Atheism as an act of humility

Atheism and humility are two words not often associated with one another.  Christianity is at fault for this false impression, of course, but I don't want to be accused of Beating a Dead Messiah.  And, to be fair, many people who are only Christian in the sense that's the box they check on census forms...and many atheists themselves, for that matter...would not consider the act of declaring there is no God anything less than a statement coming from a pride.  To many, it the act of ultimate vanity.  After all, Satan himself only chose to put himself on the same level as God.  Surely, to deny that God doesn't even exist is a boast even Ole Brimstone Breath did not dare make.

But I would contend the statement "There is a God and I have a personal relationship with him" outstrips even the most militant atheist's pride.

I could accept the statement:  "There is a God and I am scared shitless of him and will do anything I can not to piss him off" more readily than the typical Christian claim:  "There is a God and he loves me!"

Whoa, now!  Cool your jets, Speed Racer!

I am willing to admit...and I am extremely grateful for...the existence of Angelina Jolie.  But to claim she loves me?  That's really getting into weird territory.

And if I were to tell you that not only does Angelina Jolie love me, but she killed her own child just to show me how much she loves me?

As anyone who has read any of my other posts knows, I believe Christianity is not just wrong, but is a blood obsessed cult that should have been allowed to die off along with all the others at the end of the Roman Empire.  The problem is Christians don't listen to themselves...much less a good, secular therapist...when they make their outlandish claims.

Richard Dawkins was being far too kind when he declared the belief in God to be a delusion.  It is a psycho-pathological mental illness and should be treated as such.  Especially when these people teach these things to their own children and people nearing death in a hospice situation and soldiers facing death on the battlefield and criminals who have already shown themselves to be less than mentally competent in our prison system.

We have an ethical and moral obligation to stop this madness now...in our generation...and not to pass it down to our children and grandchildren for them to deal with.  And, yes, as an atheist I do dare to speak of ethics and morality.  I respect the morality or our society...and don't try to cheat my way out of it by claiming supernatural forgiveness!...and I further believe there is no greater...can be no greater...law governing the actions of individual people within our society than their own personal ethics.  If a person does not act on the basis of what they truly consider right and wrong in their own heart but rather from the narcissistic desire to ensure their own well-being in some imaginary life after this one...the only life we have...ends then they are neither moral or ethical...or adults, for that matter.  They are scared children seeking to avoid a spanking they know they deserve.

But I digress...

I have made a point that Christianity is vanity.  I would further add that the motivation Christians have is not simply a desire to cheat on the morality of the society in which they live, but the deeper reason, the true dark impulse they are fulfilling, is to set themselves apart from others.  To declare that they are superior to other people.

This is true of all forms of super-naturalism.  After all, who doesn't delight in being able to tell a good ghost story that "Really happened" either to them or to someone they know.  This sort of anecdotal evidence is, of course, useless to scientific investigation.  Yet there are people who point to the vast number of people making such claims as evidence that "there must be something going on."

Christianity is super-naturalism by definition.  Their claims have no more validity than any of the others.  To declare that their claims are 'religious' and, therefore, must be treated differently than the rest is foolishness.  After all, Jesus...if he lived at all...has been dead almost two thousand years now.  Any sightings of him are, therefore, to be treated the same as any other ghost sightings.  And, just as there is absolutely no valid evidence for such sightings...in spite of all the ghost-hunters with cable shows out there looking...then sightings of the ghost of Jesus can be similarly dismissed.  If you can't prove the supernatural, then changing your nomenclature to 'spiritual' does nothing but show that the spiritual sinks or swims on the same lack of evidence.

There is something going on, yes.  There is a dominate culture in the United States that is obsessed with the supernatural.  That a majority of our citizens make or believe claims of the supernatural/spiritual is not proof of the existence of either but is, rather, a sad comment on our educational system.  We have well-intentioned, educated people battling for the teaching of evolution through natural selection and against the introduction of super-naturalism into our public schools.  I applaud them but at the same time I feel their one-issue focus is missing the point.  Do we even teach the scientific method at all?  Do we teach that this method is the only way of establishing what is true?  Tell me, if you can, how many children with only a high-school education have any understanding of the scientific method at all, much less believe this method is the only acceptable means of establishing what is and is not true?

The application of the scientific method has taken academia beyond the realm of the easily understood.  Even with the genius of Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and others who try to simplify and explain things to the average layperson it simply can not be done without the reading and understanding of intense and mindbogglingly complex literature.

This gap between what is known by academics in their own fields and what can be understood by the typical 'peasant with a library card' such as myself is much more important and vital to our future than the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor.  The latter can be understood on a visceral, deeply personal level.  The Rich have increasingly more money than the Poor and they are making a last ditch stand through Libertarianism combined with Heretical Christianity to make a gated community of our nation before the minorities gain the democratic numbers and solidarity to force a change.  There's nothing hidden about this.  The Poor, through their religion, are being enticed to vote against their own self interest on moral issues while the Rich, who have no morality, are profiting.

