A letter to my personal physician

When I told you I was an atheist your first reaction was: ‘You can’t be!’  Then you went on to assure me that you, personally, could never be an atheist.

This is the sound a mind makes when it is slamming shut.

As a physician you are without a doubt educated and intelligent.  Yet you would have never gotten past pre-med if your first reaction to germ theory was: ‘It isn’t true and I will never believe in it no matter what evidence you can present on the subject!’

If there is a difference between the two, germ theory and existence or non-existence of god, I would argue that it is a matter of degree rather than kind. Belief or disbelief in god because of the ramifications associated with the decision is more important (even though belief in germ theory has done more good in the world) than belief in the germ theory and, therefore, is a subject needing the most study and information about before a decision is made.  Since these are subjects that can be studied with nothing more than a library card giving you access to the current literature and the history of the development of thought over time, they both are constrained by the same requirements for the presentation of evidence, the application of reason, and the limiting effects of probability that would apply to any field of study. 

A word about the limiting effects of probability might be in order at this point.  My first exposure to the various classical 19^th Century and earlier ‘proofs’ of God’s existence...there really hasn’t been anything new of substance added to these arguments in the last century...was in a religious school my parents insisted I attend first before going on to a secular university, a kind of inoculation against truth.  As a part of the curriculum, in spite of my major and at my own expense, I was required to take one religious class a semester.  One of the required religious classes was Proofs of God’s Existence. This class introduced me to 19^th Century arguments without bothering with the counterarguments that were presented at the time and since showing conclusively them to be lacking in internal consistency with spurious conclusions...in a word, false.

Think of it as introducing the Four Humors:  Blood, Phlegm, Choler (Yellow Bile) and Melancholy (Black Bile) as the source of all physical and mental illness in an undergraduate pre-med class as if there had been no advancement in medicine beyond that point.

After studying these 19 Century proofs of God’s existence, without the counterarguments, I saw through the basic problem.  Even if taken as true, which I was unprepared to argue one way or another due to my inoculation and indoctrination, they can only lead to a 50/50, either/or conclusion:

Either God exists and everything is explained by his existence

Or God does not exist and everything is explained without reference to him.

This statement is the basis of Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA, the uneasy truce that existed for a time between science and religion called Non-Overlapping Magisterial Authority, which contends Science and Religion are both true but each addresses a different area of ‘Magisterial Authority’.  Science tells us about the physical world and religion about the spiritual world.  NOMA is falling apart because Christianity is insisting it is both true by Faith and supported by Reason as well. The so-called Militant Atheism (meaning atheists who won’t sit down and shut up) Dawkins, Harris, Hitchins and others is a too-little, too-late reaction on the part of rational men to a direct attack on reason itself by theists.  Carl Sagan, one of the most respected scientists of the 20th Century, would likewise be vilified and attack in our time for his suggestion that it is better to live in an Enlightened World than what he referred to as a:  Demon Haunted World. 

The limiting effects of probability necessitate this attack.  The Theist claim is not just that God exists, nor is the Atheist claim simply that God does not exist.  There is that logically necessary added corollary insisting ‘everything is explained by his existence’ to Theism and that ‘everything is explained without reference to his existence’ to Atheism.

People are fond of saying in reference to and defense of religion, that some things are intangible.  Intangible’s root meaning is ‘incapable of being perceived by touch,’ which is true of gods and unicorns alike and is a statement with which I would have no trouble agreeing.  Obviously, you meant more and the dictionary goes on to give the word’s usage as a noun:  ‘Any incorporeal asset or benefit, as a trademark, franchise or good will.’ I’ve got no problem using this word as a descriptive of god (and it does exclude those unicorns from the conversation).  I would be more than happy to talk of god as an incorporeal asset or benefit.  My only objection would be the use of the word ‘intangible’ to refer to an actual, existing being of which the user is not obligated to and is even condemned outright for countenancing any rational proof for the non-existence of.’ We already have a word for that.  It’s called faith.

