Atheist Wisdom

My Last Post

2009-03-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

I've decided to wrap up Atheist Wisdom and concentrate on my other blog, Creationist Idiocy. Although it has fewer followers, it gets more hits and is generally more fun for me to maintain. It also has far more original content from yours truly, whereas most of the articles and quotes I post on Atheist Wisdom are easily found elsewhere.

Thanks to all who've read this blog, linked to it, or left comments. I especially thank those of you who have signed on as followers, and I hope that you'll check out Creationist Idiocy if you haven't already.

Cheers,

Luke

All thinking men are atheists.

Ernest Hemingway

Quote of the Week

2009-03-02T05:29:00.000-08:00

All religions die of one disease - that of being found out.

John Morley

Major Branches Within Atheism?

2009-03-01T07:11:00.001-08:00

Click for a larger version. Via LOL God.

The Fine Tuning Argument

2009-02-25T17:35:00.000-08:00

Another argument used by creationists and theists as proof of celestial design is the so-called "fine tuning of the universe." It turns out that the existence of a universe that permits life as we know it depends heavily on the size of certain constants in the laws of physics. If, for example, the charge of the electron were slightly different, or if the disparity in mass between a proton and a neutron were slightly larger, or if other constants varied by more than a few percent, the universe would differ in important ways. Stars would not live long enough to allow life to emerge and evolve, there would be no solar systems, and the universe would lack the elements and the complex chemistry necessary for building organisms. In other words, we inhabit what is called a "Goldilocks universe," where nature's laws are just right to allow life to evolve and to thrive. This observation is called "the anthropic principle."

At first glance, its explanation appears trivial. As Ken Miller says, "Taking as a starting point the observation that you and I are alive, at least in the immediate present, it's obvious that we must live in a universe where life is possible. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. So, in a certain sense the fact that we live in a life-friendly universe merits little more than a big 'Duh.'" True. But this raises a deeper question: why do the constants of the universe just happen to have those life-promoting values? The answer given by creationists is that this is no accident: a beneficent God (or an intelligent designer) crafted those physical laws precisely so that somewhere in the universe intelligent life would evolve--life so intelligent that it could work out the laws of physics and, more important, apprehend their creator. This answer--known as the strong anthropic principle--is scientifically untestable, but it sounds so reasonable that it has become one of the biggest guns in the creationist arsenal. (It is important to grasp that anthropic principles concern the conditions required for the existence of any life, and say nothing about the inevitability of complex and intelligent life.)

Also, scientists have other explanations, ones based on reason rather than on faith. Perhaps some day, when we have a "theory of everything" that unifies all the forces of physics, we will see that this theory requires our universe to have the physical constants that we observe. Alternatively, there are intriguing "multiverse" theories that invoke the appearance of many universes, each with different physical laws; and we could have evolved only in one whose laws permit life. The physicist Lee Smolin has suggested a fascinating version of multiverse theory. Drawing a parallel with natural selection among organisms, Smolin proposed that physical constants of universes actually evolve by a type of "cosmological selection" among universes. It turns out that each black hole--and there are millions in our universe--might give rise to a new universe, and these new universes could have physical constants different from those of their ancestors. (This is analogous to mutation in biological evolution.) And universes with physical constants close to the ones we see today happen to be better at producing more black holes, which in turn produce more universes. (This resembles natural selection.) Eventually this process yields a population of universes enriched in those having just the right properties to produce stars (the source of black holes), planets, and life. Smolin's theory immensely raises the odds that life could appear.

The idea of multiple universes may seem like a desperate move--a Hail Mary thrown out by physicists who are repelled by religious explanations. But physics is full of ideas that are completely counterintuitive, and multiverse theories fall naturally out of long-standing ideas of physics. They represent physicists' attempts to give a naturalistic explanation for what others see as evidence of design. For many scientists, multiverses seem far more reasonable than the solipsistic assumption that our own universe with its 10,000,000,000, 000,000 planets was created just so a single species of mammal would evolve on one of them fourteen billion years later.

Jerry Coyne

The full article, Seeing and Believing, can be read here.

Quote of the Week

2009-02-23T05:39:00.000-08:00

A Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did on Saturday, and what he is going to do on Monday.

Thomas Ybarra

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

2009-02-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

On January 27, 1987, I was led as a lamb to the slaughter, having been set up to debate the Rev. Dr. Norman Geisler of Dallas Theological Seminary on the subject, "Humanism vs. Christianity." Dubbed by its promoters as "The Main Event," the debate was held in the ballroom at Auburn University, a room overflowing with perhaps 2,000 people, some of whom had been bused in, courtesy of local churches.

Geisler had trouble staying on the general topic, focusing rather on abortion, in the most grisly terms. Humanists, he tells, are right in there with the Nazis in disregard of human life. Their despicable deeds are made likely, if not inevitable, by their moral relativism. How much firmer is the ground under Christians, who stand on moral absolutes!

During rebuttal, I said that my favorite moral absolute in scripture was in Luke 6:30 where Jesus is reported to have said, "Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again." I then turned to the Rev. Dr. Geisler and asked him for his money. Since it was not forthcoming, I knelt on one knee and begged for it, trying to cover all spiritual bases.

With a pale look about his gills, he finally pulled out a dollar bill and waved it wanly at me to which I said, "No, not a dollar; I want all of your money. But I'm not mean; I won't keep your wallet or credit cards." Geisler did not, in fact, comply with the moral absolute in Luke 6:30 (also see Matthew 5:42 and Luke 6:35). If he had given me his money, I would have taken it and kept it. Thus, we would both have been blessed, I with extra cash and he with a clear conscience for having met the challenge of obeying a moral absolute of his lord. I fear his conscience still troubles him over this episode, something I would gladly have spared him by keeping his money.

Bibliolaters are so fond of moral absolutes that I believe the rest of us should oblige them by giving them every opportunity to act thereupon. When you next hear a Christian extolling the rock of moral absolutes upon which he or she stands, go for the cash. It has a sobering effect that may in the long run be beneficial.

Delos McKown

The original article is here, brought to my attention by Unreasonable Faith.

Why Can't Science Address The Existence of Gods?

2009-02-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

Why can't science address the existence of gods? Why should we simply sit back and accept the claim of apologists that what they believe in is not subject to "observation, measurement, and experiment"?

In the United States today, we have tens of thousands of priests, rabbis, mullahs, pastors, and preachers who are paid professionals, who claim to be active and functioning mediators between people and omnipotent invisible masters of the universe. They make specific claims about their god's nature, what he's made of and what he isn't, how he thinks and acts, what you should do to propitiate it…they somehow seem to have amazingly detailed information about this being. Yet, when a scientist approaches with a critical eye, suddenly it is a creature that not only has never been observed, but cannot observed, and its actions invisible, impalpible, and immaterial.