The gap between what is known to be true by academia and what is believed to be true by the uneducated masses is much more of an insoluble problem.  The majority of the lower classes in this country are functionally illiterate.  That is to say they either do not read at all beyond what is needed to navigate the Internet and text each other or they read fluff...entertainment 'novels' tied in with movie franchises like Twilight and The Hunger Games or genre literature like romance, mystery and sci-fi/horror.  Comic books are now Graphic Novels.  Disgusting.  Remember when a Graphic Novel was James Joyce's Ulysses?  Remember when the United States used to have a prime place in world literature?

The idea of reading non-fiction written by peer reviewed authors from major universities in order to understand a subject has now retreated behind the ivy-scrawled walls of our ancient and crumbling Ivory Towers.

Now, when I want a book that isn't pop-culture mind-candy, I have to make a special request for the title at our library.  My most recent acquisition...for myself and the library...is Richard C. Carrier's "Proving History:  The Application of Bayes's Theorem to the Quest For the Historical Jesus" volume one...in which he introduces the lay reader to Bayes's Theorem and lays the groundwork for using BT in historical studies in general.  The second volume will focus on how this can...and should...be used in biblical scholarship and the establishment of the existence or lack therefore of Jesus.

I am, with humility, a talented amateur when it comes to the history of religion.  I have read many long and difficult books.  This one is the hardest I have ever encountered.  I have checked it out twice and renewed it twice and am still only half way through.  It's the math, of course, but that's little excuse.  Carrier does his best to simplify it, but I'm still struggling harder than I ever did with any assignment in college.

Why am I putting myself through this torture?  Because I value the truth.

And the truth does not set you free.  You have to free the truth from all the lies it is bound up in.

Christians, in spite of all their use of the word, do not value the truth.  Unless you put everything...even the existence of God himself...on the table, then you place no value on the truth.  You are saying "I will search for the truth and believe the truth alone unless..."

Unless the truth you find is that God does not exist.  I know plenty of Christians who will claim to have examined the evidence and came to the conclusion that God exists.

They are liars.

Harsh?  Who cares?

The decision to believe in God has nothing to do with the search for the truth.  Belief is not based on evidence.  Belief is an act of faith and, as such, is blind acceptance without evidence.

They don't look at the evidence.  They scan the evidence looking for bits and pieces that seem to confirm what they have already chosen to believe.  Their use of reason is summed up quite nicely by Paul:  "Be ready to give an answer to all men by reason of the faith that is in you."

Reason is subordinate to the faith you have and is used to give an answer to people who would question your faith.

This is a cold-blooded statement from Christian scripture showing that their use of reasoning is to answer the questions of non-believers.

This is not reason.  This is a sickening abortion of reason.  And this is how Christians to this very day think.  This is why talking to Christians is a waste of time.  They have ceased to search for the truth.  When it comes to the truth, they are apostates and hypocrites.

They are intellectually lazy.  They will not read the actual books of scholars simply because they are too long and because they hurt their heads with evidence that contradicts what they must believe if they are to avoid the Fires of Hell.

They believe these scholars, these people who have devoted their lives to biblical scholarship, are servants of Satan trying to tempt them away from their faith.

They read books.  Oh, do they read books.  They have their own bookstores not to mention a totally and maddeningly amount of space on the shelves of public libraries touting their nonsense.

Their books give them excerpts from the writings of scholars.  They use these 'sound bites' to create straw men then they destroy these effigies and, in doing so, they claim to have answered the questions raised by these scholars.

"You don't have to read Dawkins, I'll tell you what he says and I'll tell you why it's wrong."

My own brother has never read any literature other than that created by his own denomination.  He claims to have read the perfect proof for God existence in a ten part series printed in a magazine from his fellowship.  He refuses to read anything that contradicts what he already believes and he teaches others they shouldn't either.  He has written a book on why the Gospel can only be understood by the uneducated.

He teaches that ignorance is essential to salvation while education leads to damnation.  When he had the opportunity to return to college and complete his masters he did not go back to study theology.  No, he got his masters in Business Administration.

Business administration.

That's what it takes to be a minister in a Christian church today.  Business administration.

Why?

It's simple enough.  He wanted to keep his job.  He had a good thing going and he knew that actually learning the truth about what he was teaching would only get in his way.

Vanity.  Striving after the wind.

Christians want to be special people.  They want their opinions to be listened to.

They want to be able to judge other people.

They do not have a place at the table where real scholars discuss the origins of Christian and Hebrew scripture and historical scholarship of the years between 600 BCE and 300 CE.

They simply are not smart enough, not educated enough.  But they still want money, more importantly, they still want to be able to stand up in front of a crowd of people and pass off their discredited and invalid opinions as the truth.

The sweet old lady handing out a religious tract downtown is doing so because she wants to feel superior to you.  She wants to be able to look down on you and judge you and condemn you to burn in Hell.

This is her motivation, this is the engine that drives her.

The desire to condemn people to Hell for the sin of knowing more than she does.

I know these people.  I was one of them for over half my life.

So what changed in me?  What made it impossible for me to continue to be a Christian?

Humility.

I learned to be humble.  And, when you learn humility, you can no longer be a Christian.

