Albert Einstein says it well...

When I first read this, I thought, 'YES! That's it exactly!'

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.
It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.”

No Excuses

"... people can interpret the Bible however they want, but a strict literal reading of 'God's Word' plainly advocates things like racism, lack of family values, fear, judgment, violence, misogyny... a rational, objective, compassionate person could not reasonably judge that the Bible is a good guide to morality, nor that it supports/promotes intellectual honesty and inquiry into nature."

Edit: Cody teases me about being infatuated with Sam Harris... and after re-reading the above quote, I can't say it doesn't reek a little of infatuation... though I think it's more infatuation with his ideas than with him.

I emailed the above quote to a Christian friend of mine, in an attempt to explain why I am baffled when I learn that a highly educated, logical person is a 'bible believer'. She never responded. I also mentioned this position to my Dad last night, and he didn't really know what to say. I don't understand how people can ignore this stuff.

Also I think that it's strange that critical thinkers are expected to, when picking up the Bible, have someone nearby to 'explain' the bad parts. If the Bible is the word of God, it shouldn't need explaining, we should take it as-is and not need to interpret or excuse passages.

Awkward Turtle at the Oscars

So, posting this is going to reveal my rather embarrassing addiction to TMZ.com, but I'm a little too fired up not to post on it, so...

On the red carpet last night, Gary Busey greeted Jennifer Garner by kissing her on the neck.

In general, as a woman, this bothered me because it's all-too-familiar for us. Most women I know have had at least one experience where a man made them feel uncomfortable––it's the overly-friendly attitude, or the inappropriate touch, or the unwanted proposition (subtle or otherwise). It happened to me a few years ago. I remember going home to my mom and telling her about it; she, wise woman that she is, told me to stand up for myself, and I did. It made me feel empowered to take that action, to put a stop to the aggressive behavior that was making me feel so uncomfortable. Still, it made me feel uncomfortable, and violated, and intensely aware that, as a woman, I will always have to be on the look-out for predatory men. Understand, I am by no means bashing men in general (just the assholes) but this is something that is a reality for women. We deal with it all the time, most of the time barely registering the fact that we are in a constant state of watchfulness.

So, in watching the video of Jennifer Garner's reaction to the violation of her personal space, I felt for her. It made me angry, but it was a weary angry. It's that low-level anger that comes when you're really not surprised, but still aware that things like this are... well, they're just wrong. There's a strange split there: it upsets me, but I also accept that it's a part of the world we live in. I don't like it or condone it, but it seems to be one of those problems that will only be solved through the gradual changing of hearts and minds of individual people.

I was weary angry. And then, I read the comments, and got fired up. An alarmingly high number of them were somewhere along the lines of, "She should get over herself," or, "He was just being friendly," or, "He's got more talent than she does."

Fuck that. Sorry for the f-bomb droppage, but seriously. He kissed her neck. He kissed her neck, and she didn't want him to; that is all that matters. There is no excuse. It doesn't matter how famous he is. Kissing the neck of someone you've never met before isn't friendly, it's creepy. And the "she should get over herself" thing is... don't even get me started. It's cavalier, it's dismissive, and it implies that women shouldn't care when a man violates their bodily integrity.

If someone kisses my neck and I don't want them to, I will not 'get over myself'. I will not 'let it go'. I will say something. I will stand up for myself. From where I stand, that's what Jennifer Garner did last night, and that, at least, is heartening.

The ignorant commenters still piss me off, though.

Do You Know the History?

This may be old news to some, but I think it important to post for those who may not know:

The phrase 'under God' was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.

'In God We Trust' was added to our currency in 1957.



"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Quotations from "Letter to a Christian Nation"

Questions of morality are about happiness and suffering.

The idea that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality is simply astounding given the content of the book.

Jesus can be read to endorse the entirety of the Old Testament law.

The Golden Rule really is a wonderful moral precept but numerous teachers offered the same instruction centuries before Jesus.

