MiloCast

“I contend we are both atheists - I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you reject all other gods, you will understand why I reject yours as well.” - Stephen F. Roberts

There’s not much more I can add to this. I just ask that you think about it. As Greydon Square says — you just believe in the god native to your region. That’s the only true reason.

I could be wrong. About what? About anything. If you take issue with anything anywhere on my site, let me know. If I am wrong, I want to be set right.

However, the same applies in reverse. If you disagree with me, you must first admit that you could be wrong as well. If you can’t do that, then your position is not based on reason, and is therefore worthless.

Before I give the impression that I’m an intolerant jerk (too late?), let me say that I consider all the human beings on this planet to be my brothers and sisters, and I truly hope we can all come to agree on the important issues which affect our lives. That’s the only reason I write these articles. Thanks for reading.

Why is the Christian god always referred to as a “he”? If this being has a sex, then it seems there must be a species here, not one single being. That would be backed up by the whole concept of Jesus being a “son” in any sense.

This opens a whole Pandora’s Box of questions, and seems to give credit to the argument of infinite regression. I think infinite regression is kind of a joke argument used by skeptics against a self-defeating argument used by apologists. Apologists claim that man is too complex to have gotten here without a designer, so that proves their god. Skeptics retort that if that’s true, then the Christian god is even more complex, and thus requires an even more advanced designer. You can carry that argument on forever.

The most obvious explanation, in my opinion, is that man created God in his own likeness and image. Yeah, I know, I win a Captain Obvious bumper sticker for that one. But isn’t this something which should be brought up in conversation more often? If God existed and created people, why create them as sexual beings in the first place? Depending on which chapter of Genesis you read, God created Adam, apparently with genitals, without any intention of creating Eve.

The simple fact is that humans have been creating gods for at least thousands of years. All of them are eventually forgotten, as those who worship them die off. Not a single one has a shred of evidence which can be observed directly or indirectly to prove their existence, so the current favorites will be gone soon as well. I only hope that we don’t replace them, or that they don’t vanish because we destroy ourselves and this planet fighting over them.

I’m a member of a mailing list for non-theists. I wrote a message to the group today about a point a theist friend of mine and I disagree on in order to start a conversation on that point. Instead, one of the members responded with incredulity that I referred to my theist friend as “very intelligent.” This kind of thinking is a huge hindrance to the skeptical movement for many reasons. What follows is my reply to my fellow non-believer.

I understand where you’re coming from, and you have fallen victim to a very common misconception among freethinkers. We assume that since we are smart enough to see such obvious truths which are so fundamental to reality, we are somehow smarter than anyone who believes in pseudoscience, religion, or any other irrational junk.

What we must realize is that by treating people differently based on that judgment makes us as guilty of intolerance based on ignorance as fundamentalists. If people who believe religious garbage are necessarily not intelligent, then we would clearly see this in the real world: All the religious people would work at McDonalds or be on welfare, and all the millionaires, CEOs, and scientists would be atheists. Obviously this is not the case.

The truth is we simply don’t know what the difference is between a theist’s mind and a non-theist’s mind — not even those of us who are ex-theists. If we did, we’d be using that information to systematically eliminate religion from this world because of the harm it does.

Every intelligent theist makes decisions as rationally and intelligently as we do. However, they base their decisions on a collection of beliefs which contains some very wrong ideas. I’m sure you and I do the same and have some very wrong ideas about other things, although they may be nearly insignificant compared to religious dogma.

Understanding this and treating people with opposing views properly based on these ideas is very important. First of all, treating them like idiots is a stupid way to try to convince them to listen to us. Also, if we approach the problem with an incorrect hypothesis about the source of it, no solution we dream up is likely to be effective in actually fixing the problem.

I was listening to the unabridged audiobook of “The God Delusion” on my way to work this morning, and Dawkins quoted an unintentionally funny bit of advertising copy he had seen for a book. It said that the book “filled a much-needed gap.” Obviously the advertiser meant that the book was much-needed, but what they said was that the gap is what we need — not the book.

Gaps are needed — they’re vital to progress. Without unanswered questions, there would be no science and no curiosity. If we, as a species, didn’t seek out the reason things are so, we would not have the medical knowledge or technology we enjoy and our standard of living would be much lower.

When a gap is filled with a tested and reasonable explanation, we’re all richer for it. When a gap is filled with nonsense like “God did it,” we’re robbing ourselves of curiosity, wonder, and a chance to make the world a better place.

One of the fantastic things about the human species is that every time we gain knowledge, we enrich our lives. We throw away the old ideas that seemed plausible for a while, and the new ones work better — because they fit in better with reality. Maybe we’ll improve upon them later, but for now we have at least shed some ignorance.

Even Christians do this — to a point. They have finally accepted that the earth orbits the sun (albeit after committing murder in defense of their wrong ideas), and more and more Christians accept the truth of the fact of evolution. This is good, because the evidence is so overwhelming on both points that only an idiot or someone who intentionally refuses to be educated could disagree if they were presented with the facts.

Why is it, then, that when “truths” of the bible are utterly discredited, the Christians go on believing everything else that hasn’t been shown to be absolutely incorrect — yet? They believe in God because he created man in his own likeness and image — literally. No man — poof — man. Now that they must accept evolution, they just claim that God created the beginnings of life and set evolution in motion. Why the need to insert a god at all?