So where did these confident promoters of god-business get their information? Shouldn't they be admitting that their knowledge of this elusive cosmic beast is nonexistent? It seems to me that if you're going to declare scientists helpless before the absence and irrelevance of the gods, you ought to declare likewise for all of god's translators and interpreters. Be consistent when you announce who has purview over all religious belief, because making god unobservable and immeasurable makes everyone incapable of saying anything at all about it.

And what of those many millions of ordinary people who claim to have daily conversations with this entity? That is an impressive conduit for all kinds of testable information: a high bandwidth channel between the majority of people on Earth and a friendly, omniscient source of knowledge, and it isn't named Google. All these queries, and all these answers, and yet, somehow, none of these answers have enough meaning or significance to represent a testable body of counsel. Amazing! You would think that in all that volume of communication, some tiny percentage of useful information would emerge that we could assess against reality, but no…the theologians, lay and professional alike, will all claim that no usable data can be produced that would satisfy a scientist looking for sense. It sounds like empty noise to me.

We have the supposed histories of these believers, and they are full of material actions. Gods throw lightning bolts to smite unbelievers, annihilate whole cities and nations, raise the dead, slay whole worlds of people, suspend the laws of physics to halt the sun in the sky, create the whole Earth in less than a week, help footballers score goals, and even manifest themselves in physical bodies and walk about, doing amazing magic tricks. Wow, O Lord, please do vaporize a city with a column of holy fire before my eyes — I can observe that, I can measure that, I can even do experiments with the rubble. I will be really impressed.

Oh, but wait: it can only be an unobservable, undetectable exercise in mass destruction? And he's not doing that sort of thing anymore? How about pulling a rabbit out of this hat? No, sorry, all done. God can't do anything anymore where people might actually notice, or worse, record the act and figure out how the tricks are done. This is awfully convenient.

This is where the "Science has no opinion on religion" argument leads us: to an atheist's world, where there are no activities by a god that matter, where at best people can claim that their god is aloof and unknowable, admitting in their own premises that they have no knowledge at all of him.

PZ Myers

The original post can be read here.

Quote of the Week

2009-02-16T09:56:00.000-08:00

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.

Gene Roddenberry

Warwick Atheists

2009-02-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

I just discovered that my old university (Warwick, in the UK) now has an atheist society. It's a shame I left Warwick before this happened, but I'll do my bit now and give them a little publicity here. This is from their main page:

What’s the point in joining an atheist society? If God exists you are moving in the wrong direction and if God doesn’t exist then you are surely wasting your time!

Unfortunately, what other people believe also affects your life and the way in which you live it. If an individual believes something about the world that isn’t true and ends up impinging on the lives of everyone else then suddenly we have a problem.

What if vital medical research that could go a long way to curing a host of ghastly diseases is being held back? What if a deadly sexually transmitted virus is left to run rampant in the third world because people are taught that contraception is wrong? What if people, caught up too heavily in archaic mythology, turn against their neighbours and call for violence in the streets? And what if the cause of each of these atrocities is indeed a mistruth that is drilled into children from an early age, who are promised punishment for alternative thought?

You don’t have to be a rampant atheist (or an atheist at all) to think that these negative effects of various religions must be stopped.

They also have a forum. If you're a member and have stumbled across this blog, leave a comment!

Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln

2009-02-12T06:30:00.000-08:00

He almost certainly wasn't an atheist, but he was undoubtedly liberal, progressive, moral and fiercely intelligent, four adjectives I wouldn't normally associate with the religious:

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

Abraham Lincoln

Quote of the Week

2009-02-09T05:30:00.000-08:00

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. The wise man said it out loud.

Chris W

I found this quote here, posted as a response to the anti-atheism bus ads.

Carnival of the Godless 110

2009-02-08T08:05:00.000-08:00

One of my recent posts has been linked to in the latest edition of the Carnival of the Godless, so welcome to any readers arriving from there.

The post has also prompted a lengthy (attempted) rebuttal, which can be read over at Atheism is Dead. Commenters there have already started countering this rebuttal, so I'm not going to respond myself, but I can't resist posting this:

I stumbled across this blog, inappropriately titled "Atheist Wisdom", and went from intrigued to disappointed. No offense to the author, but any blog calling itself "Atheist Wisdom" should probably live up to the name, and this blog definitely doesn't.

The Truth is Consistent with Itself

2009-02-04T18:13:00.000-08:00

From the excellent blog Evangelical Realism, on the religious apologist's appeal to ignorance:

I do not claim that I can explain every strange thing that happens in life, I merely claim that truth is consistent with itself, and therefore I am confident that any future answers we may find will turn out to be consistent with the truth we already possess. But this is rather irrelevant to the particular issue under discussion here, since the question is not whether men are omniscient, but whether God shows up in real life. Man’s failure to know a particular answer does not constitute God showing up in real life. Ignorance is not knowledge. It’s as simple as that.

Appealing to ignorance is also a flawed approach when you consider the fact that the term “God,” as typically used, refers to a being about whom men claim to possess knowledge. We’re not postulating some being about which no one knows anything, whose existence might indeed be manifest only among the large body of answers we do not currently possess. A God who only “shows up” in the things we are ignorant of is a God who has not shown up. Showing up means we do know we’ve encountered Him; if we don’t know, then He hasn’t done it, and if He hasn’t shown up, then we’re back to the undeniable fact and its inescapable consequence. In God’s absence, the closest we can come to faith is to gullibly put our trust in whatever men tell us about God, despite the contradictions and inconsistencies.

Besides, we don’t need to appeal to ignorance, because we can use the evidence we do have to evaluate the different claims. I claim that God does not show up in real life. Test me. See for yourself, by real world observation, whether or not God does show up. I do not know you. I’ve never met you. I know nothing about your life. How is it, then, that I can know God has never literally, materially, personally shown up in your life? How can I be right 100% of the time? Easy: the truth is consistent with itself.

Deacon Duncan

Read the full article here.

Quote of the Week

2009-02-02T05:31:00.000-08:00

Prayer has no place in the public schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion.

Superintendent Chalmers

Misconceptions About Atheism

2009-02-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

Sam Harris at his best:

Via Josh Stein.

Questions from Believers

2009-01-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

Over at the Friendly Atheist there's a list of questions that Christians would like to ask atheists. Commenters there are answering them now, and I thought I'd post my answers here:

Utilizing each of the historical facts conceded by virtually all contemporary scholars, please produce a comprehensive natural explanation of Jesus’ resurrection that makes better sense than the event itself.