If we take Jesus in half his moods, we can easily justify the actions of St. Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. Taking the other half, we can justify the Inquisition.

Consider the question of slavery. Consult the Bible and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves. The fact that abolitionists used parts of scripture to repudiate other parts does not indicate that the Bible is a good guide to morality.

[Of the Ten Commandments] Commandments 5 through 9 are found in virtually every culture. There are obvious biological reasons why people tend to treat their parents well, and to think badly of murderers, adulterers, thieves, and liars.

God never gives us the freedom to follow the commandments we like best and neglect the rest.

If you think it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures.

Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theological defensible reading of the Bible.

It is clearly possible to say that someone like Hitler was wrong in moral terms without reference to scripture.

Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral... Your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering.

If compassion were really dependent upon religious dogmatism, how could we explain the work of secular doctors in the most war-ravaged regions of the developing world?

While missionaries do many noble things at great risk to themselves, their dogmatism still spreads ignorance and death.

We might wonder, which is more moral: helping people purely out of concern for their suffering, or helping them because you think the creator of the universe will reward you for it?

One can reasonably wonder whether most aborted fetuses suffer their destruction... One cannot reasonably wonder this about the millions of men, women, and children who must endure the torments of war, famine, political torture, or mental illness.

The compassion of human beings is often hobbled by preposterous ideas about sin and salvation. If you are worried about human suffering, abortion should rank very low on your list of concerns.

50 percent of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, usually without a woman even realizing that she was pregnant. In fact, 20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage... If God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all.

If religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers...they should be utterly immoral.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong... The problem with such tyrants is not that they reject the dogma of religion, but that they embrace other life-destroying myths.

No society in human history ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

If there were a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and societal health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don’t.

Widespread belief in God does not ensure a society’s health.

You feel that you are in a position to judge that the Golden Rule is the height of moral wisdom...and then you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world...we must depend on the Bible.We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep. If we are civilized, we will reject this as the vilest lunacy imaginable. Doing so requires that we exercise our own moral intuitions.

We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and human well-being, or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million American claiming to ‘never doubt the existence of God’ should be obliged to present evidence for his existence—and, indeed, for his benevolence.

An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a little girl—even once in a million years—casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.

It is time we recognized the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. It is time we acknowledged how disgraceful it is for the survivor of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while the same God drowned infants in their cribs.

People of all faiths regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering... If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop calamities, or He does not care to.

So much suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious taboos, and religious diversions of scarce resources.

Imagine how breathtakingly specific a work of prophecy would be, if it were actually the product of omniscience. If the Bible were such a book, it would make perfectly accurate predictions about human events. The Bible does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.

Why doesn’t the Bible say anything about electricity, or about DNA, or about the actual age and size of the universe? What about a cure for cancer? God had room to instruct us in great detail about how to keep slaves and sacrifice a wide variety of animals.

The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma: the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.

Every religion makes specific claims about the way the world is... Such claims conflict with the claims of science, because they are claims made on terrible evidence.

When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn’t.

The core of science is controlled by intellectual honesty.

Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.

Evolution is a theory. In science, facts must be explained with reference to other facts. These larger explanatory models are ‘theories’. Theories make predictions and can be tested. The phrase ‘the theory of evolution’ does not in the least suggest that evolution is not a fact. One can speak about ‘the theory of gravitation’ without casting doubt upon gravity as a fact of nature.

[Christians] are simply not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe.

An honest reading of the biblical account of creation suggests that God created all animals and plants as we now see them.

Even if we accepted that our universe simply had to be designed by a designer, this would not suggest that this designer is the biblical God, or that He approves of Christianity.

Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists.

One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be appreciated in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other non-believers for their intellectual arrogance.

When we look at the natural world, we do not see optimal design... We see flightless birds and snakes with pelvises. We see species of fish, salamanders, and crustaceans that have non-functional eyes. We see whales that produce teeth during fetal development, only to reabsorb them as adults. As embryos, we produce tales, gill sacs, and a full coat of apelike hair. The human respiratory and digestive tracts share a little plumbing at the pharynx.