They don't talk about humility much anymore in Christianity in the United States.  Just like they don't talk about greed.  Or sloth.  Or gluttony.  Or pride.

These things used to be sins.  Just like being rich was a sin and the poor were destined to inherit the earth.

I heard recently from a Christian how the early church 'made a mistake' by sharing all things in common.  This was the church created within weeks of the death of Jesus.  The church that was directly told by the Holy Spirit of God what they should and should not be doing.

And this son of a bitch says they 'made a mistake' yet still claims to be a Christian!

American Christianity is the only religion in the world dedicated to denying and finding loopholes in the teaching of its founder!

The teachings of Jesus and/or his early followers were never meant to be used to create a Christian Nation!  This country can not be a Christian Nation because Christianity was meant to be a spiritual Kingdom that encircled the world and brought all people together in spite of their national, cultural and religious differences.

I am an atheist.  I believe that I will cease to exist at the moment of my bodily death.  That just as my heart will no longer beat or my lungs no longer breath my brain will no longer function and whatever me that particular organ may have contained will no longer exist.

But if I were a Christian in this country today, if I believed in Life After Death and Eternal Judgement,  I would live and die in terror knowing I was destined to burn in Hell!

Atheism is an act of humility.

We have an ever-widening gap between what is known and what lay people are capable of understanding.

The first step in overcoming this gap is the admission that there are people in the world who know more than you do.

This is an act of humbling yourself.  This act is essential to being an atheist.

You don't become an atheist until you begin to read and understand the works of others...living and dead...who have blazed the trail before you.  You can't...you won't...do that as long as you believe you know the truth.

God is something you believe.

Atheism is not something you believe...

...atheism is something you know.

Death and Truth

I am not a hard scientist.  My background is in literature and philosophy.  But I am not an academic pontificating from an Ivory Tower with no experience in the real world outside of a university campus.  Everything I say is backed up by years of living out my beliefs on the street where it counts.  If a belief system fails to produce when applied to our lives then it is the system that is at fault and needs revision.  Life is the ultimate test of any theory. My atheism doesn't come from any discussion in a cloistered environment or from reading books on the subject, although I have done more than my share of each.  My atheism comes from knowledge of and an attempt to live out theism in my life.  I spent 50 years of my life struggling to make theism work only to find, at every turn, the belief system did not answer any problems or offer any solutions but rather made my life more miserable and me a far worse person than I would have been without it. Atheism answered all the questions and made good on all the promises that theism failed to answer or to keep.  Not just on paper, but in my life.  I know from personal experience that other people would be far better off if they rejected the primitive belief in God and accepted their own mortality.  When I admitted to myself that I was not an immortal being, that I would one day die and that with my death would come the cessation of my existence, I found the need for God to exist dropped from my eyes like a blindfold and I saw the world as it really was for the first time. So much for my personal testimony.  I'll get more into my experiences later as they are germane to my atheism.  For now this brief introduction will have to suffice. Yesterday's letter dealt with death and 'the lack of alternatives.'  My reasoning was based solely on the evidence and I made truth statements, mainly that death, decomposition and the cessation of existence were obvious facts and that theism was a turning away from the truth and the acceptance of a lie.  The unpopularity of 'truth' talk comes from the theistic misuse of the word.  This situation is exacerbated by the cowardice of contemporary philosophy and the hard sciences in the academic world.  The academic population is only a subset of all peoples and classes.  Their motivation is career advancement and, as such, they are loath to make truth statements that may lead to ridicule from their peers.  So both theist and atheist define truth in the limited sense of being 'absolute certainty.'  The application of the twin notions of infinity and eternity extend the probability of an event occurring or a being existing outwards and inwards, forwards and backwards to the point that nothing can be spoken of with absolute certainty about anything.   Since God is defined as an infinite and eternal being he is the only one who can make comment on his own existence or lack thereof, or so the theist argument goes.  If I make the truth statement 'God does not exist' the counter-argument is I would have to have the attributes of God in order to know with absolute certainty that he doesn't exist.  Because of this conundrum, we have an extended argument over the existence of God that would seem to have no possible resolution. What we have are two different definitions of truth.  The truth that is 'out there,' objective truths based on observation, and the truth that is 'inside me,' the interaction between objective truths and myself.  The problem is the latter should be referred to as my beliefs and the word truth should be reserved for the former. Belief differs from truth. Belief is fixed in time and space.  Everyone knows this.  There is the conversion moment in Christianity where one believes and is saved.  One moment you didn't believe, the next you did.  Belief is an on/off switch, either you believe or you don't.  There is no middle ground.  Doubt, the attempts of the rational mind to regain control over one's beliefs, is looked upon as a disease to be cured, not a habit of mind to be cultivated.  Belief is the cessation of the search for the truth and the substitution of a false sense of certainty that has no referent in the real world. Truth is a dimmer switch taking you from the darkness of primitive superstitions and gradually illuminating the world around you.  Truth is reliable information that can be used as the foundation for further truths yet to be learned.  Truth is an ever-elusive goal that carries us forward into the future.  Belief freezes us at one time and refuses the accumulation of further knowledge.  Truth leads to freedom, belief to stagnation and insanity. Death is the truth not because I need it to be true.  The belief in human immortality is created and sustained by the human need to deny death and live forever.  The motivation for people to believe they are immortal is so strong all religion has to do is tell one lie and they have millions of people turning their back on the truth and willingly giving up their freedom and minds. You have on one side a truth that is harsh and uncompromising and unpleasant to the point that its acceptance makes you a social pariah in a country full of believers... ...And on the other side a belief that is deeply and intensely motivated not just by the promise of immortality but the social acceptance of your surrounding culture... ...then how could you impugn a selfish motive on the former and applaud the latter? That is what is happening in our country.  An atheist gives up everything for the sake of the truth. Christians give up nothing and are, in fact, highly rewarded for their willingness to believe a lie. Yet we are the enemy, the antichrist, and the monster. We are the ones they will come for in the night.