Well here are four that spring immediately to mind, and I'm confident I could think up at least a dozen more. The witnesses lied. The resurrection was faked by someone. The event was entirely made up after the fact by the authors of the gospels. Jesus wasn't really dead. Each of these explanations make much more sense than a guy coming back from the dead after three days, which is something that we all know is physically impossible.

Given the commonly recognized and scientifically supported belief that the universe (all matter, energy, space, time) began to exist a finite time ago and that the universe is remarkably finely tuned for life, does this not (strongly) suggest that the universe is ontologically haunted and that this fact should require further exploration, given the metaphysically staggering implications?

Nobody knows whether or not the matter and energy began to exist a finite amount of time ago. We think it existed as a singularity, a region of infinite density and infinite space-time curvature. What happened before that is potentially a meaningless question given that the big bang (i.e. the expansion of this singularity) is when we think time, as we know it, began.

And "the universe is fine-tuned for life"? No. Life is fine-tuned for the universe, or at least our tiny corner of it.

Granted that the major objection to belief in God is the problem of evil, does the concept of evil itself not suggest a standard of goodness or a design plan from which things deviate, so that if things ought to be a certain way (rather than just happening to be the way they are in nature), don’t such ‘injustices’ or ‘evils’ seem to suggest a moral/design plan independent of nature?

I don't accept that "the problem of evil" is the main objection to the belief in God. There are many other factors, and every atheist has come to his or her conclusions via different thoughts and concepts. For me in particular, it's the complete lack of any evidence. And no, I don't believe that the fact that we can recognize an act as "evil" means that there must be an objective standard for "good". This is like saying that because I find olives to taste bad, there must exist somewhere a food that tastes absolutely perfect.

Please explain how something can come from nothing, how life can come from non-life, how mind can come from brain, and how our moral senses developed from an amoral source.

As I said above, the big bang theory does not require something to come from nothing. It describes the universe coming from the singularity, which may have always been there, or may have come from somewhere else.

Life could come from non-life via molecules such as RNA strands or something similar, which, since they can self-replicate, can undergo the process of evolution and selection.

How can mind come from brain? I'm not sure how you define the word "mind" but I assume you mean consciousness. I believe that consciousness is an illusion resulting from electrical impulses in our material brain.

Our moral senses likely arose as a by-product of our evolutionary history.

These explanations, I believe, are plausible. The details are being fleshed out more and more each day by scientists and experts the world over. The amount of evidence for the truth of these ideas is growing. And they require no god or supernatural elements to work.

It should also be pointed out that theists certainly cannot answer these questions any better than I can, at least not beyond "God did it", which explains nothing at all.

Irrespective of one’s worldview, many experience periods of doubt. Do you ever doubt your atheism and, if so, what is it about theism or Christianity that is most troubling to your atheism?

I honestly never, ever doubt my disbelief in any of the organized religions, or of the concept of a personal or intervening god.

Why is something here rather than nothing here? Clearly, the physical universe is not eternal (Second Law of Thermodynamics, Big Bang cosmology). Either everything came from something outside the material universe, or everything came from nothing (Law of Excluded Middle). Which of those two is the most reasonable alternative? As an atheist, you seem to have opted for the latter. Why?

This question seems to be built on several unfounded assumptions. The idea that "the physical universe is not eternal" is not "clear" to me. Then, "everything came from outside the universe" or "everything came from nothing"? These are not the only options. How about "everything was always here, in some form of other"? The big bang theory does not refute this, and if something had to have always existed, it might as well be the universe than God. And an atheist is a person lacking belief in a god. The descriptor "atheist" says nothing about a persons belief regarding the origins of the universe any more than about their taste in music.

If our cognitive faculties were selected for survival, not for truth, then how can we have any confidence, for example, that our beliefs about the reality of physical objects are true or that naturalism itself is true?

Much of this question can be discarded. It boils down to "How can we believe in anything?". This question should be more unsettling to the theist than the atheist. The answer is that, philosophically, we can never be certain about anything, but we can test ideas by repeat measurements, theories, models and verification of predictions. God fails these tests, whereas my hypothesis that "if I drop a brick on my foot, it will hurt" is based on past experience and my knowledge of the world. Science works.

Humanistic Morality

2009-01-27T17:38:00.000-08:00

Humanistic morality is a code of ethics based on the value and quality of human life. It is not derived from absolute engravings on a cosmic stone tablet. Morality is relative to human things like happiness, health, peace, beauty, love, joy, and justice. It is the preferring of those actions and ideas which enhance the human condition over those which threaten it. The Nazis, who were mostly Catholics and Lutherans, were wrong not because they broke an absolute law, but because they desecrated human life. Even though humanistic morality does assert some rights and wrongs relative to the human condition, it is flexible and free to improve. For example, on the one hand it is inconceivable that something like genocide would ever be considered moral, and on the other hand that something like genuine politeness could be considered immoral; but there will always be a middle ground between those extremes for things like birth control, divorce, diet, self defense, or patriotism, which will depend on the situation.

Any morality which is based on an unyielding structure above and beyond humanity is dangerous to human beings. History is filled with examples of what religious "morality" has done to worsen our lot. Whole cities can be gleefully exterminated in God's name. Society's "witches" can be eliminated. Free thought can be suppressed, squelching any hope for progress. (Why else were the Christian-dominated centuries called the "Dark" Ages?) Under Christian morality, anything goes if it furthers God's plan. In place of CS Lewis's Law of Morality, more enlightened people would champion reason and kindness: principles that are pliable and human, not rigid and cold.

Dan Barker

Taken from the article Mere Assertions.

Quote of the Week

2009-01-26T05:45:00.000-08:00

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.

Timothy Jones

Questions About Jesus

2009-01-23T05:35:00.000-08:00

Good Without God

2009-01-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

What would you do if there were no God? Would you commit robbery, rape, and murder, or would you continue being a good and moral person? Either way the question is a debate stopper. If the answer is that you would soon turn to robbery, rape, or murder, then this is a moral indictment of your character, indicating you are not to be trusted because if, for any reason, you were to turn away from your belief in God, your true immoral nature would emerge. If the answer is that you would continue being good and moral, then apparently you can be good without God. QED.

Michael Shermer

From his book, The Science of Good and Evil.

Quote of the Week

2009-01-19T04:17:00.000-08:00

I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.

Isaac Asimov

Science vs. Faith

2009-01-16T18:54:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge:

The Atheist Bus Campaign Update

2009-01-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

I posted a while back about the atheist bus campaign in the UK. It's finally getting underway, and you can read more about it here (thanks Dave). In my previous post I did say that I thought they could have come up with a better slogan for the campaign than the one they chose (There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life). I've posted many a quote on this very site that would be more suitable. Well, it turns out that the campaign will indeed also be using a few other choice quotes:

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.