Getting back to probability and how it is the cause of the Christian assault on reason in the 20^th and early 21^st Centuries.  Thinking of belief in God as an on/off switch inside our brains that is not constrained by questions of logic, reason, education, but is, rather, thought of in terms of belief in a proposition the results of which will be an eternal existence in Paradise (and a better life in this world, if you take Pascal up on his wager) and the denial of which will result in an eternal existence of torture...torture that is not just an act of the being you are being asked to believe is the epitome of love, but since this being is also  Omniscient and Omnipotent by definition, is the ultimate pain to which a human being could possibly ever be put. If the question is asked in those terms it is literally a ‘no-brainer.’  It is not the question itself, but the intellectual honesty and the moral ethics of a person who puts the question in this manner that needs to be questioned. I would say they know little of either.

But there is no longer a 50/50 probability when it comes to god; there is no on/off switch. Never has been one with reason and the scientific method, they are both open ended, they are a dimmer switch with darkness on one end and an ever-increasing light on the other.  This gets back to the ‘everything is explained by’ or ‘without reference to’ god’s existence.  The more that can be explained without reference to the existence of god, the less valid belief in the existence of god becomes. 

Soren Kierkegaard’s Leap of Faith holds that faith is only applicable once all other logical and reasonable explanations have been exhausted.  This was a tenable position in the 19^th Century coming at the end of the classical philosopher/scientist period...that is to say, when the cognitions of one man were put forward and responded to by others without regard to any real world data or evidence in support of the propositions being discussed.  There seemed to be so much out there we would never know the reason for that a person could easily come to the edge of man’s learning and jump off into the darkness hoping there is a supernatural being there to catch him.  Of course, even in Kierkegaard’s time this wasn’t true, as Darwin and others were rapidly proving.  As it stands now, there is no need of a Leap of Faith. It has become more like stepping over a crack so as not to break your mother’s back.  There is no need for a God to catch you because there is solid footing on both sides of the crack of the as yet unexplained.  The God of the Gaps is becoming thinner and thinner with each new discovery by Enlightened scientists…and is there any other kind?

We have watched, over the last 300 years, a constant flow of ideas that were once explained by reference to god being explained more accurately and completely without the need of a ‘god did it’ conversation stopper.  As a physician, your own profession would simply not exist without the Enlightenment and the move away from god to secular science.  The life expectancy at the beginning of this period and that had held stable the entire time religion aka ‘god’ was in charge remained a fairly constant 30 to 35 years depending on which class of society you belonged.  Ever since the unthroning of god, that rate has increased with every new contribution of the secular mind to this issue...and every new contribution was fought against by the minions of god who would prefer people to suffer and die rather than give up their positions of power and influence.

If you stack up all of the miracles claimed in Christian and Hebrew scripture and subtract the number of murders committed at the hand and commandment of their God you come up with far more people killed than saved.

This line of reasoning leads to the answer of "Why is their Evil in the world?"

Because of God and religion.

God is the source of all Evil in the world.  Religion began as and continues to be a means of convincing God to do his Evil to others and not to you or your family, clan, tribe, city, empire, nation or country.

But even if you generously attribute to God all of the healing done in scripture and claimed in his name down through the course of the history of man one simple fact remains:

The Enlightenment has saved and healed more people than God.

At the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th Century, Christianity was being attacked from without and within.  Darwin explained the existence of human beings without referring to the god hypothesis.  German theologians introduced textual criticism of scripture laying the foundation for the modern historical understanding of the ancient texts.  The attempt by the pope to show how academic research in to the origins and meaning of the texts proves them inerrant and the Catholic Church’s version of history failed miserably when the very scholars he sent to study the problem were convinced by the research and had to be ex-communicated and went on to create Modernism.