Death and the Lack of Alternatives

How many times would you have to see the same thing happen before your eyes before you acknowledged the truth of the lesson being presented?

How about every single time?  Wouldn't you have to admit that if there's any validity to the concept of truth then something that is attested to by every occurrence has to be considered true?

Gravity, of course comes to mind.  Fire burns.  Daddy's razor is not a toy. These are truisms we've all come to live with.  Why?  Because we have a vested interest, avoidance of pain, in remembering these things and none whatsoever in each time testing to see if, just this once, the laws of nature have been rescinded. 

The ultimate, of course, is death.  

Everyone dies.  Everyone decomposes.  Nobody comes back.

This is the truth.

Do I really have to bring out arguments in support of a truth that has been played out by everything that has ever lived and ever will live on this planet?

Death is the truth.  The truth is death.

Don't like the sound of that?  Tough.  Get used to it. Nobody's going to change the laws of nature just because you think they shouldn't apply to you.

Grow up.

If you only remember two words from this essay, then I hope these are the two:

Grow up.

On some level, deep inside no matter how much dirt and rocks you've piled on top of it over the years...on some level you know the truth.  Not on a conscious level; on a totally physical level.  Your cells die daily.  They know what your brain can't admit to.  Your lungs know what it would feel like if they tried to take that next breath and couldn't.  Even your brain, not your mind, but the fleshy, animal part of your brain...even your brain knows death far better than you.

The soul is a red herring.  A distraction. Like those O2 masks that come down from the ceiling in a plane crash that don't do anything but give the passengers enough oxygen to calm them down before they die.  The soul, religion, all the rest of that malarkey, is nothing but something to keep you're mood up even as your body ceases to live and the little spurts of energy firing within your brain start flickering out like city lights in a slow, rolling black out.

Look, suppose you had a perfect AI, passes the Turing Test with flying colors every time.  A computer created artificial intelligence indistinguishable from a real person in blind tests.

For that matter, you could have the AI programmed to remember his life before he became totally paralyzed in a whitewater rafter accident.  Really fix it so this AI doesn't know that he isn't a living human being, just one whose only interaction to the outside world comes through his computer.  Kind of like your average teenager, for that matter.

Now, let's get really cruel...remember, this is just a demonstration on a computer simulation that mimics a human being...and program into the computer the absolute, religious faith that he has an immortal soul and when he dies he will go to Heaven to be with Jesus.

You with me so far?  Pretty cool, huh?  Like Frankenstein, but instead of meat life, we're creating a human soul.

Or are we?

Now, here's the question, the payoff to this set up.

What would happen if we totally destroyed the hardware this AI program was loaded on to?  I mean, we're talking Arnold slipping into the vat of molten metal at the end of Terminator 2 kind of destruction.

I think most of us would agree that the AI program we created ceased to exist when the microchips it was encoded on were destroyed.

The fact that the AI was programmed to believe he had a soul that would survive his corporeal destruction could not change the truth:

He didn't.

There was a time when we didn't understand the flow of energy around us, the spectrum of light and sound and the splashing and crashing chaos of our world was limited to our five senses.  Back then; we hadn't a clue what we were talking about.  It was easy to speculate because we lacked the equipment to measure the world around us.  So we could all have souls that left the body at the moment of death.  

It was pretty easy to keep up believing in this nonsense until we had people start dying while they had all these wires and machines hooked up to their brains and bodies.  All of a sudden you've got to ask yourself, Where's the soul?

Now if all of the brain cells were stone cold dead and there was this vague little halo of energy left inside off in a corner of the dead man's head that was still registering on the monitors and pumping out little 'hey, it's me' signals, then we might have something to talk about.

We don't. 

I don't think people quite get what medicine brings to the table when it comes to the debate between rationality and superstition.  Or what they don't bring, I should say.  No energy, capish?

You get some people who still want to claim there's a human soul that survives the death of the body in spite of the fact.  They say the soul is composed of energy that can't be detected by our machines but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and we're ignoring their theory and not giving it credibility

Strange thing about this elusive energy:  the only reason you infer its existence is that without it your whole house of cards comes a tumblin' down and your porcine-behind is out of a job.

That's what it's all about, of course, not the money.  Everybody got it all wrong back in the days of the televangelist scandals.  These guys were amateurs, the goons. Weren't even smart enough to cover their own litter.