Emily Dickinson

and:

I do not beieve in a personal God and have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.

Albert Einstein

While I think the scheme is a great idea, I still find these quotes somewhat lacking. Then yesterday I read about the Italian atheist bus campaign. Their slogan (translated to English) reads:

The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that you do not need him.

I love it. It's confident and positive. Hemant Mehta (the Friendly Atheist), however, is of the opinion that the lack of the "probably" qualifier, as seen in the UK slogan, is "intellectually dishonest", since we can't prove absolutely that God doesn't exist. I disagree, since nobody would think to argue the same point about the phrase "Santa Claus does not exist", and God and Santa Claus each have exactly the same amount of evidence for their existence.

Thumbs up to the Italian infidels.

The Things That Really Matter

2009-01-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

Atheism, as I have seen it, isn’t about Darwinism and science and mocking faith, although there are atheists who enjoy pursuing all of these things. It was about recognizing, as religious people do, that our time on the earth is limited. The difference is that atheism realizes that your time on earth is limited, and when it’s over, it is probably really over. Religion gives people something to cling to, and encourages a disregard for this life in its most fervent and conservative believers. The next life is the one that really counts, so it doesn’t matter much if you’re a failure in this one. As long as you’re not a failure to god. If you live in poverty, if your man beats you, if you don’t pick up litter, none of it matters. In atheism, there is no do over. This is it.

Atheism is about making every moment count, and you do that by seeking out and cultivating connections to people, the earth, the universe. I personally think this is why many atheists are so interested in science, for science explains the things that connect us to the universe and to the hummingbird. When you know that this is the only time you have, and that you won’t be able to do it over, it makes you want to spend your energy on the things that really matter - the family, friendships, and pursuits that really enhance your life. If others deem that pursuit petty, it doesn’t matter. It is about doing what feels good, as long as it doesn’t harm another. And there is nothing wrong with it. The only difference in this between an atheist and a religious believer is that the religious believer is made to feel guilty, dirty, and ashamed for doing what feels good, while the atheist is allowed to experience the joy unfettered. You don’t don’t deny yourself because there is no other opportunity. There won’t be a day when you can indulge in sex with eager virgins, or drink all the wine you like, or wear pretty clothes except the days you have today.

Tree Dreamer

Taken from the essay Beautiful Atheism.

Quote of the Week

2009-01-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?

Homer Simpson

The God Simulator

2009-01-09T18:55:00.001-08:00

This has to be the easiest game ever. It's when you play it badly that things start feeling strangely familiar...

Apatheism

2009-01-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

Apatheism is yet another stance on the debate, and one that seems to be commonly held. From Wikipedia:

Apatheism is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief, or lack of belief in a deity. An apatheist is someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. In other words, an apatheist is someone who considers the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to his or her life; nor to human affairs.

Personally, I see Ignosticism as an acceptable position to take regarding the question of the existence of god. After all, each religion defines god in fundamentally different ways. Even the three main "Abrahamic" religions, which I've often been told worship the same deity, have crucial differences in their definitions and claims over who or what this deity actually is.

Apatheism however, as it is defined above, I do not accept as an intellectually tenable position, though I know many individuals who would seem to fit the definition perfectly. Assuming one could avoid an ignostic response by first defining the word "god" (let's assume it's an omniscient, omnipotent being that created the universe and takes an interest in our activities), then the correct answer to the question "Does god exist?" is crucial, and would have an effect on our lives that would be absolutely profound.

If the answer was yes, further questions would immediately arise, most notably "So which religion is the correct one?" and "How can I avoid upsetting such a powerful being?". Given the existence of god, these questions would be of fundamental importance and would utterly dominate our lives (which begs the question "do believers really believe?").

If the answer was no, think how drastically the world as we know it would change, for better or for worse (I would argue for the better). So many aspects of society (and therefore our lives) are built upon the foundations of religion, and to ask "is there a god?" shoots straight to the core of whether or not these aspects are justified.

The existence of god is therefore a vital matter, and, even if the question may never be resolved, to take the apatheist's stance is to admit to indifference to the world and intellectual lethargy.

Ingosticism

2009-01-06T14:39:00.000-08:00

Ignosticism is a lesser known alternative to atheism, agnosticism, theism, etc. From Wikipedia:

Ignosticism is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts. It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God.

The first view is that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition cannot be falsified, the ignostic takes the position that the question of the existence of God is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless.

The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking "What is meant by God?" before proclaiming the original question "Does God exist?" as meaningless.

An ignostic cannot even say whether he/she is a theist or a nontheist until a better definition of theism is put forth.

Quote of the Week

2009-01-05T05:16:00.000-08:00

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

Richard P. Feynman

A Few More Religulous Quotes

2009-01-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

A lot of people have arrived at Atheist Wisdom after googling for "Religulous quotes", so here are a few more of my favourites. First, Bill Maher talking to Father Reginald Foster, a senior Vatican priest:

BM: The date of Jesus’ birth really wasn’t established until 349 AD.

RF: Oh yeah, that’s because… he might have been born on July 3rd. These are all just nice stories, you know.

BM: And that doesn’t bother you either?

RF: Well it bothers me when everyone says “Oh, we have to have midnight mass because Jesus was born at midnight on the 25th”. This is all nonsense.

Later in the movie he chats with Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, a preacher who claims to be a direct descendent of Jesus Christ:

J: Two angels came to me and they told me that the lord of lords and king of kings is coming to anoint you for the ministry tonight.

BM: What form did the angels come in?

J: They were tall and strong. Whatever they told me, I obey. I don’t want to mess with them.

Towards the end of the film Bill visits the Dome of the Rock and talks to Dr Muhammad Hourani:

BM: Women in your culture seem not to be as equal to men as they are in our culture.

MH: (Points to a lone female worshipper on the other side of the room) You see, we have women here. They have a special corner.

And I've posted one last quote from the movie on my other blog.

A Jealous God

2009-01-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

Bill Maher talks to "Jesus" at The Holy Land Experience in the documentary Religulous:

J: No other gods before me, Bill.

BM: But having no other gods before you, that’s not moral. There’s nothing moral about that, it’s just something a jealous god would do.

J: It does say that our god is a jealous god.

BM: But your god is jealous? That seems so un-god-like. That god would have such a petty human emotion. I know people who’ve gotten over jealousy.

J: Well there’s two sides of the coin. He’s a jealous god, and he’s also a merciful god.

BM: No, he spends the first five books of the bible wiping out people.

J: Well, that’s what he chose to do. His ways are higher than ours, Bill!

BM: Maybe our thinking should be higher.

J: That’s a good point.

A Sign from Athe?