The reaction of the church in this country was a direct assault on the people who were humble enough to admit there were others who knew more than they did on the translation of ancient texts and the science of evolution, educated enough to learn and understand these subjects by reading experts in the respective fields, honest enough to accept the truth when they saw it and brave enough to stand against the one true enemy of mankind, not Satan, but ignorance.

The leadership of the church in this country decided to teach and defend ignorance rather than give up their money, power and prestige. They have succeeded. 

This is the status of Christian indoctrination (not education) in this country.   This is why the rest of the world...where the influence of the national religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is looked upon, quite accurately, as an impediment to peace and even the survival of the human race...recognizes no distinction between the three.  They worship the same God; their only quibble being which man was his spokesperson.  This is a God who promises them and urges them towards world conquest. 

Judaism sees its Messianic Future as one in which they and their religion are the sole criteria for and source of all religion and spirituality in the world.  This of course, can only be accomplished by their conquest and retention of the lands promised by their God in ancient texts...texts whose authorship, audience, purpose and date of can only be understood by academics who have devoted their entire life to studying in an objective (read ‘secular’ in Christian agitprop) manner.  The People of the Book (as Islam puts it quite nicely) have gone from Judaism in which the books were a framework for commentary, to Christians who claim they are the actual words of God and (thusly) inerrant and beyond the reach of objective study, and finally, down to Islam and the ultimate desecration of the written word:  the act of killing people for burning the paper upon which it is written. 

Islam’s vision of jihad speaks for itself.  They see, and quite correctly I may add, that it is only through the conquest of the whole world that their religion can be imposed on all people.  This is their goal; this is the reasoning behind their methods.  In their defense, it was the foolishly romantic and biblically inspired stupidity of sending the Jews to Palestine following World War II that started the whole mess. 

Then we have the Christians of this country who believe they are destined to rule a Thousand Year Kingdom on this earth along with Jesus out of the ashes of Jerusalem once they have given Jew and Islam alike the option of conversion or death.  And, yes, I don’t care if your religion doesn’t include such nonsense.  Just as the moderate Islamic clerics who do not speak publicly against the suicide bombers are giving their tacit approval and are just as guilty as the bombers themselves, so the moderate Christian churches...and politicians of all sorts...who fail to call this Thousand Year Kingdom what it is are guilty of crimes against the same crimes against humanity.  A decree that it is God’s will for constant warfare in the Middle East up to and including nuclear confrontation and decry any effort to make peace as the work of Satan and His Antichrist is Evil.  Keeping your mouth shut about it lest you be counted an atheist or because you know it will be political suicide is treachery and cowardice.  The truth is anybody who believes that God has a plan for the Middle East is not fit to hold public office.

You asked me why I didn’t kill myself since I was an atheist. I've heard this question before.  Sometimes it’s ‘why don’t you just rape and kill anyone you want’ or ‘drink yourself to oblivion.’  Obviously, these are not questions; rather they are attacks.  More importantly, they are attacks that tell me about the person asking the question.  This is what they would do if they did not believe in god. 

If the only reason you are alive...or not a drunk or a rapist or a murderer...is because of God and his promises of reward and threats of punishment, then you need to give serious consideration to other ways of thinking on the subject.

My experience has shown me that morality is a separate subject from religion altogether.  Morality is a function of society, what is right or wrong is determined by the history and real world experiences of the culture in which you live.  

Monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are a function of the state.  Judaism as first a client kingdom following the return from Babylon of the priestly and upper castes, then later as the official religion of the state beginning with the Maccobean War against Darius the Madman circa 200 BCE till the destruction of the temple in the first Jewish Revolt.  Christianity began with Constantine’s legalization of the religion in order to win the Battle of Milan Bridge and leading to the ultimate combination of state and religion Catholicism plunging the world into a Dark Age that only Islam brought us out of and re-engaged us with the Greek philosophers banned and burnt by the church. Islam has made no secret of its relationship with the state, of course.  Perhaps it is easier to see in our enemy that which we are blinded to in ourselves, but the treatment of women under Islamic law is direct proof of the difference between morality and religion.  By any possible standard that could be called ‘moral’ Islamic treatment of women is institutionalized barbarity.  

