Why I am an atheist – Matthew Kiffmeyer

When I was 7 years old, my 2nd grade teacher was giving a lesson about dinosaurs. Another student asked a seemingly sensible question at the time, why hadn’t the Tyrannosaurus Rex eaten all of the people. The teacher replied that dinosaurs and people didn’t live at the same time. This answer didn’t sit well with me and in a rare case of assertiveness, I muttered defiantly, “Yes, they did.” The teacher’s eyes went wide and her gaze snapped onto me, burning the image into my memory, and stated, “No. They. Did. NOT!”

I can only imagine that my teacher must have thought she had a creationist in her class. But in my young, malleable mind, I was calling forth reference materials such as “The Flintstones” and “Captain Caveman”. While her harsh admonishment may have temporarily put me off from classic schooling, it started something else in me. If I was to be so publicly scolded for my ignorance, I wanted to know why I was wrong. More than that, I wanted to know how to find the real answers.

That philosophy of curiosity stuck with me. When I tried to apply this in my catechism classes however, not only was I not given a good reason for many of the strange traditions and beliefs in the Catholic religion, but people became angry with me for honestly trying to figure them out. Their anger told me they didn’t know either. “Faith,” I was told tersely, was essential to understand, but never once given a reason for that either. I got the distinct impression that discovery was not a valued virtue in religion. So, it ceased to be important to me.

I am an atheist because the things I want to believe are only the ideas that have a satisfactory answer to the question I should have asked my 2nd grade teacher and have since asked repeatedly of those seeking to share the “truth” of their religion with me, “How do you know that to be true?”

Matthew Kiffmeyer
United States

So that’s the tax on stupid

I was just tuning in to watch The Walking Dead … gotta see the zombies … and they keep annoying me with these commercials peddling “gold” coins: a $50 value, yours for only $9.95, and they are genuine 24K gold (plated), containing a whole 14 milligrams of gold. I checked gold prices, did a quick estimation, and figured out nearly instantly that that amounts to … about 75 cents worth.

Wow. That’s quite a racket. Shouldn’t there be something illegal about taking advantage of stupid people that excessively?

“Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.”

I think that’s my new favorite pseudo-scientific phrase. It’s part of a whole mind-numbing compendium of utter nonsense and woo — it claims that junk DNA plays a role in data storage and communication, that it contains “basic rules of grammar”, and that it responds to your words.

This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used.

This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language.

Just think of all the mutant babies spawned by listening to Rush Limbaugh. But be prepared: we might be sucking in alien propaganda.

But the higher developed an individual’s consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop to laugh at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn’t end there.?The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).? These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness.

Stop to laugh, everyone! It’s expected!

Now here comes the “science”:

In nature, hyper communication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as “intuition.” But we, too, can regain full use of it. An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the “building plans” also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hyper communication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one’s knowledge base. Such hyper communication is then experienced as inspiration or intuition. The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini for instance dreamt one night that a devil sat at his bedside playing the violin. The next morning Tartini was able to note down the piece exactly from memory, he called it the Devil’s Trill Sonata.

I’m going to stop there. The rest is Indigo Children, collective consciousness, UFOs, anti-gravity, and how DNA is superconducting and transforms gravity into electricity. There’s only so much I can take.

The Reason Rally ought to have some standards

Oh, joy. Senator Tom Harkin will appear in a video message at the Reason Rally. While he may be a lifelong Catholic, as he declares in the announcement, and while he is one of the biggest supporters of acupuncture, chiropracty, herbal and homeopathic ‘healing’, and all the alt med bullshit he can fling millions of federal funds at, we’re apparently supposed to grovel in gratitude that a sitting senator deigns to patronize us atheists.

Why?

This is a man who takes pride in being affiliated with a patriarchal, hierarchical, medieval institution that oppresses women, celebrates poverty, wallows in its own wealth and privilege, and has actively disseminated pedophiles into communities all around the world…and has worked hard to protect and defend these child rapists. This is an organization that is currently fighting for the right to refuse life-saving care to women, that even opposes making contraception available to men and women, that endorses discrimination against gay couples.