2008-12-31T09:55:00.001-08:00

The little counter at the bottom of this page just clicked over from 2008 to 2009, on today of all days. I take this as a sign from Athe that she is pleased with the blog.

Westboro Baptist Church: Incredibly Biblical

2008-12-30T08:16:00.000-08:00

I don't know what possessed me to take a look through the Westboro Baptist Church's picketing schedule, and I don't really feel like rationalizing, but I looked over it and, as I expected, they plan to picket the inauguration of President-Elect Obama.

Frankly, I think most people get the message: God hates everything! Fags are bad, dead soldiers are good, and blah, blah, blah.

Still, there is something that makes me curious about their message, because the more I read into it, the more I realize that the notions that they are talking about are incredibly Biblical. I mean, they take care of all of their source citations and, when I do the references, everything is in context (though absurd and undesirable, and ignorant of some important passages).

It seems that while having the positions of the WBC is not the only result of a Biblical interpretation, the position is a rational one if the literalist worldview is espoused.

At least most Christians are self conscious and aware of the inanity of their beliefs.

Joshua Stein

From Josh's blog.

Quote of the Week

2008-12-29T06:28:00.001-08:00

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

Chapman Cohen

Grow up. Or die.

2008-12-28T13:48:00.000-08:00

The final minutes of the documentary Religulous:

Quote of the Week

2008-12-22T05:35:00.000-08:00

The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.

Voltaire

How Can An Atheist Enjoy Christmas?

2008-12-20T09:16:00.001-08:00

Apparently most Christmas traditions are borrowed from earlier pagan religions. This makes sense, since early humans must have watched anxiously as the winter sun slipped lower and lower toward the horizon. What if it just kept going and never came back? I'm fairly certain the first human inhabitants of, say, Sweden, during their first frigid winter, were certain that was precisely what was happening. Bye-bye sun. Bye-bye life. Looks like we blew it by heading north.

So the joy that resulted from the sun's gradual ascent, after such a worrying dark period, must have been close to ecstasy! (Accompanied, perhaps, by a bit of resentment toward the sun for pulling such a cruel stunt every year!) It also follows then that a celebration would definitely be called for. We're talking party time! Evergreen trees, berries, anything that did not seem to "die" every winter, would be an integral part of any such celebration. Evergreens represent, in a way, everlasting life. So decorate them, dance around them, sing, and party hearty! Enter Christmas.

The overlapping, nearly identical symbolism shared by the rebirth of the sun, and the birth of the "Son," scream out for recognition. Add to that the date of the winter solstice, usually around December 22, and the fact that the most influential god around the Mediterranean when Jesus was supposedly born, Mithra, had his Holy Day on December 25, and "Christmas" is defined. If there was a historical Jesus, no one has a clue when he was born. But it most assuredly was not on December 25.

Moving on then, what's wrong with non-theists co-opting Christmas, just as Christianity co-opted Mithra's birthday? I, for one, am always delighted to see the sun begin its climb in the sky every December. I hate those short, gloomy days when it's already dark long before dinnertime. And while my childhood was unmistakably saturated by my Christian faith, I was also a normal kid. To an eight-year-old looking at a Christmas tree poised over a cornucopia of beautifully wrapped presents, Jesus could come or go—who cared? There was so much fun to be had at Christmas!

Judith Hayes

Taken from the article An Atheist Christmas by Judith Hayes, a.k.a. The Happy Heretic.

Dawkins on CBS

2008-12-19T08:34:00.001-08:00

Dawkins is on form here, though the interviewer hardly poses any difficult challenges:

Via atheist media blog.

God: Christmas Trees are for Heathens

2008-12-17T06:05:00.000-08:00

Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

Jeremiah 10:2-4

Quote of the Week

2008-12-15T06:12:00.000-08:00

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Frank Lloyd Wright

The Atheist Commandment

2008-12-11T06:00:00.001-08:00

Quote of the Week

2008-12-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

An organization that requires the suppression of facts and the discouragement of knowledge in order to maintain its supremacy, is the relic of a tyranny which our free age and our free thought are in duty bound to remove from the earth.

Lemuel K Washburn

Crisis of Faith?

2008-12-08T05:13:00.000-08:00

I've been talking to a lot of my religious friends who think that I am going through a "crisis of faith", even though I've been an atheist for years now, and I'm getting more than a little annoyed by it.

A crisis of faith implies that I am struggling, that I am depressed, that I, in some way, anguish to be wrong over the issue.

There are plenty of atheists who see their disbelief as problematic, and wish that they might be proven wrong. I am not one of those disappointed atheists, not because I think that religion is a terrible, viral infection (though I think that).

I am happy that I don't believe, because I think the world is beautiful in its simplicity, in its independence, and in the processes that drive it. Evolution epitomizes elegance, just as physics and mathematics lay a foundation for understanding the universe.

The continuity of the learning process, the ability to expand my consciousness through observation, through research and through reading is fascinating to me, and it opens up a philosophy of living that cannot exist in a world where god is recognized as sovereign, and ignorance is a blessing.

Atheism is the enlightened notion that it is possible for me to live for myself.

A theist may claim to see the face of god in a flower. I do not.

I see petals and stem and stamen and pistol, but what's more I see the work of an incredible process, and the simplicity, the elegance, of the processes that govern my universe. I see the beauty of particles forged in the center of stars in the dew on its leaf, in the flesh of its petal and the weight of my palm.

It is my disbelief that allows me to see, clearly, that I am in solidarity with the universe.

Joshua Stein

Joshua posted this recently on his blog. Great stuff.

The God of the Gaps

2008-12-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

Not everything has been explained, nor will it ever be. The important thing is that we have not observed anything that seems to require supernatural intervention for its explanation. There are some today who cling to the remaining gaps in our understanding (such as our ignorance about the origin of life) as evidence for God. But as time passes and more and more of these gaps are filled in, their position gives an impression of people desperately holding on to outmoded opinions.

The problem for religious belief is not just that science has explained a lot of odds and ends about the world. There is a second source of tension: that these explanations have cast increasing doubt on the special role of man, as an actor created by God to play a starring part in a great cosmic drama of sin and salvation. We have had to accept that our home, the earth, is just another planet circling the sun; our sun is just one of a hundred billion stars in a galaxy that is just one of billions of visible galaxies; and it may be that the whole expanding cloud of galaxies is just a small part of a much larger multiverse, most of whose parts are utterly inhospitable to life. As Richard Feynman has said, "The theory that it's all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate."

Most important so far has been the discovery by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace that humans arose from earlier animals through natural selection acting on random heritable variations, with no need for a divine plan to explain the advent of humanity. This discovery led some, including Darwin, to lose their faith. It's not surprising that of all the discoveries of science, this is the one that continues most to disturb religious conservatives. I can imagine how disturbed they will feel in the future, when at last scientists learn how to understand human behavior in terms of the chemistry and physics of the brain, and nothing is left that needs to be explained by our having an immaterial soul.

