Why I am an atheist – Tom Hail

This is a letter I wrote my aunt in 2007 after she asked why I wanted to take her faith away from her.

Why I am godless.

I don’t understand how perfectly rational, intelligent, kind, and responsible people can believe in a God. It baffles me totally. And I think about it a lot, not like I feel like I am missing anything myself but in wonder at how this belief can be corrected. You know, I wouldn’t trade our family for any other family, I enjoy and love them all and the fact that most have faith saddens me somewhat.

I do not see any god anywhere I look. From the maelstrom of quantum mechanics in particle physics, to the busy chemistry of each living cell, to the beautiful physics of aerodynamics, to the majestic geology of our earth, to the titanic forces in our solar system, to the stupendous forces driving our galaxy and universe… it is all so awesome and beautiful that to attribute any of it to God’s creation is, to me, insufficient. That there are questions and problems with what we understand only makes discovery all that more meaningful. It is all so hugely complex in total, but it all builds upon many simpler things. Evolution is perfect simplicity which builds very slowly into the complex beauty of life we have today. I feel that beauty in my heart much better than I can express in words. Even without the controversies of life and evolution, the complexities of the universe are so much beyond a god, needs no explanation with a god. God is so unnecessary.

I have a saying that has gelled in my mind over the last year or so… Atheism: Natural Morals, Real Meaning, Credible Truth.

Our morals come naturally, someone writing them down and calling them the word of God seems like plagiarism to me. And I think they added in the rules to help control the masses better, or at least to control the women better. It looks to me that our natural morals come from our need to survive, we can’t survive if we are killing each other, we are wired for survival and propagation of the population. Stoning women for adultery seems wrong and it is, it isn’t a natural moral, but the writers of the “messiah’s” words seem to have another motive, valid at the time maybe, probably to help control the population to their benefit. The need to survive and procreate is very simple but a lot of things derive naturally from it. Helping others, kindness to your children, education, it just builds and builds on it. To me it boils down to “relieve and prevent suffering, give pleasure.” If I am doing that in any way, I am being true to my morals.

Real meaning in life also comes from the need to survive and procreate, to do so means we must discover how our world works, adapt, learn, overcome problems, coexist with the individuals of our species, coexist with our world. This is real meaning to me. To worship a deity hoping for a good result when I die doesn’t provide any meaning. The discovery of our world may be the most important and leads us into our future. If we stop, we will stagnate and suffer. I think our species made a mistake creating religions, it is a dead end that we have to back out of to progress on, but maybe it was a lesson we had to learn.

Credible truth, the biggest being that this is it. This is heaven, hell, whatever you make of it. This is your one life. You are only borrowing the atoms you consist of for your sort life time and then they are recycled into the universe to be used again. I am ok with that. It doesn’t scare me. I wish it weren’t so but that is the way of the universe. We are such a small mote in just our galaxy which is a small object in an immense universe. But the meaning of life is to be all that you can be to your family and friends, community, and world. That is a real truth that I can believe in.

Why is this important to me? I see thousands dying monthly, sometimes daily in fighting to the death over what are to me fairy tales. Fighting over essentially worthless land, fighting for what boils down to power. Much of it in the name of their religion. It makes me angry. The war in Iraq has many religious overtones that disturb me. The trillions of dollars this is going to cost us is going to hurt.

I didn’t mean to write this on a Sunday, it just turned out that way, I’ve been busy and I had to compose it some in my mind first. I had a great day yesterday with flying passengers for the 99’s scholarship fundraiser. Allena came over and helped out the ladies. It was one of those things I do that gives real meaning to my life, showing 10 people their world from above.

Tom Hail
United States

This is not the church of FTB

Ian calls his post “The church of FTB“, but he goes beyond that to point out that this isn’t a church, it doesn’t aim to be a church, and what we do is explore alternative methods of building community. And it’s effective — I think that what humanity needs to do to get its collective head out of its humongous ass is to repurpose all that wasted effort spent on the frills and nonsense and trappings of religion on more human needs. At my talk here in South Dakota last night, one of the things I said in the Q&A was we’d do a greater service to humanity if we all spent Sunday trying to write poetry*, rather than praying in a church.