But that’s not the war we’re fighting.  We are, instead, fighting over which state should have control over Jerusalem and, by extension; the world and our religions are dutifully lined up endorsing our politics.  Take Israel, a thriving theocracy that would be the envy of any Islamic nation if the religions were reversed. The refusal to allow people of dissenting religious opinion full citizenship in the country in which they live should preclude Israel from being included in the roster of democracies we call the Free World. And yet, while condemning Islamic theocracies because of their religion, we make an exception for Israel for precisely the same reason:  their religion.  The Holocaust?  How has the establishment of the state of Israel kept this genocide from being repeated?  I contend that only a Second Holocaust can usher in any of the three kingdoms envisioned by Judaism, Islam and Christianity. 

The Holocaust murder 11 million people.  Most Christians and Jews are taught and believe that only 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. 

Who speaks for the Forgotten Five Million?

Shall I talk about the United States? Dare I talk about the United States would be a better way of phrasing the question.  Being openly atheist in this country is political suicide.  On the surface it would appear there are no atheist politicians in the US, though I suspect all politicians are atheists at heart.  You cannot be elected to a position in any form of the government, be it local, state or federal, higher than that of a city counsel member if you are an ‘out of the closet’ atheist.  To put it simply:  in today’s political climate the majority of the Founding Fathers would not be considered fit for public office.

The same holds true in the work place.  In spite of all the emphasis on equal employment, atheists are left unprotected and are subjected to prejudicial hiring and advancement practices that would be decried as illegal if the same were done because of your race.  Personal relationships?  Can you or anyone in this country say with a straight face that admitting your atheism to even your closest loved ones would not irreparably harm your relationships? Even impersonal relationships are minefields for the atheist.  Talking to strangers and casual acquaintances, especially as I do with the intent of convincing the other person of the correctness of my position in the hopes they, too, will become atheists, is physically dangerous in many parts of this country and, without a doubt, in this state. This isn’t morality; this is herd mentality.

Why don’t I kill myself?

There’s a line the dystopian movie The Road about the future of man after the destruction of life on this planet that sums it up nicely.  When Viggo Mortenson asks Robert Duval the same question, with the world dying around them:

“Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

Duval responds:

“I don’t think it is right, in times like these, to ask for luxuries.”

Today I told my doctor I was an atheist

Today I told my doctor I was an atheist

she didn’t take it well

the first words our of her mouth were:

“You can’t be!”

then I asked her if she ever thought

about becoming an atheist

immediately the shutters on her mind

slammed down and she said:

i could never be an atheist

and lets me know there is

absolutely nothing i could say

that would ever convince her

all i wanted her to do

was to seriously think about

why she’s a theist

to not throw up that wall

around your mind

when someone starts

talking about the subject

just to leave it down

then imagine what her life would be

like if she did not believe in god

this is a second generation doctor

who spends time with you and knows you

if i wanted to talk politics

or medicine

or science

or any other subject

in the world

she would be open

to conversation

on an objective basis

without declaring her intention

right up front

to never consider the idea period

this is a physician

educated, literate, intelligent

attractive in emma thompson way

she just was so shocked

not only by the idea

that i was an atheist

but that i would ask her

to consider what her life

would be like

without god looking over

her shoulder all the times

at one point she was

so freaked she actually said to me:

why don’t you just kill yourself

and get it over with

since nothing means

anything anyway

my personal physician,

a woman i hug when i leave

her office

advised me to kill myself

i figured i’d expanded her cranium

enough for one day

so i didn’t say

my life has meaning,

much more now than

when i was a christian

sweating blood over my

own eternal destiny

does anybody think that’s a bit selfish?

children dying around the world

from easily preventable diseases

or malnutrition or being raped

and forced to kill their families

then to kill others

and all Christians

can think to do is save their

own ass from the fire?

bottom line is

i am an atheist

because i am sickened

by what we have done

to the world

and each other

and women

and children

i am an atheist, in part,

because i came to realize

that Christianity

is the only religion ever

to exist solely for the purpose

of denying the teachings

of its founder

God Is the Fear of the Dark

God is the fear of the dark; a paralyzing terror that keeps us hiding in bed beneath the covers too afraid to get up and turn on the light and find out what really made that bumping sound.  You mutter prayers and incantations and, after a while, the darkness becomes familiar and comfortable. 