Steven Weinberg

Taken from his article Without God.

Atheist Communities

2008-12-02T15:08:00.000-08:00

I just posted about a small victory for reason in the evolution vs. creationism war on my other blog, and it got me thinking. You've probably heard the quote "organizing atheists is like herding cats". Richard Dawkins has a good response to this:

Even if they can't be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored.

Cincinnati Zoo's change of heart about hopping into bed with the Creation Museum after a number of complaints, many from readers of PZ Myer's Pharyngula, is proof that Dawkins is really onto something, and is an excellent example of what can be achieved with a little organization. Many others have realized this, and atheist communities are starting to spring up and grow (several of them are linked on the right). I'm a member of two at the moment, The Brights (a "constituency of individuals who share a naturalistic worldview"), and Atheist Nexus (an atheist myspace/facebook). Joining these communities is a quick and simple way to make a lot of noise. They are a good way of meeting like-minded people, keeping up to date on relevant issues, raising money for worthwhile causes and just generally helping to give atheists more of a presence in the world. Have a think about joining one today.

Quote of the Week

2008-12-01T05:48:00.000-08:00

Maybe a President that didn't believe our soldiers were going to heaven would be less willing to get them killed.

Bill Maher

Reason's Greetings: Atheist Christmas Cards

2008-11-26T05:10:00.000-08:00

It's nearly December, and time to start thinking about mailing out those cards. Here are some you might like to send this year. Click the images for links:

Quote of the Week

2008-11-24T05:29:00.000-08:00

Arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there would be no religious people.

Gregory House MD

Brian's Shoe

2008-11-19T07:30:00.000-08:00

This is my favourite part of the movie The Life of Brian. It shows how quickly religions can arise... and divide:

Quote of the Week

2008-11-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them — although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That’s much more like the priesthood as I know it.

Christopher Hitchens

There Is No God

2008-11-12T16:21:00.000-08:00

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Penn Jillette

An excerpt from this article.

Quote of the Week

2008-11-10T05:10:00.000-08:00

If ignorance of Nature gave birth to gods, then knowledge of Nature is calculated to destroy them.

Baron d'Holbach

An Encouraging Election Result

2008-11-08T15:09:00.000-08:00

Democrat Pete Stark, the only openly atheist member of US Congress, was re-elected as California state representative, winning 76 % of the votes in his district. From secular.org:

Polls have shown that Americans without a god-belief are, as a group, more distrusted than any other minority in America, and that most Americans would not vote for an atheist for president even if he or she were the most qualified for the office. At the same time, however, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2008 saw a "small but significant" increase in the number of Americans who say they are "uncomfortable when they hear politicians talk about how religious they are."

"This year, we saw an incumbent U.S. Senator not only defeated but roundly criticized after trying to paint her opponent as godless; and now we see an openly godless member of the House handily re-elected," said Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition for America. "This looks to us like progress, and we praise Rep. Stark for his courage and leadership."

Freethought Books for Prisoners

2008-11-06T05:17:00.000-08:00

Leslie Zukor runs the Freethought Books Project, which has been "donating secular & freethinking literature to inmates, mental hospitals, and others in need since 2005". This is a terrific scheme, especially given the following statistics:

US Population that is Atheist/Agnostic: 14%

US Prison Population that is Atheist/Agnostic: 0.21%

Why not send Leslie that old copy of The God Delusion you've got lying around?

Quote of the Week

2008-11-03T05:20:00.000-08:00

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson

How to Deal with Fundamentalists

2008-10-31T05:46:00.000-07:00

If your goal is to simply counter them and let them know there are happy, informed nonbelievers in the world, then that is easy. Just be yourself, say what you think, and don’t worry if they change their minds. Be relaxed about it. You are not the one with the problem and you can’t solve everyone else’s problems. If you try too hard to change their mind, it can make you look uneasy, like you are “protesting too much,” which they most certainly will take as a sign of insecurity. It can also validate their “war” (as the hymn says, “Onward, Christian Soldiers”), hardening their resolve.

If your goal, however, is to convert them, then you have a lot of work to do. Well, actually, we can’t “convert” anyone. We all have to come to our own conclusions. If you were raised religious, like me, you know that your de-conversion came from inside, not from an atheist evangelist. But still, some of us atheists and agnostics do feel a need, or responsibility, to champion reason, science, and kindness, and would like to improve the world by persuading others to abandon superstition and dogma.

Dan Barker

Taken from this article.

Quote of the Week

2008-10-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

Agnostics are just atheists without balls.

Stephen Colbert

Why I Don't Believe In God

2008-10-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

My journey to atheism began as I studied science. I gradually traveled from young earth creationism to old earth creationism to theistic evolution to atheistic evolution. Evolution elegantly refuted my belief that design required a designer. I also realized the probability of an “infinitely complex” God was inherently more improbable than any other cosmological solution, because something infinitely complex is infinitely improbable.

I studied the history of the Bible. Eventually I acknowledged its messy history, contradictions, horrors and absurdities. It had no more evidence of being from God than any other holy book. Without blind belief in the Bible, there was no evidence for the supernatural claims of Christianity. Furthermore, I realized that miraculous claims were always based on anecdote. There was never any evidence, only tall tales.

Long ago, man, in his ignorance, created gods to make sense of the world. Then, when that failed, man created science. Science has been the most successful way of discovering truth ever invented. For example, we no longer have to pray for the sick or exorcise demons - we heal with medicine. Science has, in every way, proven far more effective than religion.

God is no longer necessary, and I say good riddance.

Daniel Florien

Daniel is an ex-evangelical Christian who now runs one of the top atheist blogs Unreasonable Faith.

The Atheist Bus Campaign

2008-10-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

You may have heard about an advertising campaign intending to put atheist slogans on buses in the UK. The scheme started today, and is funded by donations to the British Humanist Association. The organizers had hoped to raise £5,500 to pay for the adverts. At the time of writing the total money raised stands at a whopping £49,700. It's great that so many people are showing their support for this. The slogan that will appear on the buses is:

There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

I think they can come up with something better than this (perhaps one of the many atheist quotes found here and elsewhere would do), but it's a start, and should get people talking at least. In the words of Richard Dawkins:

This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think – and thinking is anathema to religion.

Quote of the Week

2008-10-20T05:35:00.000-07:00

Monism - too much emphasis cannot be placed upon this truth - admits of no breaks, allows for no interference, no guidance, no special providence. From star mist to planet, on through protoplasm to man, it asserts the existence of an unbroken sequence. If there are any gaps, they are in our knowledge, not in the things themselves.

