Well, there goes my holiday. Apparently, Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Well, there goes my holiday. Apparently, Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
While growing up, I shared almost no similarities with all the other children in Kansas. I was never what one might call a religious child. I never went to church, I never prayed, I never read the Bible, and I never really cared about Heaven or Hell. Back when I was a child, the only things I cared about were watching cartoons and playing video games. I was in pursuit of fun, and I saw church as the most boring thing in existence. To sit for hours on end listening to an old man speak about the works of people who died long ago was like torture to me. Another reason I never went to church is because my parents were too busy to care about going to church. They worked long and hard, and time spent in church is time spent not doing something productive, or in my case, not playing video games or watching TV. Also, why give a tenth of your paycheck to the church when you could use it to purchase something that has tangible value?
I didn’t seriously think about religion until I turned 14, which was also when I discovered the infinite depths of the internet. I can’t really remember how it happened, but I think it happened while I was searching for the lyrics to several death metal songs I was listening to at the time. I was just clicking on links at random when I stumbled upon a website called No Beliefs. As a person of great inquiry who always wanted to learn more, I decided to read every inch of it. It was there that I learned the true history of the Old Testament, that its stories were cobbled together from several separate myths in the region; it was there that I learned the history of the New Testament, and of how it was written long after Jesus’ supposed death; and it was there that I learned of the Bible’s dark and disgusting nature, a side of the Bible many Christians refuse to address.
After several hours of reading, I learned of not just the absurdities – light being created before any source of light, snakes that can talk, ten billion species of lands animals being packed into a tiny boat, bats classified as birds, whales classified as fish, pi classified as a round number – but the atrocities as well. I learned of the verses that depict God either committing or condoning countless atrocities, including burning his creations alive (Numbers 16:32-35), slaughtering the firstborn (Exodus 12:29-30), sending down pestilence (I Chronicles 21), slaughtering those with black skin (II Chronicles 14), murdering tens of thousands of men without a single shred of shame or remorse (I Samuel 6:19), and the wholesale extermination of the innocent (throughout the Bible really, but specifically in verses Deuteronomy 2:34, Ezekiel 9:5-6, Joshua 6:21, and countless others).
It became quite evident to me that the Bible is not the supreme, flawless, absolute word of an all-loving God as many people in Kansas claim it is. Instead, it is the blood-stained parchment of angry, ignorant, hateful men from ancient times who used the religious stories and appeals to divine authority for political expediency. However, it was not just Christianity that was alone in this fraud. After learning of the unholy nature of their supposedly holy books, I saw all religions in a contemptible light. It was clear to me that religion is nothing more than a tool crafted by the powerful that is used primarily for social control. It fetters the mind, cripples critical thought, and silences the voice of freedom. It teaches you to submit, obey, conform. It turns ignorance and blind obedience into divine virtues and it demonizes dissent and free thought. Religion aims to keep man in perpetual darkness. Like a concrete wall, it hinders all progress, be it social, technological, or scientific. Indeed, without religion, the world would be a more advanced place than it is today.
I will never let my mind be imprisoned. I will never surrender myself to the contemptible entity that is religion. I will never be a member of an institution that gleefully contributes to mankind’s self-destruction. I stand for reason. I stand for progress. I stand for enlightenment. I stand for that which will lift the veil of lies from mankind’s blinded eyes. After observing all the evidence, I came to the realization that there was only one position that made any logical sense: atheism. With that, I declared to myself, “I am an atheist.”
I knew I was an atheist, but I had to keep it a secret from everyone. After all, atheists are the most hated minority in America, and if people were aware of my atheism, I would be ostracized, beaten up, or worse. And so, throughout most of high school, I kept my lips sealed. Luckily for me, matters of religion rarely came up for discussion. Near the end of senior year, I casually made the comment that I didn’t believe in god. One girl simply asked me, “What will happen to you when you die?” To this I gleefully responded, “I’ll be buried in the ground and be eaten by worms.” That was it. No one ever asked me religious questions ever again, but they still got along well with me.
Such wasn’t the case with my gifted class. Gifted class is basically a special class where the school’s smartest kids do special activities and high-level assignments, and although many of the students in this class were the best and brightest of the school, they still haven’t rejected the ridiculous idea that the earth is only six thousand years old. When I told them that I am an atheist, they were genuinely shocked. They could not comprehend the notion that a kind young man such as myself did not believe in god. Even my gifted teacher seemed to believe that my atheism was nothing more than a phase, and that I would grow out of it as soon as I graduated from high school. The only gifted student who didn’t seem to care that I was an atheist was a prospective comedian from Canada.