The thing about coming back from the dead is that it's kind of tricky.  Anyone who's seen both George Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Stephanie Myer's Twilight can appreciate the difference between coming back as a mindless consumer and coming back as yourself, with coherent memories tying you to the past life you just gave up when you died. 

Most of us don't believe in the reanimation of dead flesh.  Those who do are in dire need of a check up from the neck up, as Kinky Friedman likes to say.

We believe in the immortality of the soul.  Now Paul, the devious genius that he was, came up with the idea that your spirit has to have a body to reside in.  The problem is, our spirits are stuck in flesh like a horse stuck in the mud.  So we got to wash off and put on a new body...but this one's a Spiritual body, wink, wink...nudge, nudge.

So you have a soul that is what?  Your mind?  A mirror image of your mind...kind of a back up system in case the main brain crashes?  Energy that's just too elusive for us to detect?

And this soul has to survive the death of your body with enough of you intact so that you have a coherent afterlife.  Your hard drive is gone, liquidized.  So in order to survive, your soul must be a form of free-floating energy.  But in order to carry information about you and your recently departed life, this energy must first, be organized and encrypted and, second, must adhere to only energy like itself in order for there to be an afterlife.  Dissipation, I'm assuming, would be a problem since we're talking about a free-floating ball of energy with you recorded on it like a demo tape for the afterlife.

And the way you get to the afterlife is by having faith...

...wait a minute, this is beginning to sound familiar!  

I got it!  

Tinkerbell!

Remember, when her light was going out because she drank the poison instead of letting Peter drink it, and you had to clap and squeal real hard:

"I believe in fairies! I do, I swear I do!"

Until the stagehand had enough begging and started turning the dimmer switch back up.

Grow up.

Acknowledge the truth.  We die, we decompose, we don't come back.

OK, take a deep breath now.  You don't have to do it, all you have to do is imagine what your life would be like if that were true.

Now first, there's a technical problem with your senses and there's nothing to be done about it except try and find some wiggle room around it.  The problem is the human mind cannot conceive of it's own non-existence.  Least that's what I've heard; sometimes I think I can almost grasp it, then it slips away.  

But, good old logic to the rescue, you know exactly what it means to be non-existent.  You were non-existent for an eternity before your birth.  So, when you die, you go back to being in the same state you were before you were born.


On August 1st, 1950 I did not exist.  Sometime during the day on August 2nd I came into existence...or are you one of those sick-o's who believes that yucky stuff that fills up the nipple on a used, stretched condom is alive?  Christ, the murders I have committed literally at my own hand are astronomical!

OK, here's the deal with life.  You got to be able to keep it on your own or you lose it.

Adam was created from the dust of the earth.  His body was completely created and formed in every detail but not animated by a living soul until God Breathes the Breath of Life into his mouth at which point he becomes a living soul.

So we don't become souls until we are capable of sustaining life on our own.  Mom did her best while she had you in her Lovin' Oven now it's up to you to breathe or die, sweety.  That's why frogs and insects have all kinds of kids.  That way you don't get attached.

And here's a thought:

If they're keeping you alive with machines then you aren't a human being any more, you're a science experiment.

Probably stole that from somewhere.  Was it Hemingway who said "All writers steal, good writers know what to steal."

I'm wandering, but I do my best thinking when I let the dog off the leash and let her chase the coon herself while I sit up here on the porch in my rocking chair with my shotgun across my knees while Chet and Molly's retarded boy plays that same damn song on the banjo over and over again.  Dadgum boy done went all Hollywood since that movie.

You see, it's not a stream of consciousness if you try to use a rudder.  The worst mistake a writer can make is to get in the way.

Point is, we know that when we fry a hard drive on the barbie that everything stored on the drive is gone and isn't coming back.  Unless it's NCIS and Abbie gets hold of it, of course.

We know our bodies die and decompose.  We know they don't come back.

We just don't say it aloud.

Because if you say it aloud then you give it power.

How about if we do that whole sinner's prayer thing they had in the back of the Chick Tracts...talk about great American Primitive artwork...I was proud to hand a sinner a Chick Tract because I knew I was giving him a quality product.

You know the one, where you say aloud how you believe in and accept him into your heart...blah, blah, blah, 23 pages of boilerplate, standard savior/sinner contract...been a hell of a lot easier if his dad would have only signed his name...who knew thirty was underage for an eternal being?

Here's the deal, I'm not asking you to ask me into your heart.  Even though Valentine's Day is coming, that would still be just creepy...

What I want is for you to say aloud one simple, absolutely true and undeniably significant statement.

Here, I'll show you how easy it is.

When I, Philip Jarrett, die I will cease to exist.  

My body will decompose.

I will not go anywhere or come back from anywhere.

There will come a time when I, Philip Jarret, will no longer be the center of the universe and all existence.

The universe and all existence will continue on without me.

There's nothing personal about this, it's just business the way it's done in our universe.

Nobody can get me off the hook for old times sake.

There will be no last minute call from the governor staying my execution.

