate for them to respond to him.

The only salvation is to leave the military, get out from under the regulations that protect creatures like Dowty, and speak out…as one sergeant has now done on This Week in Christian Nationalism.

I’m just wondering when the other officers will recognize that Dowty is using his religion as a club to hammer on enlisted men, and realize that maybe this is not helping morale or unit cohesion? Unless, of course, they want a military consisting only of religious zealots. Do we civilians want a Janissary corps, though?

Michigan’s failure

Republicans. Christians. Why do I despise them both? We have a beautifully illustrative example coming out of Michigan.

Concerned about school bullying, and motivated by the suicide of a student, Matt Epling, who was driven to the act by prolonged bullying, the Michigan legislature tried to put together “Matt’s Safe School Law”. It has passed, but there’s nothing to be cheerful about. The Republicans and Christians turned it into a bullying protection act.

First, the Republicans gutted it.

This year, Republicans only agreed to consider an anti-bullying measure that did not require school districts to report bullying incidents, did not include any provisions for enforcement or teacher training, and did not hold administrators accountable if they fail to act.

So the bill does nothing. It’s the Republican equivalent of saying, “tut, tut.”

Then the Christian element got to work and added a critical clause.

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled state senate passed an anti-bullying bill that manages to protect school bullies instead of those they victimize. It accomplishes this impressive feat by allowing students, teachers, and other school employees to claim that “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” justifies their harassment.

We all know what that’s about. It’s all about giving the church kids permission to torment the gay kids. That clause is nothing but bigotry in disguise.

Well guess what, Michigan? We atheists have a sincerely held religious belief about religion: that it’s an evil dogma that needs to be howled down at its every occurrence. When the godless kids of Michigan see someone, anyone bullying the gays out of their sincerely held religious bigotry, I hope they band together and frogmarch the offender right in to the principal’s office. They whiny little bastard will get off by pleading Jesus, but do it often enough and a message will start to sink in.