Chapman Cohen

Thanks to Josh Stein for suggesting this quote.

Do Believers Really Believe?

2008-10-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

All Christians fail to act on their avowed beliefs. Suppose you believed that Heaven exists and that only some of us will qualify to live in it for ever, as the vast majority of Christians claim to. How would this affect your behaviour?

It would depend on what you thought were the admission criteria for Heaven. But whatever you took these virtues to be, they would utterly dominate your life. When everlasting bliss is on offer, nothing else matters at all. People who believed in Heaven would surely act quite unlike those who do not.

Yet the expected behavioural difference is not to be observed. The vast majority of Christians display a remarkably blasé attitude toward their approaching day of judgment, leading lives almost indistinguishable from those of us open non-believers. Put simply, they fail the behavioural test for belief.

Jamie Whyte

An excerpt from this article.

Religulous

2008-10-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

This movie has been out for a few days now and reviews are mostly positive. I'm hopefully going to see it later this week, and maybe I'll post a mini-review. In the meantime, you can watch the trailer by clicking on the poster on the right, and here are the creators Bill Maher and Larry Charles talking about the film:

Quote of the Week

2008-10-06T06:03:00.001-07:00

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.

Sigmund Freud

Bertrand Russell's Wisdom III: Christ's Moral Character

2008-10-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation.

Bertrand Russell

From his article Why I Am Not A Christian.

What Does The Bible Tell Us?

2008-10-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Look at the bible as a pastiche, a collection of mutually and often internally inconsistent fragments slapped together for crude reasons of politics and art and priestly self-promotion and sometimes beauty and a lot of chest-thumping tribalism, and through that lens, it makes a lot of sense. It does tell us something important…about us, not some fantastic mythological being. It tells us that we are fractious, arrogant, scrappy people who sometimes accomplish great things and more often cause grief and pain to one another. We want to be special in a universe that is uncaring and cold, and in which the nature of our existence is a transient flicker, so we invent these strange stories of grand beginnings, like every orphan dreaming that they are the children of kings who will one day ride up on a white horse and take them away to a beautiful palace and a rich and healthy family that will love them forever. We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned.

PZ Myers

From his Pharyngula post Theology is a Deceitful Strategy.

Quote of the Week

2008-09-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest - and as scientists honesty is our precise duty - we cannot help but admit that any religion is a pack of false statements, deprived of any real foundation. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination... I do not recognize any religious myth, at least because they contradict one another...

Paul Dirac

Why Are There No Atheist Churches?

2008-09-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

That’s our strength. We don’t need support groups. When I meet someone in Georgia, or Manila, or Calcutta who thinks like me, it takes a few minutes of conversation before we understand each other. We know there are millions of us all over the world. It’s an easy handshake of recognition. We don’t think “OK, now we have to get together every seven days, or twice a day, to shout and holler just to reassure ourselves that we still believe it.” We don’t need that. It can be believed without effort, without fanaticism. It’s an understanding, and it’s based on reason, and literature, and to some extent irony, and a little humor, and culture.

The fact that religion keeps having to pump people up at mass rallies is a sign of its weakness. It needs constant reinforcement, and would crumble without it.

Christopher Hitchens

Taken from this interview.

My God is a Little God

2008-09-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed?' Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way'.

Carl Sagan

Quote of the Week

2008-09-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

Doubting Thomas – the patron saint of scientists.

Richard Dawkins

Bertrand Russell's Wisdom II: The Argument from Design

2008-09-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

Since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.

When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?

Bertrand Russell

From his article Why I Am Not A Christian.

Edward Current's Wisdom

2008-09-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Time for a little humour. Edward Current is one of the more prolific religious satirists on YouTube, and this is just one of many videos he's made that could so easily be mistaken for the real deal (see Poe's Law):

Quote of the Week

2008-09-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Mark Twain

Hitler and Atheism?

2008-09-12T07:40:00.001-07:00

Even if Hitler was an atheist, so what? Hitler was also a vegetarian. Does that suggest that vegetarians have a special tendency to be murderous, bigoted racists?

The point is that there is a logical pathway leading from religion to the committing of atrocities. It’s perfectly logical: if you believe that your religion is the right one, you believe that your god is the only god and you believe that your god has ordered you through a priest, or through a holy book, to kill somebody, to blow somebody up, to fly a plane into a skyscraper, then you are doing a righteous act. You’re a good person. You’re following your religious morality.

There is no such logical pathway leading from atheism, or secularism, to any such atrocious act. It just doesn’t follow.

Richard Dawkins

Bertrand Russell's Wisdom I: The First Cause Argument

2008-09-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.

Bertrant Russell

From his article Why I Am Not A Christian.

Quote of the Week

2008-09-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

The best thing about religion is that it’s so transparently absurd it can’t possibly last forever. I’m convinced it will only take a small shift in human consciousness for it to be laughed off the planet, and I hope I’m still around when that happens.

Pat Condell

Atheist Spirituality

2008-09-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond ourselves. There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality — art, for example. Consider the 1889 impressionist painting The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. It is a magnificent swirl of dark and light, punctuated by stars, with the sky and land delineated by horizon, and the infinite vastness of space hovering over humanity’s tiny abode.

The Starry Night is awe-inspiring art, but it is the product of centuries of scientific discovery, coming after Nicolaus Copernicus displaced us from the center of the cosmos; after Johannes Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion; after Galileo Galilei discovered the moons of Jupiter, mountains on the moon, and sunspots; after Isaac Newton united celestial and terrestrial physics; and after Charles Darwin put us in our proper place in nature’s ancestry. No one, especially an emotionally volatile impressionist painter like Van Gogh, could look up at the night sky and not be daunted by the vastness of the minuscule portion of the galaxy we can observe from Earth (about 2,500 out of the approximately 100 billion stars in the Milky Way).

Van Gogh painted the conflict between body and soul, between objective and subjective, and between outer and inner experiences. As he told his brother Theo: “I retain from nature a certain sequence and a certain correctness in placing my tones. I study nature so as not to do foolish things — however, I don’t mind so much whether my color corresponds exactly, as long as it looks beautiful on the canvas.” In fact, Van Gogh described The Starry Night to his brother “as an attempt to reach a religious viewpoint without God.” Read spiritual for religious.

As magical as The Starry Night is, Van Gogh painted it decades before astronomer Edwin Hubble expanded our universe by orders of magnitude through his observations from the 100-inch telescope atop Mount Wilson in Southern California. On October 6, 1923, Hubble first realized that the fuzzy patches he was observing were not “nebulae” within the Milky Way galaxy, but were, in fact, separate galaxies, and that the universe is bigger than anyone imagined. He subsequently discovered through this same telescope that those galaxies are all red-shifted — their light is receding from us, and thus stretched toward the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum — meaning that all galaxies are expanding away from one another, the result of a spectacular explosion that marked the birth of the universe. It was the first empirical data indicating that the universe has a beginning, and thus is not eternal. What could be more awe-inspiring — more numinous, magical, spiritual — than this cosmic visage? Darwin and the geologists gave us deep time. Hubble and the astronomers gave us deep space.