It is a harsh truth but no belief system has been able to stop death.

They are failures, they are a waste of time.

Time, as in your life.  Time that if you accept your own mortality will become the most precious part of your life.  The flow of the sand in an hour glass, the ticking of the clock on the mantel, the candle as it sputters out...or perhaps is snuffed.

If you believe you will meet your parents or children or anyone else in heaven or you will get a chance to make up for your failures in another life here on earth then where is the motivation to do something about these things in the real world, the here and now world?

This isn't moral.  This isn't ethical.  This is a lie.

Anyone who tells you there is life after death doesn't know anything more than you do on the subject and that makes him a liar.

If the truth makes you free then anyone who tells you a lie is tring to make you a mental slave.

Free Minds can make a Free World. 

But we aren't born free.

Freedom is not a gift from a supernatural being.  God does not believe in Free Will.  With Him it's either My Way or the Highway to Hell.

Each of us has to fight for our freedom.  Each of us has to swim upstream against the flow of history. 

You have to kill who you are to become who you want to be.  And you'd better best get in the habit of doing it every morning if you want to life a happy life.

Here's a clue from my person Atheology:

Since death is the ultimate and escapable truth of life, then each moment of our life is our life.

If you want to have a happy life, then you have to learn to stream together as many happy moments as you can.

Admit the truth and be happy.  Believe the lie and live in fear of either eternal damnation or an afterlife of blessings you know deep down that you don't deserve.

There's a line from City of Angels where Nick Cage explains to Meg Ryan about the supernatural afterlife and the existence of angels by saying:

Somethings are true whether you believe in them or not.

Great line, too bad it was wasted on an Oprah Winfrey feel-good movieto Meg.

I think we, as atheists and non-believers, should steal and re-word this line for our own purposes:

Somethings just aren't true no matter how badly you want to believe they are.

Christianity Is Immoral

I didn't start out this way. Or maybe I did. I don't remember large portions of my childhood. From the parts I do remember, I figure it's probably for the best. I put The Toys You Never Won out here the other day if you want to know how my childhood smelled. Things happen along the way and whether you are a victim or a predator depends entirely on the moment in life you are at. We all are good and evil, sure. We all are capable of being good and evil. I mean, it just isn't fair. It's good and EVIL shoudn't it be like, good and bad? I think jumping straight from good to EVIL right off the bat like that goes right over some very important gradations. What ever happened to nice? It's become a taboo word in our society. Nice is like calling someone a zombie, but more importantly below your radar. One of the invisible people, the ignored. Would it hurt to throw in a couple of grades between A and F for Nada's sake? I'm not trying to clue you in on your own creation, high and allrighty, but most of us are C students with an increasingly large percentage dropping out each month. And if you are so omniscient how come you've never figured out how to grade on a curve, man? This pass/fail shit is killing us. The only way they can sell Jesus anymore is to tell people that if you believe in him, him being the Big Enchilada's Son, he can slip you out a copy of the answers for the final exam and you'll sneak past and into heaven and still get to do all that bad stuff you did down here. Talk about the best possible worlds. Pascal wins his wager big time. Here's the deal:  Christianity has nothing to do with morality. Christianity is how to cheat at morality. Look at it this way: Penalty for lusting after a woman in your heart? Eternal damnation. Penalty for carrying out the act and bagging her (sorry, is 'bagging' an acceptable term? I lost this month's edition of PC Monthly): Eternal damnation. So where is the impetus...the morality...to keep someone who already sees himself as damned from doing whatever they want to as a result? Damned if you do, damned if you don't; so damn it just go ahead and do it. Then you say the 'Sinner's Prayer,' a short little ditty...shorter than 'Now I lay me down to sleep'...in which you acknowledge you are sinner and invite Jesus into your heart...kind of like you have to invite a vampire in to your home...and that's it. Sin again?  No problem.  Another short prayer asking forgiveness...or a few minutes in a confessional...and you're good to go to Heaven again.  The injustice, the immorality of this doctrine can be illustrated by a personal reference. My father-in-law abused my wife's mother violently and physically through the years of their marriage.  He raped his own daughter, my wife.  After the divorce, he became a Christian.  He went directly from being an abuser and a rapist to feeling himself morally superior to his victims...his own wife and daughter... because he was a Christian and they...at least in his own perverted imagination...were not.  This is what Christians call 'morality.'  Here's the truth about Christian Morality…and this is coming from a Preacher's Kid who spent 40 years as a Christian: Christian "morality" is based on lack of opportunity. When the opportunity presents itself, they are just as susceptible as anyone else to the temptation.  When the opportunity does not present itself, then they claim superior virtue.   Worse yet, they condemn in others what they, by their own nature, are not tempted to do in the first place.  Gender preference is established long before religious preference.  But Christians feel morally superior for what they, by nature, aren't tempted to do and condemn others, who have as little choice as heterosexuals in the matter, as evil. Shooting ducks in a barrel is what we used to call it. Everyone has a temptation to which they are powerless to resist.  The only difference between Christians and alcoholics, drug addicts, homosexuals, pedophiles and a host of others they condemn as evil is that the opportunity to act on their fantasies has never presented itself.   Christianity does not have a moral system of it's own.  It feeds on the morality of the society within which it finds itself.  Christianity has a constantly updated and revised rule book by which actions of others...that are perfectly moral in terms of the society in which they live...are judged and found wanting.  That they seek to have their rules established as the law of this country is an open admission their power does not come from a moral imperative but rather from a set of doctrines.   Let me say that again. Christians who seek legal protection for their doctrines are admitting they have lost their moral imperative and are resorting to brute force to impose their rules on society. They exist in contradistinction from the perfectly healthy and functioning quite well morality of the United States. They are outside of the morality of our society. They are immoral. I would use the word 'amoral' but when any group seeks to extend their rules  to others who do not belong to their group by force they do not deserve to be respected or differed to semantically or in any other fashion. Let them howl.  I fall back on a revision of an old cliche: If you can't stand the heat, stay out of discretion.