It is not easy to stay asleep when the light is on.  Once you investigate and discover what made that bumping sound, and there’s always a rational explanation and a material agency with the light on, you can return to bed, turn off the light and sleep soundly and unafraid in the dark with no need of God to hold your hand while you cower beneath the covers.

People who are afraid of things that go bump in the night are called children.

People who turn on the light to see what made the noise are called adults.

Skeptic has become a bad word.  It is used to characterize people as ignorant of the world around them and unwilling to accept anecdotal evidence in their alleged insistence to force the world into a materialistic box.  There was a time when this was not so, a time not so long ago.  There was a time when the opposite of the word skeptic was not open-mindedness to new and faith based belief. 

There was a time when the opposite of the word skeptical was gullible.  Gullibility is the eagerness to believe that pushes aside contradictory evidence in favor of unsubstantiated rumor and, in the case of religion, raises the ability to believe in spite of no evidence at all to a level of virtue higher than that awarded to a person who insists on knowing the truth.  Faith in a demonstrable falsehood is, in the mind of the religious, far better than knowledge.  To the faithful, knowledge has become the enemy.  Knowledge, the search for truth in increments, is shallow comfort to a person used to receiving his information about the world in one lump, and in one book, through revelation from a non-existent being.

The opposite of knowledge is not faith.  The opposite of knowledge is ignorance.

Gaining knowledge is hard work.  It requires reading, not just one, but many books.  It requires education, paying attention in school and doing your homework.  It requires at least an undergraduate degree just to introduce you to the subject and graduate level work if you want to participate in the conversation rather than listen in.  When you are an adult, it requires even more reading done on your own time stolen from obligations to family, work and the community in order stay conversant with the newest literature on a subject.

Ignorance is easier and frees up so much of your spare time for the various entertainments, religion being the foremost, offered by our distraction obsessed culture.  The knowledge is available through the public library system or, if you have the money, Amazon.com.  The only reason for any person to remain ignorant is laziness.

The problem comes when the lazy and ignorant person is confronted with a person who has done the hard work and, therefore, knows more than the ignorant person does.  The ignorant person could, and should, realize his opinion is ill-founded and start doing the hard work necessary so he may gain enough knowledge so he may join in the conversation.  That this does happen shows it is possible; that it happens rarely shows the bond between laziness and ignorance is hard to overcome.

The problem is a matter of pride.  In order to gain knowledge, the first thing that has to go is the idea that your opinion is as good as anyone else’s.  It isn’t.  Admitting there are people who know more than you do on a subject and seeking these people out and learning from them is not only hard work but it is an act of humility.

Alas, ignorance is its own advocate.  When confronted with knowledge that is not to their liking, the last thing the ignorant/lazy want to do is go back to school and learn even more knowledge that will be even more upsetting to their narrow view of the world.  The next to the last thing the ignorant/lazy want to do is admit their opinion isn’t equal or superior to the opinion of the person with knowledge.

The poor, the uneducated, the ignorant and the lazy are drawn to religion because they find a way of salvaging their pride and, more importantly, demonize both knowledge and the educated as the work of Satan.  Each argument is to be treated as a satanic attack on their faith that must be resisted on threat of eternal punishment in Hell.  The person who knows more than do becomes an agent of the Antichrist.  They go from being lazy and ignorant to being morally superior to those people who have worked hard to gain knowledge. 