This is a man who pushed through the formation of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative ‘Medicine’, a gigantic boondoggle that sucks federal research dollars out of the hands of qualified scientists studying real phenomena and into the hands of quacks and con artists peddling bogus therapies. This is a man who so poorly understands science that, when his pet quackeries all failed when examined, declared his disappointment because he said NCCAM was supposed to “validate alternative approaches”, and instead was “disproving things rather than seeking out and approving things.”

Yeah. That Tom Harkin.

Was Deepak Chopra busy on 24 March? Did Oprah have a hair appointment? Maybe it’s not too late to sign up John Edward — he could channel Ingersoll and Russell and Sagan for us, although of course we’d have to be content with him guessing at their words one letter at a time. Aww, heck, let’s go all the way: the Phelps clan is going to be there picketing anyway, let’s give one of them a speaker’s slot right after Nate Phelps.

You know, I’ve been working on my 15 minute talk for the event, and I’m kind of peeved that now I have to toss in some stuff sniping at this dumbass video Harkin is phoning in…which is scheduled to be shown two hours after me, which makes it hard to address. I’m sandwiched in at 1:40, in between Jamila Bey (yay!) and…

Bill Maher?

WTF, man. W. T. F. Yeah, I know he’s said some great pro-atheist stuff, but I’m planning to promote science and reason, and that anti-vax/anti-medicine stuff ought to be a big red flag at a Reason Rally.

Dave Silverman is going to hate me.

(Also on Sb)

Why I am an atheist – Megan Foley

I am atheist because religion cannot answer questions. Because religion is disrespectful to every other species with which we share this planet. Because the universe is all the more beautiful without any gods and their magic pointing fingers poofing things into existence. I am an atheist because I love science and despise magical and irrational thinking. I’m an atheist because I’ve seen to many intelligent people destroyed by fear.

I am an atheist from a southern Baptist family. I suspect I would have become an atheist eventually, but I’m glad I abandoned it at an early age. As a child I questioned everything. One of those annoying kids whose favorite question was why. When I asked my grandmother who wrote the bible, I was told god. My first thought was a mental image of a book falling out of the sky and hitting some poor sucker on the down. I knew that books required writers, printing presses, publishers and why were there so many versions of the stupid thing. This and a dozen other questions were not the straw that broken my back.

I was willing to accept the concept of a god, heaven and hell on sufferance barring better evidence. At age twelve I stopped taking it so. I’ve had animals all my life, from the time I was three years old. I lost my first pet to feline leukemia, which led to a brain tumor, which led to his early death by veterinarian. I was there the whole time and deeply regretted the vet’s refusal to allow me to burying him properly. An unfortunate and deeply sad event, but a normal part of life for any pet lover. After his death I turned to my grandmother for comfort and I imagine anyone who came from a Baptist household can guess what she said. ìAnimals don’t have souls.î I had known humans were animals from the time I was about six, given the other options at the time were plants and rocks (my knowledge of fungi and bacteria was a bit lacking at six years old). If humans were not animals, what were we? If humans were animals and had souls, then why exactly didn’t every other animal have a soul? And why was I believing in a religious doctrine so full of holes a child could find them if I couldn’t have my animals in heaven? At this point I said screw it and abandoned Christianity all together.

I had not abandoned religion all together and spent years exploring other religions and doctrines, which were fine to a point, but there was always this slip into magical thinking. Every time you look at them with a clinical eye they would burst like a soap bubble. Eventually I stopped looking, though I continued to call myself agnostic, not realizing that was a bit of a misnomer. When I was in college I was walking to class and had an epiphany that there were no gods. I was more surprised at how little that bothered me. After a brief but amusing foray into solipsism, I found atheism respite from all the silly superstitions that surround me.

I am an atheist because I am not afraid. Because evolution is more amazing the more I study it. Because I love science and research and knowledge, and I despise the people, who in the name of an invisible sky daddy, prevent people from getting to see it. Because I don’t care what other people do so long as it’s consensual. Because I want to reduce suffering and see everyone live in this glorious, amazing universe full of living things that evolve, stars that explode and spin and get eaten by black holes, an expanding universe, social behaviors in sharks, complicated trophic webs, and ecological homeostasis (guess what classes I’m taking this semester) .

I am an atheist because I never stopped asking why.