There are now around three hundred and fifty thousand known species of beetles.

Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us unwilling to criticize ideas that are increasingly maladaptive and patently ridiculous.

Our competing religious certainties are impeding the emergence of a viable, global civilization.

Religion is the only form of in-group/out-group thinking that casts the difference between people in terms of eternal rewards and punishments.

The bigotry and hatred that divide one community from another are often the products of their religious identities.

We do not all worship the same God, and nothing attests to this fact more eloquently than our history of religious bloodshed.

Devout Muslims are as convinced as you are that their religion is perfect and that any deviation leads directly to hell... A person’s religious beliefs uniquely determine what he thinks peace is good for, as well as what he means by a term like ‘compassion.’ There are millions of Muslims who would be willing to die before they would allow your version of compassion to gain a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula.

How can interfaith dialogue reconcile worldviews that are fundamentally incompatible and immune to revision?

We desperately need a public discourse that encourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty.

It is time we learned to meet our emotional needs without embracing the preposterous.

There is no question that it is possible for people to have profoundly transformative experiences... But this does not make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims any more respectable.

Any genuine exploration of ethics or the contemplative life demands the same standards of reasonableness and self-criticism that animate all intellectual discourse.

That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.



SamHarris.org

Religious Fluidity

A Christian friend of mine admitted today that had she been brought up in a Muslim family, she would be a Muslim today, instead of a Christian. What I can not understand is how the next logical conclusion can not be made by her. If your religious identity is based purely on what your parents taught you, how can you continue to believe that your faith is the only correct one, when you know there are other religions out there that you might belong to, had you been born into a different family?

BLOWS MY MIND.

"The Problem with Atheism" by Sam Harris

Here are some excerpts that state the main tone of the article:

“Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn’t really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as “non-racism” is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves.

So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

Well, rather than declare ourselves “atheists” in opposition to all religion, I think we should do nothing more than advocate reason and intellectual honesty—and where this advocacy causes us to collide with religion, as it inevitably will, we should observe that the points of impact are always with specific religious beliefs—not with religion in general. There is no religion in general.

Another problem with calling ourselves “atheists” is that every religious person thinks he has a knockdown argument against atheism.

…consider what would happen if we simply used words like “reason” and “evidence.” What is the argument against reason? …there are very few people, even among religious fundamentalists, who will happily admit to being enemies of reason. In fact, fundamentalists tend to think they are champions of reason and that they have very good reasons for believing in God. Nobody wants to believe things on bad evidence. The desire to know what is actually going on in our world is very difficult to argue with. In so far as we represent that desire, we become difficult to argue with. And this desire is not reducible to an interest group. It’s not a club or an affiliation, and I think trying to make it one diminishes its power.

As “atheists” we give others, and even ourselves, the sense that we are well on our way toward purging the universe of mystery. As advocates of reason, we know that mystery is going to be with us for a very long time.

We are faced, however, with the challenge of communicating this view to others. We are faced with the monumental task of persuading a myth-infatuated world that love and curiosity are sufficient, and that we need not console or frighten ourselves or our children with Iron Age fairy tales. I don’t think there is a more important intellectual struggle to win; it has to be fought from a hundred sides, all at once, and continuously; but it seems to me that there is no reason for us to fight in well-ordered ranks, like the red coats of Atheism.

What will victory against racism look like, should that happy day ever dawn? It certainly won’t be a world in which a majority of people profess that they are “nonracist.” Most likely, it will be a world in which the very concept of separate races has lost its meaning.

It seems to me that intellectual honesty is now, and will always be, deeper and more durable, and more easily spread, than “atheism.””