I eventually graduated from high school and contrary to what my gifted teacher seemed to believe, I did not stop being an atheist, and I am still an atheist today. Unlike most people in Kansas, I don’t base my views of the world on absurd fantasies and wishful thinking. My views are based on logic and scientific evidence. I am not a puppet controlled by invisible hands. I am the master of my own destiny. Most people are still shocked when I tell them I’m an atheist. When they ask me why I don’t believe in god, I simply reply, “For the same reason you don’t believe in Allah.” When the people of Kansas understand why they reject all the other gods – from Abaangui to Zywie – they will understand why I reject their god.
Ethan Mittel
United States
Chris Stedman is at it again. Once more, he’s carping at atheists who dare to question the beliefs of the delusional theists he considers his dearest friends, his most important clients, and the people he wants to spend his life working among, the liberal Christians and Muslims. Unfortunately, he chose as his opening salvo a rather innocuous comment, which tells us exactly where the limits of his tolerance lie, and they’re pretty darned low. David Silverman of American Atheists said this:
The WTC cross has become a Christian icon. It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their god, who couldn’t be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross.
Yes. That sounds accurate to me. Do you have a problem with that, Stedman? It’s a very clear statement about the absurdity of sanctifying some random wreckage because it shares a trivial orthogonality with the simplistic religious symbol of Christians, and it’s good that Silverman was pointing that out — I want atheist leaders to be clear-headed and assertive.
But not Stedman. He seems to think that statement was divisive, and for backup, he cites Jon Stewart, who took offense at a statement of truth.
After sharing that statement, Stewart — speaking as if he were Silverman — added: “As President of the American Atheists organization, I promise to make sure that everyone, even those that are indifferent to our cause, will f-cking hate us.”
What neither Stedman nor Stewart mentioned, of course, was that Stewart is on the 9/11 Memorial and Museum board of directors, has a vested interest in the 9/11 museum, and that his organization was being sued by American Atheists for promoting sectarian religion in the museum.
But even ignoring that, I would ask both Stedman and Stewart this: was Silverman wrong? I don’t think so. What stings about that remark is the truth of it…that the museum and Stedman just want to let some stupid pareidolia have a place in a museum because it’s easier than actually pointing out the folly of it all. They don’t think it’s worth fighting for a reasonable response because it might alienate groups of unreasonable people.
It’s good to know that an atheist community under the thumb of Stedman would be asked to avoid comments as mild as Silverman’s, for fear of antagonizing Stedman’s favored clientele…the believers. It’s becoming obvious that Stedman also has a conflict of interest: he’s not really interested in working for atheism, but is more aligned with that weird pro-faith organization called Interfaith Youth Core. Could he please toddle off, work hard with them, and stop pretending to be one of us, please?
Stedman also does something unconscionable. Most of his post consists of a garbled, desperate twisting of a post by Greta Christina, on the different goals of the atheist movement. Greta is a firebrand, someone who promotes a strong, aggressive atheism, and somehow, Stedman mangles her words to pretend that it all somehow supports his position of passive-aggressive self-adulation. And he doesn’t even understand Greta’s argument, which doesn’t say much for Stedman’s ability to empathize with different positions. He simply doesn’t comprehend the New Atheist position at all.
I’ll help. As Greta says (and I’ve said before, too), there are a lot of different reasons to be an atheist, but the reasons of the New Atheists (and myself, specifically) are quite clear and simple. They’re so simple that stupidity can’t be Stedman’s excuse for not grasping them.
And here it is: our first priority is the truth.
When someone makes a statement about gods — and here’s where Stedman is really incomprehending, because we aren’t focused on just the fundamentalists, but also include the liberal religious persuasions in this criticism — the question right at the top of our heads is, “Is that true?”
Someone says, “God will cast you into eternal hellfire!”, and we wonder, “Really? Is that true? Can you back that up with evidence?”
Someone says, “God is love,” and it’s all the same to us. “Is that true? How do you know? Is there a way to confirm that, or even say it with less mush in your mouth?”
Somebody sees a couple of girders at right angles to one another in the rubble of the WTC towers, and thinks it’s worth putting in a museum. We ask, “Why? Does this make sense, even in the context of your own religion, that this tragedy is marked with a symbol of your faith?” It’s a good question. Jon Stewart didn’t answer it. Stedman sure as hell didn’t.
No, not Stedman. Stedman is one of those guys who’d happily sacrifice reality on the altar of let’s-just-get-along.
That’s not where I stand. If Stedman had actually read Greta’s post with comprehension, he’d know that there are a lot of different atheists out there, and some of us have science and an attitude of unrelenting criticism and doubt seared into us, right down to the bone. We’re not surrendering it to make some hippy-dippy narcissistic appeaser happy, or to reconcile jesus-worshippers to us. That’s a compromise we aren’t going to make. Especially when Stedman’s only alternative is to shut up about the incoherence of faith.