Michael Shermer

An excerpt from Shermer's article Why I Am An Atheist.

Quote of the Week

2008-09-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge... it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Charles Darwin

An Ancient Superstition

2008-08-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

Religious belief is humankind's earliest science. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are young religions in historical terms, and came into existence after kings and emperors had more magnificently taken the place of tribal chiefs. The new religions therefore modelled their respective deities on kings with absolute powers.

But for tens of thousands of years beforehand people were fundamentally animistic, explaining the natural world by imputing agency to things - spirits or gods in the wind, in the thunder, in the rivers and sea.

As knowledge replaced these naiveties, so deities became more invisible, receding to mountain tops and then to the sky or the earth's depths. One can easily see how it was in the interests of priesthoods, most of which were hereditary, to keep these myths alive.

With such a view of religion - as ancient superstition, as a primitive form of explanation of the world sophisticated into mythology - it is hard for non-religious folk to take it seriously, and equally hard for them to accept the claim of religious folk to a disproportionate say in running society.

AC Grayling

An excerpt from the article Believers Are Away With The Fairies by AC Grayling.

Atheism Pamphlets

2008-08-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Cyberguy has some atheism pamphlets available to download. They're a little lacking in artistic flair at the moment, but they're a great idea. Next time those Jehovah's witnesses come knocking you can give them one, you never know, it might make them stop and think. Hopefully Cyberguy and others will work to improve these, and let's get them out there...

Quote of the Week

2008-08-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

I shall not waste any time on fashionable claims that science is just the white, western, patriarchal view of truth. Science works. That is why when you go to an international conference on cultural relativism, you go by Boeing 747 rather than by magic carpet.

Richard Dawkins

The Wisdom of Dougal McGuire

2008-08-22T19:37:00.001-07:00

Quote of the Week

2008-08-20T14:39:00.001-07:00

Which is more likely: That the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?

David Hume

Sir David Attenborough On Religion

2008-08-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

In this short interview clip, Sir David Attenborough discusses his views on religion and God after a life-long career spent studying the natural world:

The Future Is Not Fixed

2008-08-14T05:14:00.000-07:00

We have no reason to believe that there are dates inscribed in heaven or hell. We may yet destroy ourselves; we might scrape through. Confronting that uncertainty is the obligation of our maturity and our only spur to wise action. The believers should know in their hearts by now that, even if they are right and there actually is a benign and watchful personal God, he is, as all the daily tragedies, all the dead children attest, a reluctant intervener. The rest of us, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, know that it is highly improbable that there is anyone up there at all. Either way, in this case it hardly matters who is wrong - there will be no one to save us but ourselves.

Ian McEwan

An excerpt from Ian McEwan's article about scriptural prophecy The Day of Judgment.

Quote of the Week

2008-08-11T05:29:00.000-07:00

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

H.L. Mencken

Evolution as Evidence Against Christianity

2008-08-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

The most devastating thing, though, that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people, the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin, there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation, there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.

Frank Zindler

Quote of the Week

2008-08-04T06:29:00.000-07:00

Without a doubt, humans and civilization are in sore need of the intellectual cleanness and mental health of Atheism.

G. Richard Bozarth

The God Poll

2008-08-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

Vote!

A Little Religious Wisdom?

2008-08-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

Happy is he who has found wisdom,
and the man who has acquired understanding.
For wisdom is more profitable than silver,
and the gain she brings is better than gold.
She is more precious than red coral,
and all your jewels are no match for her.
Long life is in her right hand,
in her left hand are riches and honour.

Proverbs 3:13-16

I think this passage sits well alongside the following quote:

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Quote of the Week

2008-07-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Christopher Hitchens

Demanding Irrationality

2008-07-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

This imperviousness to reason is, I think, the property that we should most fear in religion. Other institutions or traditions may encourage a certain amount of irrationality - think of the wild abandon that is often appreciated in sports or art - but only religion demands it as a sacred duty. This might not matter if the activities that composed religion were somewhat insulated from the rest of the world the way they are in sports and art. Then we could treat religious allegiances the way we treat differences in taste: if you have a taste for kick boxing or heavy metal bands, that's your business. Knock yourself out, as we say, it's only a game. Not so with religion. Its arena includes not just the participants but all of life on the planet. Given that, it's troubling to note how avidly some people engage in deliberate make-believe in order to execute the prescribed duties.

The better is enemy of the best: religion may make many people better, but it is preventing them from being as good as they could be. If only we could transfer all that respect, loyalty and intense devotion from an imaginary being - God - to something real: the wonderful world of goodness we and our ancestors have made, and of which we are now the stewards.

Daniel Dennet

The full article can be read at The Guardian.

Quote of the Week

2008-07-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence that whatever religion you are brought up in always turns out to be the right one?

Richard Dawkins

The Atheist Blogroll

2008-07-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

Atheist Wisdom has now been added to The Atheist Blogroll, and I've added a link to this on the right. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to add your blog to the list, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

Reasons to Become an Atheist

2008-07-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

Top ten reasons here. Number one is great:

1. No Christians after the Rapture! This is assuming that they are right, which is completely unlikely. But even so, could an atheist imagine a better world than one in which all the 'true believers' were suddenly whisked away to free the world of religious division and hatred and allow mankind to put our effort into improving the real world and this life for a change!

This page also offers some pretty convincing arguments. A couple of my favourites:

...you'll save money on funerals because you now know there's no point in getting all dressed up, since there's no place to go!

...you'll get to finally think for yourself, according to a recent scientific journal.

In truth no reasons are necessary to be an atheist (though they do exist!). Atheism is a default position, we are all born as atheists, starting out in life without any belief in deities. The burden of proof lays with the theists, it is they who must persuade us of the existence of their god and the validity of their religion.

Quote of the Week

2008-07-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Ten Myths About Atheism

2008-07-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

TranceDevotee's YouTube video, based on an article by Sam Harris:

Quote of the Week

2008-07-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

George Bernard Shaw

Dawkins on Darwin

2008-07-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

On the 150th anniversary of the theory of evolution by natural selection, here is a video of Richard Dawkins being interviewed about Charles Darwin. The video also features some clips from a new three-part documentary about Darwin, which will be shown on Channel 4 in the UK later this year:

Dawkins on Darwin

Quote of the Week

2008-06-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

Unknown