Introduction to What Happened? 1st Draft

When I tell people I am an atheist the most common response is:  “What happened?”

As with most questions, this one reveals more about the questioner than the person being asked.   Christians are either born into the church and never know there is an alternative or they have a conversion experience as an adult.  They discount those born into Christianity as well they should.  The number of people who have the good fortune to be raised in secular families is few and, even in those cases, the permeation of Christian myth throughout our society makes even the most secular of upbringings ill founded.  The United States is a Christian nation.  This is not a goal to be achieved, but a fact to be accepted in order to understand our national character.  When we speak of God we speak of the Christian God.  As an atheist, I am a Christian atheist.  That is to say, the God I do not believe in isn’t the universal God theologians create then make apologies for but is, rather, a very specific God whose history can be traced from the nomadic tribes of North Africa and the Middle East down through various incarnations from Babylon to Islam to this very day as God is revised and edited to fit the needs of each culture and time humanity experiences.  That we can trace the history of God, as Karen Armstrong does in her book of the same title, is one of the most underappreciated, yet telling, arguments for the non-existence of God any Christian has ever unintentionally created.

So when a Christian asks an atheist, “What happened?” he is assuming an experience or series of experiences must have occurred to cause the atheist to “Lose his faith” and “Deny God.”  They are projecting their own experience on to others as it is really Christians who convert under times of intense stress.  When they are weak and not in their rational minds Christians swoop down upon them like benevolent vultures with offers of prayers and the ever present covered dishes.  Did it occur to them that there is something deeply unethical and morally wrong about approaching a person at such a vulnerable moment and asking them to make a lifetime, and presumably afterlifetime, decision?  They are vain and lack the understanding this is tantamount to lawyers trolling for clients among the accident victims in the Emergency Room.

“My wife died of cancer in spite of all my fervent prayers to God to spare her life.”  Silliness.  Prayer (or “talking to the ceiling” as I have come to think of it) is useless and has been proven so by an experiment funded and conducted by the Templeton Foundation, a Christian organization rewarding scientists whose work can be tortured to seemingly verify the existence of God.  The reality is some people die of cancer, others are cured through modern medicine, still others, for reasons yet unknown, go into spontaneous remission.  Percentages and projections can be made about the likelihood of a patient falling into one of these groups.  This data forms the basis of the insurance industry.  Christian prayer is, to bastardize Einstein, “Rolling the God dice.”  They pray over every cancer patient and the ones who survive are touted as miraculous and proof of God’s existence and benevolence.  The ones who die are dismissed with a “Everything happens for a reason” platitude. 

This is a cold, calculated, primitive and ultimately cruel practice.  Unfortunately, it is also one of those insights that can only come from a rational mind.  Remember the foolish, bumper sticker theology that says “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous”?  No, inasmuch as coincidence can be said to exist at all, it is the application of statistical probability to individual instances.  Coincidence, luck, serendipity and all the names improbability goes under can be broken down to a lack of data needed to draw a more precise conclusion.  Case in point is lung cancer.  Smoking and the deliberate job related exposure to carcinogens as in coal mining narrows down the field and allows us to say, with statistical backing, that engaging in these activities increases the chance of lung cancer.  It is not only possible, it is probable that increases in computer representations will eventually lead to a close to certain diagnosis that a certain individual will succumb to lung cancer.  Early treatment and lifestyle intervention will greatly reduce the incidence of cancer and the survival rate of those who contract the disease.  And all without a single prayer being offered.

My personal favorite is the endless debate circling around “Why is there evil in the world?”  I like this one for two reasons:  it is capable of causing people to think “outside of the God box” thus requiring the use of the rational, instead of the religious, mind and the argument has a distinct answer in the very Christian scripture they claim to worship and revere. 

The first reason should be obvious:  by asking the question and seeking to answer it the person is acknowledging there are certain rational truths that even God is restrained by and forced to obey.  This is one of the first steps towards the conclusion God does not and cannot exist.  Christians, in order to defend their God, make this step unwittingly.  By acknowledging the subject of the existence of God is actually a topic for discussion, not the central fact of the universe, they have forfeited the game.  They have lost their faith and are now beginning a hopeless, drowning struggle to impose their own beliefs and skewed morality upon this country by force of law.  They are dangerous.  Far more dangerous, to more people and with the capacity for greater disruption and unwanted change to our core way of life than any internal threat the sovereignty and union of the United States has faced since the days before the Civil War. 