Megan Foley
United States

John Hembling, aka JohntheOther, slimy psycho MRA

Meet JohntheOther. He’s very concerned about the atheist movement — he wonders very seriously whether perhaps we’re vulnerable, because we lack a codified dogma, to being parasitized by psychopaths and sociopaths. He preaches at great length here about his deep concerns and his sincere worries before getting down to the details of a specific incident and dangerous individual that troubles him greatly: the sociopathic behavior of Rebecca Watson at Skepticon a few years ago.

What is it with Rebecca? She is so damned good at attracting these nutcases. And nutcase he is: he’s an MRA, one of the clueless goons behind the often and deservedly mocked MRA site A Voice for Men, and he also seems to be one of those kooks obsessed with chastising me, too (Rebecca is not alone in her her kook magnetism). He’s one of those despised pseudo-scientific pontificators who love to mangle evolutionary psychology to justify misogyny.

Narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, these are arguably not aberrations of normal human psychology at all, rather they are the amplification of female personality traits which afforded women a survival advantage throughout human pre-history. In a world of scarcity where humans often died of starvation, women with the attributes of innate selfishness and skill at manipulating men meant increased survival for themselves as well as their offspring.

Appalling. This bozo is simply using an evolutionary rationalization, free of all evidence, to justify his predetermined conclusion, that women are narcissistic, histrionic, selfish exploiters of men. I’m no fan of evolutionary psychology, but I think most evolutionary psychologists would rush to wash their hands of the taint of this contemptible fraud.

So if you watched that video, you were watching a scumbag oozing faux sincerity and concern for the skeptic and atheist movements while making a slanderous attack on someone he considers a feminist enemy. Don’t be taken in by the smarmy used-car-salesman personality. The only sociopath you should be worried about is JohntheOther.

Let me explain for JohntheOther, the guy who is incapable of reading elementary social cues, what was going on in that Skepticon incident that he so deplored.

Rebecca Watson was telling a joke. That’s extremely common at Skepticon, which has always leaned towards the light touch and humor and audience involvement, and Rebecca is a known and popular speaker who often takes a sarcastic and comedic approach to skepticism. Everyone was primed for a good time; I know I was. I was there in the audience and was one of those ‘sociopaths’ laughing along.

She told a story about how she was assigned a handler, a young woman named Kasi, when she arrived at the conference. And then she explained how, with the power going to her head, she ‘abused’ poor Kasi at extraordinary length throughout the con.

What was funny about that? Two things. First, the target of the joke: Rebecca Watson was making fun of herself, or rather, her image as wild party girl and She-Wolf of Skepticism, and mocking that image. She was not abusing poor Kasi, she was making herself the butt of a self-deprecatory joke. Secondly, she defused it all by pretending to be this petty tyrant whose great crime was sending Kasi off on a scavenger hunt. A very silly and harmless scavenger hunt. I mean, come on, JohntheOther, how can you sit there like a po-faced humorless clot worrying so much about the terrible psychological abuse being inflicted on Kasi when she was sent scurrying off to get coffee, M&Ms, condoms one day and a pregnancy test the next, and vegetarian cashew chicken? How can you listen to an obvious funny story and write,

what happens when people lack an ethical compass? What if the people we view as influential lack an ethical compass? Humans are social animals, if “leaders” are sociopathic, does it automatically follow that we all become dysfunctional?

And he says, “What I don’t understand is the laughter from the audience”, while accusing them all of being dysfunctional sociopaths. I’m sorry, JohntheOther, but the audience was responding to the patent social cues and the humorous content of the story. Why are you incapable of recognizing that? Do you have a psychological disorder?

Actually, I don’t think he’s psychologically blind to it at all: I think he’s dishonestly ginning up a lie that Rebecca Watson is a psychopath because of his ideological fixation on advancing raging misogyny. The obvious indicator of that: he left off the punchline of the joke! He shows the buildup, but doesn’t reveal the kicker that made it even more hilarious. Rebecca had let Kasi in on the plan at the very beginning: the whole Tyrant Rebecca act was a game to punk the eminently punkable JT Eberhard, the organizer of the conference. He had to know this; it was in the original video that he carefully edited and framed with his sleazy psychological ponderings.

Also, Rebecca Watson showed up in the youtube comments to explain that to him.