Religion is the triumph of ignorance over knowledge.

Their God is hiding behind a curtain pulling levers and pushing buttons and hoping nobody will rip the curtain aside and expose him as the fraud he is.

Their God is no longer the fear of the dark children have then leave behind when they grow up.

Their God is the fear of the Light.

Education vs. Indoctrination

Education is the cure for ignorance by introducing you to conflicting information and requiring you to defend your assumptions in the face of cogent evidence to the contrary; indoctrination is learning the doctrine of a group to which you have already given your allegiance.

Education is a lifelong endeavor.  To be educated to the extent possible at any given moment in history is simply not enough.  As knowledge grows; re-education is necessary.  Education is hard work and it hurts.  It does not feel good when cherished assumptions are proven false.  It does not feel good to realize you have been wrong all of your life.  In the face of the hard work needed to learn about then apply newly found knowledge to your life, the lazy person finds ways of avoiding this work.    

Education demands change; indoctrination forbids change.

Indoctrination, especially religious indoctrination, is reinforcing your cherished assumptions.  It isn’t hard; being told you are right and have been right all along is easy.  Change is not required of you since the information you receive is a lump sum, from one book, and is revealed, not learned.  Change is forbidden on the threat of eternal punishment.  How else could it be?  For the believer, change means changing, not his beliefs, but the actual Word of God.

Knowledge is the incremental acquisition of truth through education.  Indoctrination is the suppression and manipulation of truth in defense of a fixed and unchangeable revelation.  Knowledge is on-going and, for all practical purposes, un-ending.  Indoctrination is a one-time inoculation against further knowledge and is fixed in time and space to a particular moment in the existence of a particular group.

That education is superior to indoctrination was once upon a time obvious to all but the ignorant and uneducated.  How did we get to our current situation where the beliefs and opinions of the uneducated are given equal footing with those of the educated? 

Public education enforced by law is necessary for a cohesive society.  Children must be taught to think; not what to think.  They must be educated to live in the world as it is, not as it was and most certainly not as a radical, anarchistic movement would have it to be.  When the ignorant are allowed to remove their children from the public education system they are not simply giving them a different sort of education, they are denying them an education at all.  They turn their backs on education and substitute indoctrination.

This is child abuse far more harmful than beating or sexual abuse.  This is imprisoning their children in a dark room and forbidding them the light of day.  This is taking a free mind and making it a slave to ignorance.  This is child sacrifice to a God they did not freely choose to accept.  This is an unimaginable, unforgivable evil.  That this is an accepted practice in our country is in direct conflict with and denial of the concept of freedom to which we give lip-service and little else.

This is the last and largest bastion of the treatment of children as property to be disposed of at their father’s pleasure. 

That the ignorant will instill their children with their ignorance is sadly unavoidable.  What is not unavoidable is the cooperation of the state in this folly.  Yet that is what has been and is still allowed to occur.

We have allowed generations of children to be raised as automatons, foot soldiers in a war they were never given the option to decide if they wanted to fight or not.  We have allowed a separate nation to grow like a cancer in our country.  A nation that has stolen our history and befouled the beliefs of our Founding Fathers.  A nation intent on domination not only of our country but the world.

Hannibal is living inside the Gates and is our neighbor we wave to on our way to work.  We have come to accept this situation as normal.  We have no one to blame but ourselves.

A nation divided against itself cannot stand.

How soon we have forgotten the hard won lessons of history.

We have learned nothing from the past and now we are to suffer for our own stupidity.  It is to be expected that the ignorant, the gullible, the infantile will find leaders to tell them what they want to hear.  Leaders who rise to the top because they are more willing to lie than the honest men who insist on the truth.  In a country of the blind how could you tell the person who claims to see isn’t just as blind as you or is lying about what he sees? 

Ignorance is blind. 

And if the blind are allowed to carry and stockpile weapons, whose fault is it when the shooting starts?