Can you imagine a world in which ALL the religious behaved as if they believed all the crazy shit they claim to?
The Thinking Atheist gives us a small taste of what that might be like.
Monthly Archives: July 2011
Morality 2: Not-so-good books by QualiaSoup
To date, one of the best atheist videos on morality I have seen on Youtube.
Pat Condell on the massacre in Norway
One of the best commentaries I’ve heard to date from any atheist on the massacre in Norway.
explaining atheism
I recently had a commenter on another blog ask me what atheists believed:
“Godless Monster, you don’t believe in the occult? That’s consistent, but I don’t know what atheists believe and don’t believe.”
At first I was a little surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. I have long realized that many (most?) people have a false impression or understanding of what atheism is. In fact, so many of the nasty notions that people have about atheists can be attributed to them not understanding what atheism is in the first place.
I gave the gentleman a short and long answer and hopefully that will have broadened his horizons just a tad. I’m not inclined to be patient when confronted with willful ignorance, but sometimes I’m too quick to label simple ignorance as willful ignorance and end up slamming the door on an opportunity to teach others about rational thought and secularism. I’ve tried to be more mindful of the fact that I was once ignorant of what atheism is and just as important…isn’t.
If a religious person asked you how you’d explain atheism would you take the time to teach them? If not why? If so, how? What would you tell them?
to be or not to be…an atheist
A post on Atheist Revolution touches on the subject of choice and atheism. Specifically, vjack asserts (correctly) that atheism is not a choice.
Still, choice is an important factor in the process that leads to atheism. At some point in the lives of those who are free-thinkers, we made a choice – a choice to follow where the evidence takes us and not where emotion may lead. A choice was made to embrace reality as we interpreted it or understood it through evidence. Once we committed to reality, atheism was inevitable. At that point, it cannot be a choice. It just IS.
The religious faced the same dilemma we did and took another path. The easy path, the path of least resistance and good intentions. But, as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, “L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs” (hell is full of good wishes and desires).
To make a conscious decision to forgo reality is to knowingly squander the good fortune that has been bestowed on each and every one of us. That we are alive at all is testament to the fact that we have won the genetic lottery and are the benefactors of billions of years of evolution. Each and every one of us are the end result of the living, struggling, suffering and dying of an untold number of organisms. By denying reality, the religious deny the contributions of our ancestors, and through the commission of that misdeed they contribute to the unnecessary emotional and intellectual crippling of their descendants.
If for no other reason than this, there is a stench of evil about religion, even at its most benign.
Here we go again…
It seems that anytime someone who claims to be (or is) a Christian commits a violent crime, a sizable number of atheists go into a stereotypical default mode of whining about how Christians and Christianity is no different from Islam and that they both present an identical threat to civilization. This not only shows a complete lack of imagination, it also betrays an astounding ignorance of current events, world history and religion.
In regards to the massacre of scores of innocents in Norway, I must say that it is far too early to state unequivocally if the crimes were motivated by religion at all. The evidence at this time points to political hatred, perhaps tinged by racism as well. One commenter on another atheist blog made a comment about how the mainstream media was going to ignore that fact that the subject in custody was a Christian and:
This just shows the only real difference between a muslim and christian terrorist is that most muslims die in the attack.
My response to his comment:
I agree with your assessment that his religion will be downplayed, but I don’t have an issue with that due to the fact that there are fundamental differences between Christianity of the last few hundred years and Islam.
Christianity was influenced heavily by the Enlightenment in regards to some values and Islam…was not…at all.
The type of behavior exhibited by this individual in Norway is atypical and is not in line with any teachings by any sects or sub-sects of Christianity.
Islam is a different story. I was raised both Christian and Muslim and there are indeed notable differences. Fascism and Communism are both destructive ideologies, but they are indeed different. I despise them both, but for different reasons. It’s a mistake to not understand the enemy and what makes them tick. If we don’t have a handle on that, we’ll continue to set up straw men to knock down and eventually be caught completely unaware when the time comes to confront and effectively deal with them.
As far as the left-handed compliment about most Muslims dying in their attacks, please understand that a sizable number of the Muslims dying are the mentally ill, young, and socially disenfranchised. They are manipulated by those in power to commit these acts. These attacks are often organized by sizable established groups or by independent cells inspired and sometimes trained or funded by larger groups. They also usually blend into their communities and do not conduct themselves in ways that are considered as socially unacceptable. Terrorist attacks by Christians are exclusively (to date), committed by lone individuals, or extremely small fringe groups that operate well outside the local religious and social norms.
There are frequent accusations of sexism, racism and religiously motivated behavior coming from the far-left in the atheist community. It’s pretty much a cottage industry for these folks. The asisnine elevator incident comes to mind.
For a community that allegedly prides itself on adhering to evidence and facts to arrive at conclusions, it seems many are woefully lacking in this area when it comes to challenging ideas or notions that do not fit in with the Weltanschauung of the extreme left.
I’m back
After numerous false starts and threats to reenter the wonderful world of atheist blogging, I’m finally ready to get back into the fray.
I’ve been given a clean bill of health by several doctors over the last year. It turns out that all of my symptoms were stress related and that the stress was job related – more specifically, snot-faced-son-of-the-owner related.
To remedy that problem, I left the employ of the people who I made into millionaires in May of this year and started my own business. The stress level is still high, but it’s the good kind of stress, and I’ve never been happier.
As far as the number of posts I’ll be writing, let’s just say that I don’t want to sacrifice quality for quantity. Two to three posts a week wouldn’t be out of the realm of probability, but daily just isn’t going to happen, at least not for the short-term.
I look forward to interacting with my blog friends and listening to what you have to say.
See you in the trenches!
TGM