I suppose my journey to atheism started with spirituality. When I was a kid, I attended a Unitarian Universalist church in Seattle. We had both a Solstice and a Christmas pageant, celebrated Easter and the Equinox. My parents sought not to force an ideology upon me, but to expose me to many traditions so that I could piece together my own collage of beliefs. I remember one day, standing in my living room, when someone inquired as to my religion. Bewildered, I said “I don’t know…” and turned to my mother, who replied “Good.” When my sisters were born, though, our house and traditions were suddenly too small.
We moved to a cohousing community about half an hour away when I was nine or ten, and my father moved back to Seattle soon afterward. He was and is a very scientifically minded person, fascinated with the acquisition of any kind of knowledge he can get his hands on, and I believe his transition to atheism came soon after my parents split. I began attending a New Thought church with my mother (and later my stepfather). In this place, I was taught that god is just a word for some spiritual thingy that makes up everything, a person’s natural state is perfection, that our thoughts affect what happens to us, and that heaven and hell are merely states of mind. After a while, though, I became disenchanted with that fat box of joy. They started asking people to tithe after every service. They acquired a new TV spot, associated themselves with Deepak Chopra, and built a new “celebration hall” with the money they constantly milked their audience for…. The average wealth of the people attending rose visibly, and not because the church was making anyone richer. Our old holding-hands-during songs tradition was abolished without a word. Not to mention the fact that we were building ugly new buildings instead of, say, helping people through devastating world crises. Attached to my previous participation in the music program and to the friends I’d made there, I dangled on for a little while before I gave up.
As I began my college career last year, I discovered my fascination with anthropology and psychology; the reasons people are how we are, and how we perceive the world around us. And in the light of my recent split from the New Thought movement, and the insight I was being given into humanity, I turned my questioning nature upon my own beliefs. I’d read Pharyngula before, and was already better versed in biology and the scientific method than most people my age, but had held tightly to my vague, earthy spirituality. Under closer scrutiny, I was shocked at my conclusion:
None of the important values I was holding onto and associated with spirituality- self-fulfilling prophecy (a well-known psychological phenomenon), respect for life, empathy, getting to know oneself- needed to be assigned to any sort of supernatural being or force. There was just no reason I had to believe something quite frankly silly to be a whole, happy person living on a fascinating speck in a vast and astounding universe.
So I did. And now I’m an atheist.
Natasha K
United States
When will they ever learn? Tim Minchin did a new song for a television show, and when the director, Peter Fincham, saw it, he presumably freaked out and demanded it be cut. This wasn’t The Pope Song — it was a very friendly and cheerful song about Jesus. But he had it cut anyway, and now everyone is featuring it on their blogs.
I have decided that Peter Fincham has to be the most cunning Jesus-hating atheist ever, because it was an absolutely brilliant move guaranteed to get the song promoted all over the place.
Thank you Tim Minchin for another lovely song, and here’s to you, Peter Fincham, you magnificent devious blaspheming bastard.
My path to atheism was paved with history books.
I was interested in my native Catholicism, so I read Elaine Pagels on the origins of Christianity. Starting from her books, I was led to the similarities between Catholicism and ancient Egyptian beliefs. It could not have been chance that those people, who were not Catholic, believed in the same things as me. It couldn’t be unless those beliefs and mine were the same in some way: they are the legacy of that time and people to me. That was the biggest and most crucial step.
Then, I read up on Santeria. It’s part of my native culture too, but I didn’t consider it an option to believe in. Given the way Santeria was presented to me in my childhood, it was the opposite. Santeria was never a live option, in exactly the same way that dog-headed and falcon-headed gods were not. Yet the parallels to Catholicism were too obvious. I noticed another obvious thing. In some Catholic circles, Santeria is viewed with extreme contempt. I noticed that contempt, and I noticed how much racism was tied up in that contempt. It bothered me.
Santeria is a New World religion and it may be a syncretic religion; it may be the combination of Catholicism and certain Yoruba and other African religious practices. In that view, the saints and orishas represent the same underlying principles. Or maybe, it’s not syncretic at all. On this view, the saints that are associated with the orishas are a dodge and a defense mechanism. That dodge enables an older, persecuted religion to survive in secret in a new environment, even if in a changed form, and even if some believers eventually forget the dodge. Funny about that, how that process is similar to what happened to those Egyptian ideas from so long ago.
Either syncretic or not, Santeria’s history has played out in the last 500 years, and there are clear historical records to be read. Sorry Osiris, Horus and Isis; sorry Chango, Yemaya and Cachita; sorry Santa Barbara, Regla, and Caridad del Cobre, but I just can’t believe in you.
It didn’t take much imagination to extend that same logic to Jesus and Mary and Genesis and Yaweh and all that.