I listened to an interview with Sam Harris on the FFRF podcast today, and he went over parts of this speech, which I found very interesting because I'd never thought about what effects the title 'Atheist' might have on this fight.
One thing he mentioned in the interview, that is not in the article, is that there may be a purpose, now, in people labeling themselves as Atheists.

So, between the article, his interview, and my own experience of 'coming out' to people as an Atheist, I came to the conclusion that, for now, I will continue to label myself as such, if only for the purpose of making it known to those around me that there are people who absolutely do not believe in any gods, and that we are not wicked or hateful because we lack this belief. I think it is important that people are made aware of this, and the best way I can see of doing that, now, (probably the most dramatic, as well) is to bluntly state my position, and I think that 'Atheist' (though it comes with all its misinterpretations) is the simplest way of showing my opposition to religion.

Religion and Politics: Election '08 Edition

This is a rather nice rundown of some of the more alarming aspects of Mike Huckabee. For the sake of my blood pressure and sanity, I haven't been pondering the idea of a Huckabee presidency (and his delegate counts seem to preclude the possibility of his securing the nomination). Still, he's a rather strident advocate for theocracy––though he doesn't name it as such––and that is a very dangerous mindset to have. This guy genuinely scares me, but at least Jon Stewart's always-funny commentary keeps me from crying at the Huckabee quotes.

Put very simply...

I'm doing research on 'the role of the church in the initial reception of Darwin's thought' and ran across this comic.

Jesus loves you. Now get out.

I've been meaning to write about this article for awhile now. A quick excerpt:

On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P."

Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.

The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey's real offense, in her pastor's view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he'd charged her with spreading "a spirit of cancer and discord" and expelled her from the congregation. "I've been shunned," she says.

Her story reflects a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders.

I had hoped to marshal my thoughts into something, well, cohesive, but I find this article too emotional for me, even after two weeks of thinking about it. So here, I present simply a summary of what's in my head:

1. On first glance, this article seems to be yet another example of the hypocrisy of the church. I find it incredibly convenient that pastors are using this 'doctrine' to settle what appear to be personal vendettas. For a pastor to think himself above reproach and use this shunning tactic as a means of silencing his critics is disgraceful. It seems remarkably un-Christlike to me, as well. And yet, because of my own experiences with Churchianity, it's hardly surprising.

2. Part of my journey from Christian to atheist has been about resolving my anger issues with the church and Christians. Don't get me wrong, I still yell at my TV when Pat Robertson says something crazy on his little show, but I've been trying not to condemn Christians on sight, if that makes any sense. Here's the thing, though. Karolyn Caskey's pastor had a 71-year-old woman arrested for attending church. Full stop. He, in his infinite wisdom, decided this woman deserved to go to jail with criminals because, in essence, she disagreed with him. I may not share Karolyn Caskey's religious beliefs, but I respect her right to have them. I mean, this lady served her church for longer than its pastor has been alive. It's just––he should be ashamed of himself. The only word I can really think of to describe this pastor's actions is mean. What he did to this woman was intentionally humiliating and bullying. It was mean.

3. I hear about this kind of stuff, and it makes me sad and grateful all at the same time. I'm grateful because I realize I've escaped from this madness. My sadness, though, comes from the realization that, well, this kind of thing probably isn't going away anytime soon. It's naive of me, I know, but there's a part of me that will always wish that we, as a society, can just move on and grow the hell up. I just... is this really how adults are choosing to resolve their differences? I read somewhere else that Mr. Burrick is in his twenties; maybe he's simply immature. Still, I'm in my twenties (and probably younger than Mr. Burrick) and I damn well know better. I'm fired up about this, and I realize it. After six years working at the retirement home, seniors hold a special place in my heart; I can't help but side with Karolyn Caskey. She deserved her pastor's respect, and she didn't get it, and that angers me. It's all the worse that at least half the congregation sided with the pastor and turned their backs on a woman who'd devoted her life to her church––they should all be ashamed, too.

In conclusion, I think I should simply say that this is a club I'm glad I don't belong to anymore. And I hope Jason Burrick grows up and apologizes.