So I go a little further than Ian, but I don’t disagree with him. I just resent that part of the movement that wants to regress and build a church of humanism, with all the same titles and geegaws and practices. Humanity deserves and needs something new and better and greater, that breaks the old shackles and doesn’t try to dress us up in shinier shackles with a different manufacturer’s label on them.

We need communities. We need a non-religious ecumene that wraps around the whole world and includes diverse points of view…but we don’t need churches and temples and hierarchies and priests and chaplains. Can we please all grow up and be free?

Actually, my ideal community is The Culture. Spaceships optional.

*I’m well aware that most of that poetry would be mind-gnawingly awful. The virtue lies in the effort, the attempt to do something novel and think in different ways. (So, obviously, the Cuttlefish has to sit at home on Sundays and force himself to think in prose.)

Christians teach me to despise Christianity

Waaaaaah — some poor Christian is whining, Atheists, please don’t hate us! Unfortunately for his desperately pathetic persecution complex, I don’t hate Christians at all: I just hold their beliefs in deep contempt. And then what what does little KevinKing do? He confirms exactly why I despise them! Look at his argument:

Most Christians, including myself, live according to a set of rules. This set of rules is called “The Ten Commandments”. These commandments include:

“1. Honour your father and mother;
2. You shall not murder;
3. You shall not commit adultery;
4. You shall not steal;
5. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour;
6. You shall not covert your neighbour’s house, wife and assets”

Now atheists, ask yourselves, is this a bad thing? I’m really struggling to find a reason why we wouldn’t want more of these people around… And yes, I know that some of you will say “but Christians break these rules all the time!”

Actually, no, that wasn’t the comment I was thinking of at all.

Here’s a good reason to despise Christianity: because it inspires people to think that their religion invented these basic rules for social cooperation, and that they have some unique appreciation of their importance. Seriously, if you think the best reason people ought to like you is your cheery affirmation, “I don’t kill people!” — best said with a little smiley emoticon — then there is something goddamned wrong with you. Outside of death row in a federal penitentiary, there aren’t many communities of people who think mutual plunder, murder, and rapine are ordinary, and that it marks you as special to reassure me that you won’t try to fuck my wife.

But apparently, in Christian communities, it’s noteworthy and wins you a merit badge.

But you know what makes dumb Christians particularly annoying? It’s not just that they think they’re special because they have rules that say they shouldn’t steal my television set; it’s that they’re so patronizingly condescending about it, and go one further and tell us that they know we lack that morality. Really. KevinKing goes on to sanctimoniously smear all atheists for their moral deficiencies…in an article in which he supposedly trying to persuade us to like him.

Yes Christians break the rules (sin) but I can assure you that they are trying a damn lot harder not to break the rules than the average Atheist because for Christians, there is the Almighty, and there is Hell. Atheists have no Almight to hold them accountable and there is not eternal damnation. There is no reason for atheists not to murder, rape and steal other than because the government says so, which is very scary since we are living in a crime ridden country where literally only 10% of violent criminals are caught and convicted. What is then stopping an Atheist from committing these acts?

Oh, you’re trying a damn lot harder than me not to break the rules? OK, that says a lot about you, not me. I’ve never been tempted to murder anyone, or break into their house and steal their stuff. It’s not because I fantasize about it and then think, “Oh, no, I might get in trouble with the government.” It’s because I like my neighbors, like the people in my community, and wish them well — and because I value peaceful, cooperative co-existence. It’s because I have empathy, and can appreciate that other people value their lives as much as I value my own, and could not deprive them of that life without feeling the pain and loss myself.

I don’t need a threat of hell in an afterlife to keep me in line, because I recognize the worth of life in this one.