The other thing I really like about the “why is there evil in the world?” debate is Christian scripture answers this seemingly elusive question directly and finally.  Even a Mythicist would have to admit that without reference to Jesus’ existence someone, and some group they were speaking to, chose to put these words and this instance into his mouth.  Jesus was being questioned about the fall of a tower that killed many people.  The questioner opined that the people killed under the tower’s fall must have been the worse people in all of Israel.  Jesus, as is the form of this doctrinal storytelling has it, rebukes the man with a clever response that settles the matter.  In this case, his response was, to paraphrase, “Of course not, they were the people who just happened to be under the tower when it fell.”  Natural and manmade disasters don’t count one way or other on the good to evil scale.  They just are and the people they kill are simply unlucky.  Quite an admission for God Incarnate to make!  So we can take natural and manmade disasters off the table in our discussion of why there is evil in the world. 

The most common answer to the problem of evil is because man has “Free Will.”  Vincent Bugliosi, the celebrity lawyer, pointed out in his recent defense of agnosticism Divinity of Doubt: The God Question the idea of man having “free will” does not exist anywhere in Scripture except some obscure book in the Catholic Apocrypha and even that is not a fully developed doctrine by any means.  So Christians can’t use free will as an excuse, it’s not in their Rule Book

So why is there evil in the world?  Simple enough.  Christians need to consult their Handbook for the Recently Saved and read it in the red.  “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Greed, coveting, lust, acquisition, pride…in a word, Capitalism.  The misnamed Free Marketplace that makes “freedom” a commodity to be bought and sold like any other.  A luxury only the wealthy can afford.  No wonder Christian Capitalists spin wild tales about the meaning of the Book of Revelation; if they read it for what it said they’d understand that it is the wealth of Rome that is being condemned and those who Drink From the Cup of Abominations are those who trade with Rome.  And the only Rome, the only Babylon, in the world today is the United States.

Jesus hammered at the subject over and over.

“You can’t serve both God and money, make a choice.”

“A rich man has as much chance of getting to heaven as a camel does of getting through a needle’s eye.”

To the rich young ruler, “Go, sell everything you have, then take the money down to the poor and hand them the money personally.”

About taxes?  “Show me the coin.  Who’s image is upon it?  Well, give to Caesar what  belongs to him and to God what belongs to him.”

If you trade with Rome, then you belong to Rome.  If you follow God then return to him his land.  It was the land that belonged to the Jews.  They survived countless client Kingdoms as long as they were left as serfs only their inherited plots of land.  Land given to them by God, not by any King.  Then Rome came in to Galilee and introduced factory farming and that all changed.

The peasants, driven into town as the Romans consolidated into huge factory farms, were called upon at planting and harvest time but left idle the rest of the year.  Unemployment, being forced from land given to you by God, countless bodies on countless crosses as the Jews suffered under Roman rule as they were years later to suffer under the Germans.    

So when Jesus told the idle peasants in the crowds to “Return to God what belongs to him” the code was easily broken.  The land belongs to God.  The Romans must be driven out.  But first, all ties must be severed between the revolutionaries and the Marketplace. 

Why is there evil in the world?

Money.

It makes it easy to be an atheist when the people you offend aren’t Christians any longer.  They are a hybrid of Libertarian economics and Underground Right conspiracy theory.  They are a heretical sect of Christianity.  They are also the last grasp of the White Upper Class to cease power in this country before they become outnumbered by people of color.  They hate democracy.  They talk about being a Republic, but Libertarianism is a form of anarchy.  The idea that this country would be so swept up in this madness and that the other side of the political coin is offering nothing in the form of response is maddening.  Sanity hurts, only the sane can be driven mad.

To return to my original question about my atheism:  What happened?

One day I got tired of coming up with reasons why God did the things he did.  I had tried so many different things, went down so many dead ends, found over and over again the same pettiness and power plays, the same meddling and condemning and always, always the prying eyes.  When you are a Christian, and I will reserve that word for actual church attendees, your life becomes common property shared, judged and rated by all.

What happened?

I got sick with the confusion, the cacophony of all the cawing Christians crowing incoherently.  I wanted peace and time to think. 

I prayed what I didn’t know at the time was to be my last prayer to God.  All I asked for was to know how things really worked.

I never thought about “Why do I exist?” and “What is my purpose?” and “Did you really suffer on the Cross like in that Mel Gibson movie they showed at church?”  What about the intrinsic selfishness of seeking “your own salvation with fear and trembling?”

How do things work?  What engine drives the world?  I wanted knowledge, not mythology.  Truth, not doctrine.  Surety, not doubt.  I wanted the war that had been raging inside of me since I was in my crib to end.  I wanted peace.  I wanted a “place where God will never find me.”

Less than a year later, I was an atheist.

Funny thing about fathers:  the good ones want you to grow up and leave home.

So what happened?

My life. 

My life happened.

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.”