Edit: After stewing on it a little longer, I realize that my anger stems largely from the story of Karolyn Caskey's service to her church. She reminds me of my grandmothers' (note the plural) own years of serving their respective churches. And if anyone tried to evict any of my 4 grandmas from their churches, or had them arrested, I could reasonably see myself being provoked to violence. You don't do that to grandmas, period.

It bothers me all the more that the pastor, who has nothing on Mrs. Caskey in terms of wisdom and life experience, felt he had the right to do what he did. Aside from his own sense of self-importance, I suspect, in part, it had to do with her being a woman.

Seriously, I'd like to know...

My guess would be 'no one' but I'm not a Christian, so maybe I'm wrong...

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

I'm studying for a Physics quiz I have tomorrow and couldn't help but look up this quote. It is one of the funniest things I have ever read (scary, but funny), and it applies to what I'm studying at this moment.

"One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it." (courtesy of FSTDT)

Gets me every time!

"It's God's Will"

The above refers to a typical response many Christians have to the bad things that happen to all of us. Usually accompanied by a somber shake of the head, it's meant to comfort grieving family members, or to explain things like car accidents, serious illness, and other hardships. In terms of deaths, it tends to be applied more to those considered "untimely".

I hate it.

It's a platitude, and not terribly comforting, at least to my way of thinking. It cheapens the emotions we feel; to say that the death of a person is God's will does a disservice to those grieving that loss, and to the memory of the deceased. It may seem antithetical, but I only gained true appreciation for the wonder that is human life after I became atheist. To be atheist is to accept that this life is all there is, that the type of person you consider yourself to be is solely determined by how you live your life. Atheism has brought me newfound respect for this earth I walk on, and the people I share it with. However many years I have, that's how long I have to effect some sort of change in the world. When I'm gone, I'm gone, and it will be someone else's turn to act (or not).

The value of human life is precisely why "It's God's will" doesn't work for me. When a loved one dies, we should be able to celebrate a life well-lived, and to lament that person's loss. People leave behind a hole when they die––a space that they, and only they, fit perfectly. Everyone is unique, and so a loss should be grieved. It should be painful for those left behind; that's a true legacy to a life well-lived. But chalking a death up to God's will, by seeking to provide a purpose to one's suffering, actually perverts its true purpose. To suffer and grieve, as I've said, is to lend meaning to a person's life (however great or small, positive or negative the contribution seems). But to say that it was God's will for that person to die lessens the emotional tribute the bereaved are paying. It says, in effect, that whatever reason God had for taking a person's life was greater and more important than what they did with the life they had. It suggests that human beings are merely on the Earth at the whim of a supernatural being, that nothing they do really matters.

"It's God's will" implies that the person's life was finished. It negates any future good they might have done for the world. It assumes they had no future, aside from eternity in heaven, and that's a shame. The world is a big place. Who wants to be finished? I think there can be no greater task for human beings than to try to live our life unfinished––to always learn new things and find new experiences. I don't want to live my life with a predetermined expiration date. "It's God's will" takes the excitement and wonder from life. It paints this world as a place of monotony, when compared to the Utopian heaven promised to Christians. This focus on the afterlife is an easy trap to fall into with Christianity. Church parking lots fill on Sunday mornings with SUVs because, with the promise of Rapture, who cares about providing a healthy planet to our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren?

Ultimately, that's my problem with "It's God's will". It places too much value on one's fate after one dies. It glosses over the impact a person's death has on the world it leaves behind. For Christians, I understand that the promise of seeing one's loved ones again someday is comforting. For me, however, I'd rather go without that comfort. I'd rather grieve and cry and miss the person, fiercely. And then I want to wake up the next day, and ask myself, "What lessons can I learn from how this person lived? What can I do to make this world I'm living in better?" I want to challenge myself to honor the memories of those who've made an impact on my life, and that means honoring their lives, not their deaths.