Rodriguez
United States
Thomas Nast, the 19th century political cartoonist who gave us our standard image of both Santa Claus and Uncle Sam, is going to be enrolled in the New Jersey Hall of Fame. This isn’t really controversial: he was extremely influential. He was not entirely a nice guy, though, being a bit of a nativist and also responsible for promoting the stereotype of the Irish as violent drunks…so I would hope that his exhibit in the Hall of Fame would also highlight his bigotry. That’s not acceptable to Bill Donohue, though — Nast is the subject of his latest fit of apoplexy, because, unfortunately, while having a biased attitude towards the Irish people, he also portrayed Catholicism accurately.
I confess. I laughed.
Ken Ham has been planning to build this colossal boondoogle in Kentucky, a life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark. Except they’ve hit one little snag.
Their groundbreaking was pushed back from spring, to summer, to fall, and the most recent media report was to next spring. Meanwhile, their fundraising goal of $24.5 million appears to have ground to a halt at just over $4 million, where it has been for quite a while. They had reached the $3 million mark all the way back in May.
I don’t know what the problem is. $4 million is more than enough to hire one old man with a wooden mallet and a bronze axe for a year.
$4 million is also a lot of moolah for Answers in Genesis to walk away with if their Ark project flops.
(Also on Sb)
I am an atheist because, if I am to be an honest person, it is the only way I am able to be.
When I was struggling with trying to be Christian in my early 20’s, other Christians who knew I was struggling would tell me to “have faith” and “it will come with time” if I just believe. I was subtly told that I was over-thinking the whole question. (What does it mean to “over-think”?) I tried to be open to God, but I couldn’t stop “over-thinking”. I pleaded with God to reveal himself to me and wondered what was wrong with me that he never did. I wasn’t even asking for much of a sign–I didn’t want a burning bush or a miracle, I just wanted a feeling like so many Christians I knew claimed they had–a feeling of knowing the “truth” and knowing that God was there with me.
I never got such a feeling and I slowly came around to the idea that maybe there was nothing wrong with me. Maybe the reason I wasn’t picking up God’s signal was not because I was a poor receptor but because he wasn’t actually there. The moment I let myself think that, I was on a very quick path to atheism. My “eureka” moment was not “God does not exist” but rather, “I don’t have to believe in God.” It seems obvious to me now, but at the time it was a real revelation (so to speak). I started to see faith for what it is: not the noble, humble position as it is touted, but a lie to oneself–deliberate deceit self-imposed in order to believe in something that’s not true.
I’ve recently become not only an atheist, but an “out” atheist. I talk about it with the religious members of my family. I say it outright if someone asks me if I belong to a church. I updated my facebook “philosophy” to read “atheist” (this was surprisingly difficult for me for whatever reason). I’ve even told a handful of my students when they’ve asked. This newfound zeal came about this year when my husband and I started looking for resources on raising our 3-year-old daughter without religion. We want to raise her to not be afraid–of being different, of being creative, of being smart, of being rational. And so I had to stop and examine how I was living my life and I saw that I had been hiding. I didn’t believe, but I sometimes pretended I did to avoid conflict. I was noncommittal or weakly compromising at best and untruthful at worst, and I don’t want to raise my daughter to think that’s OK.
I became an atheist to be honest with myself and so I had to come out as an atheist to be honest with others.
We teach by example, so I’m working to be an example worth learning from.
Holly
United States
Alaska is one of those states afflicted with licensed naturopaths, which basically means they’ve got a bunch of people with no qualifications and a skull full of stupid who get to call themselves doctors and make sick people worse. The premiere Alaskan quack is Michael Ellenburg, one of those guys who peddles everything from homeopathy to traditional Chinese medicine to ozone therapy to acupuncture — the usual cocktail of New Age sewage. Steeped as I currently am in cancer texts in preparation for the next term, I perked right up when I read about Bryomixol.
Bryomixol is an herbal therapy that targets the patient’s immune system function. In patients who have cancer they need to get their immune system to start working properly. Anyone who has cancer does not have a proper functioning immune system, otherwise they would not have cancer. Chemotherapy and Radiation are directed against the tumor(s), they do nothing to support the immune system. Bryomixol can be used in cancer to treat the patient’s immune system; it is not a targeted cancer treatment. Bryomixol specifically effects Natural Killer cell function. NK cells are involved in seeking out and destroying tumor cells, bacteria, and viruses.
Try listening to any of these quacks on the radio (sadly, turn to any of the more liberal networks in your area, and you’ll find them infested with magic medicine shows), and this is the refrain you hear most frequently: “enhance your immune system naturally”. I don’t even know what that means, and I’m a biologist…but it sounds good, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately for all those cancer patients who are going to hand over their money to Ellenburg, bryomixol is also homeopathic: it’s distilled water, nothing more. Ellenburg is a guy who skims profit off the pain and suffering of others, offering nothing in return but a glass of water.