That’s why Christian stupidity is despised, too: that they think everyone else is plotting to commit crimes, and that there aren’t enough people in jail — in a country with the highest rates of incarceration in the world.

I would ask KevinKing who he thinks is in prison: is it the domain of godless atheists? Or is it full of Christians and Muslims? If we’re living in a crime-ridden country, and as I’m sure he believes, it is a “Christian nation”, how does he reconcile his fantasies of Christians living lives of obedience out of fear to the actual facts on the ground of god-belief flourishing in prisons?

I would also ask KevinKing why he committed the sin of omission. Notice that he listed six of the ten commandments, and that he left out the first four. Why? Is he ashamed of them?

1. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
3. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

He should be. Those are stupid. For some reason, his god gave them priority: he thinks the most important rules people should follow, before the rules against murder, theft, adultery, and lying, are that they should serve his vanity, worshiping him exclusively, and dedicate one day in seven to obeisance to this petty cosmic tyrant.

So yes, I also despise Christianity for its fucked-up priorities, in addition to its sanctimony and ignorance and primitive, fear-based morality. Thanks, KevinKing, for representing those faults so effectively.

Disband NASA! We have a better way!

Who needs rockets and space probes? We have Dr P. V. Vartak an MD who does experiments in his spare time. Here’s part of his list:

First experiment of Astral Travel in Samadhi to the planet Mars was performed on 10th August, 1975. A report of his 21 observations was published, out of which 20 observations were fully corroborated by the spaceship Viking 1, after 21st July, 1976, i.e. almost one year after his observations. The 21st observation about ancient water and moss on the Mars was established by another spaceship, the Pathfinder in 1987, 12 years later.

In his second experiment of Astral Travel on 12th August, 1976, he observed by Clairvoyance the docking of spaceships Viking-1 & Viking-2. Advance observation by him was subsequently confirmed by NASA on 7th Sept. 1976.

In yet another Astral Travel to the planet Jupiter on 27th August 1977 , he made 18 distinct observations on the Jupiter. Spaceship Voyager corroborated his 10 observations in 1979, while the remaining observations are yet to be tangibly proved, may be, through some future space program of humanity.

In 1980, during his Samadhi, he saw a man on a celestial body in another Solar System . He has published his findings through this transcendental feat in his book , ‘Scientific Explanation of the Katha Upanishad.’

USA had planned to launch a spaceship to the Saturn to reach & study the planet in 2004. He, through his transcendental visit to Saturn visualized that the Saturn is a ball of three types of revolving heavy gases, having purple, yellow and black shades. The famous ring of Saturn is made of some material like slurry or mud along with floating rocks. There are no land marks on the Saturn because there is no formation of land. In the third edition (2003) of his autobiography ‘ Brahmarashichi Samaranayatra’, he has published his observations about the planet Saturn.

Take that, Phil Plait! Astronomy has just become superfluous!

Unfortunately, Dr Vartak’s credibility isn’t perfect. He was a surgeon, would you believe…would you let this guy anywhere near you with a knife?

One thing he’s good for: he’s a Hindu theologian. Point some of those fanatical Christians to his publishings every time they start asserting the truth of the Bible — Vartak plays the same game of treating holy writ as scientific data, and comes to the conclusion that the Upanishads were literally true and accurate in every regard. Besides, that Jesus guy was a Tamil Hindu, don’t you know.