I can’t figure out if you purposely misinterpreted and edited the video or if you’re just very stupid. In my talk I explain that I told Kasi about the bet with JT immediately, and from then on we just pretended that I was demanding things of her. The gag was that during my talk, she pretended to quit, thereby freaking out JT, at which point I made it clear that the joke was actually on JT.

Good luck on that psychology degree, though.

Even better, Kasi shows up.

Hi, so… Kasi “the handler” here. Thanks for the lulz. That conference was the best time I had all year. I got to spend time with a person I greatly admire, Rebecca, who stayed up late talking/listening to me and went shopping with me and just proved to me that she’s an all-around wonderful person. Yes, we pranked JT, but he had no hard feelings. I wasn’t actually asked to go get her things-That was made up in the build up to the reveal during her talk. Everyone else got that besides this guy..

At this point, it should be clear: JohntheOther, aka John Hembling, owes Rebecca Watson an apology. He ought to be on his knees begging for forgiveness from the entire atheist community that he defamed with his phony accusations. He ought to be deeply embarrassed at his public display of stupidity.

Don’t expect such honest behavior, though. Here’s the reaction he posted on youtube:

is that why it had 80 up votes and 2 down votes before the RW fans arrived in force and dropped 64 down votes within a few hours? – this mob’s behavior does nothing except confirm and re-enforce my opinion of the great and mighty REB

Right. He’s exposed as a pretentious liar, and his concern is that his video got downvoted, and his opinion of Rebecca is only confirmed.

You know what else is confirmed? My opinion of MRA assholes.

the tone of the JW fans piling on here telling me how wrong, humourless, mentally deficient and horrible I am is making my case for me.

A guy who made a 16 minute video accusing Rebecca Watson of being a wicked sociopath is now complaining about tone? I think he ought to listen to all the people telling him he’s wrong, humorless, and mentally deficient — they’ve got him stone cold to rights.

Why I am an atheist – Ange

My upbringing was a casual blend of secularism in the home with Catholic and Protestant bits thrown in when friends and family took me to churches. I went to a Lutheran day camp with a family friend, Catholic mass with an aunt and Baptist revival with another aunt, etc. What I learned at home wasn’t anti-religion, but pragmatism, rationality and an appreciation for sense making. When my mom or dad took time to explain something to me, I would then be asked “Does that make sense?” I learned that sense making was a mutual effort, something people did together or not at all.

So during Sunday school when I first learned of the burning bush story and Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, there was much sense left unmade. A talking, burning bush is one thing. Kids are expected to accept goofy talking characters, but I couldn’t accept the horror of a father holding a knife to his kid’s throat. When I blurted out in all innocence “I’m sure glad my dad isn’t a Christian” the Sunday school teacher reprimanded me. Later I found out that I was considered disruptive and asked not to return. That experience lead me to classify Christianity as something only adults understood properly, like bills, work, coffee and why my parents occasionally locked their bedroom door. The appeal of adulthood was there though, and I felt particularly grown up when we sang “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb” since I wasn’t allowed to watch scary movies at home due to my youth.

Enter adolescence. I became willing to forego logic for the sake of participating in social activities, travel and adventure with an evangelical youth ministry. For some time I was quite successful in ignoring the blatant hypocrisy all around, but ultimately the cognitive dissonance became a burden too great to bear. The evangelical Christian answer to coping with feminine sexuality is for the men to simultaneously guard against it as if it were wickedness and horde it as if it were a prized possession. Girls and women should be subservient, detached, receptacle like objects. I was entering a time in which I wished to be valued more as an adult human who could accomplish things, but was devalued based on the sexiness of all that I was becoming. Was I glory or was I filth?

The precipitating event leading to my whole hearted embrace of atheism came when one particular youth minister committed suicide. He was in his 50’s and was known to enjoy ministering to the young women. At his funeral, memorial service and afterward people cried when they spoke of what a good man he was and how happy he must be in heaven. How his holy father called him home early and such garbage. He was, in fact a predator who deserved a hell I wished I could craft. I was, in fact a whole human who deserved life, love and the freedom to explore the world without shame regardless of my anatomy.

The simple act of self-reclamation is a joy I have both struggled with and reveled in since. To command my own presence, indulge my own curiosity, demand sense making to my own satisfaction, be treated as a fellow human, and all the complications that follow are endeavors worthy of a life’s work without necessity for reward or punishment beyond.

Ange
United States