Why I am an atheist – Kyle

Six years ago, when I was about nine, my primary school class studied ancient Greece. We did the usual stuff- the scientific contributions, the art, the mythology. One afternoon we had a lesson on the gods, which I very much enjoyed. I was thinking about how cool and badass Zeus was with his lighting bolts and toga, and in came the local reverend to tell us a story from the Bible. (In retrospect, this should never have happened and I should have used my seat on the pupil council to prevent this and the Christian songs in assembly from ever happening ever again, but I didn’t really notice at the time.) I paid little attention to the reverend, thinking about Zeus and Hermes and Aphrodite and Hades and Poseidon and how much better they were than this capital-G ‘God’ that the reverend was talking about. But I still knew that they were the wrong gods and the one in the bible was the right one, the real one. After all, if he was just another story like Apollo and Ares, why would we sing his praises every Monday and pray to him every day before lunch? It was then that it hit me. The god that the Reverend was talking about was just another story. He was no different from Zeus and Poseidon: just as false, just as much a story. That is when I became an atheist.

Kyle
Scotland.

Ouch — American Atheists gets a slap that hurts

All the religious fanatics and Christian and Muslim weirdos who criticize atheists can take a flying leap — and when Bill Donohue rants and raves about atheist billboards, it’s a vindication and a triumph. But when one of our own, the black atheist Sikivu Hutchinson, speaks out in criticism, it’s a message that must be taken seriously and addressed.

But AA’s ahistorical paternalistic approach to “secular” public service messaging is one of the main reasons why New Atheism is still racially segregated and lily white. Clearly AA doesn’t give a damn about the reality of urban communities of color in the U.S. vis-à-vis the institutional role of organized religion in a white supremacist capitalist context.

David Silverman, are you listening? I know this is not the message you want to send, but it’s what people are hearing. Fix this. Don’t tell people of color what they want, listen when they tell you what they need.

So is AA on the frontlines of providing prisoner re-entry resources—the real regime of 21st century “enslavement” for millions of African Americans—to families and communities that are permanently locked out of the so-called American dream due to the legal disenfranchisement of former convicted felons in employment, housing, and voting? Did AA even deign to consult with local interfaith and secular, humanist or atheist people of color about the cultural and psychological impact of the legacy of slavery in a nation where black bodies are still the primary targets of violent police suppression, racist criminal sentencing and capital punishment?

Why, I do believe there’s a hint or two in there about what would win people over to our side…

A tiny bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing

Good news! The gorilla genome sequence was published in Nature last week, and adds to our body of knowledge about primate evolution. Here’s the abstract:

Gorillas are humans’ closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly and analysis of a genome sequence for the western lowland gorilla, and compare the whole genomes of all extant great ape genera. We propose a synthesis of genetic and fossil evidence consistent with placing the human–chimpanzee and human–chimpanzee–gorilla speciation events at approximately 6 and 10 million years ago. In 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other; this is rarer around coding genes, indicating pervasive selection throughout great ape evolution, and has functional consequences in gene expression. A comparison of protein coding genes reveals approximately 500 genes showing accelerated evolution on each of the gorilla, human and chimpanzee lineages, and evidence for parallel acceleration, particularly of genes involved in hearing. We also compare the western and eastern gorilla species, estimating an average sequence divergence time 1.75 million years ago, but with evidence for more recent genetic exchange and a population bottleneck in the eastern species. The use of the genome sequence in these and future analyses will promote a deeper understanding of great ape biology and evolution.

I’ve highlighted one phrase in that abstract because, surprise surprise, creationists read the paper and that was the only thing they saw, and in either dumb incomprehension or malicious distortion, took an article titled “Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence” and twisted it into a bumbling mess of lies titled “Gorilla Genome Is Bad News for Evolution”. They treat a phenomenon called Incomplete Lineage Sorting (ILS) as an obstacle to evolution rather than an expected outcome.

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Why I am an atheist – Chris Kwolek

To put it simply, the idea of a god or gods is preposterous; if there were any higher being which had sway over this world, we would see some measurable signs of it, which are markedly absent. Furthermore, had any such thing happened throughout history, there would be some form of consensus throughout historical record of this being or beings, but what we have from history instead is a large number of contradicting accounts. As a final note, the motivations of religious figures are transparent: They have everything to gain from perpetuating these stories, and we have seen their capability to control people through these religious teachings.

Chris Kwolek
United States