The bible was the indisputable word of God for a while. Now it’s not. But it’s somehow still “true” in some sense, and the increasing number of holes in its claims don’t seem to diminish that idea in some people’s heads. I still believe that most self-proclaimed Christians haven’t read the bible — they listen to a man in a pulpit tell them what certain small parts of the bible say, and then spend an hour telling them what they should believe it means. Apparently it can’t be taken literally — then you’d either have a bunch of Christians going on murder sprees or becoming atheists.

Christians: Nothing you believe about Jesus has any provable basis in reality. Many things you believe about Jesus and the bible have been conclusively shown not to have happened. Why are you clinging to these stories? Many religions, believed just as strongly as yours is, have long since been abandoned because they are no longer relevant to this world. There was no less evidence for those than Christianity, and many of them were older and lasted longer. It’s time to give up the big Santa Claus in the sky and become grown-ups.

Ever notice how, when a Christian says they used to be an atheist, they expect that to carry some weight? The implied message is that they know both sides of the story, and they finally understand the truth.

But tell a Christian you used to be an Christian, and you’re still an idiot — either they think you were never a “true Christian” — whatever that is — or you somehow had the truth but got confused.

The interesting thing is that an ex-religious atheist can probably give many evidence-based examples of reasons why what they once believed just doesn’t hold water. An “ex-athiest” Christian can’t give a single valid reason why Christianity is true. They can give you thousands of reasons why they want it to be true, but not a single solitary reason it is even remotely probable.

What is it about some people that makes them prefer to believe something they would like to be true when there is no evidence for and plenty of evidence against? What drives an otherwise normal person to dismiss validated scientific research for no other reason than that it conflicts with their baseless beliefs? Some of them even know they’re completely full of crap, and they put out misinformation and just plain lies about science, evolution, and anything else which doesn’t agree with their religion. They seem to think that there’s some kernel of truth in their mythology, and any piece of it which is obviously untrue must be defended for the greater good.

Maybe it’s just the frustration talking. I encounter theists on a regular basis, in person and online, who all act exactly the same predictable, ridiculous ways. They can’t give a straight answer to a question because that would require being honest, which necessarily conflicts with their beliefs. They use every logical fallacy in the book with ease. They repeat blatant lies which have been disproved long ago. As someone who cares about the truth, and that other people understand the truth, this just frustrates me to no end.

A common claim among Christians who found their faith later in life (after childhood, when most people are indoctrinated), is that they “used to be atheists.” Technically, that’s true. Everyone is born an atheist, by definition. However, there are different types of atheism. There is “default atheism,” also known as “weak atheism,” which simply describes a person who was never indoctrinated into a religion. Then there is “strong atheism,” which describes people who have decided based upon actual information that there is no valid reason to believe in any gods.

So a weak atheist converting to a religion is simply a gullible person accepting irrational claims made by other human beings. You don’t see strong atheists converting to religion, because they value the truth. The closest we can come to knowing the truth is to base our opinions on the best evidence we have. If a strong atheist were to convert to a religion, there would have to be a reason compelling enough for him to explain to other strong atheists. If such an argument existed and was valid, all strong atheists would convert to religion, because it would be the most convincing position based upon the facts. However, this has clearly not happened.

I am well aware that I have used strong language in this article, including repeated use of the word “indoctrination” to describe the way people gain their religious beliefs, and the use of the word “gullible” to describe adults who accept baseless claims about a religion as holy truth. I stand by everything I have said. However, any evidence which shows that I was mistaken will be acknowledged and I will amend my statements if such information is provided. At this time, the only exceptions I can think of to what I said above is that I believe a strong atheist could convert to religion without evidence if he experienced brain damage.

I had a conversation with a theist via e-mail, and his silly arguments about the bible inspired a reply which I paraphrase below because I think it’s such an obvious proof.

The bible contains plenty of depictions of people doing good, and plenty of depictions of God’s own people committing the most horrific crimes imaginable — often at God’s command. However, Christians do not do everything the bible commands. They claim that some of the bible is literal and some is figurative, or allegorical. They make the decisions as to what parts of the bible should be taken literally by their moral values.

So, the truth is that people of all religions and people of no religion all have the same concepts about right and wrong, which we get from our culture. These values have some variations in different parts of the world. For example, the way women are treated in some places, or the way animals are treated. So a Christian and an atheist who are both born and raised in the same place are going to have the same moral values as each other, and two Christians or two atheists born in different cultures will have the same values as the people who surround them, but not necessarily as each other.

Based upon these facts, it’s very clear that the bible is not the source of morality. It is simply a reflection of the values of the cultures which wrote it, and is limited by their understanding of the world, which was much smaller than ours in the modern age.

The authors of the bible demand the death penalty for all manner of transgressions, from disobeying your parents to adultery. Even trying to get a Christian to change their religion requires them to immediately kill you, according to the bible (Deuteronomy, 13:6-9).

Considering that so many people claim to believe that the bible is the inspired or direct word of their almighty creator, upon whose mercy they will be delivered from eternal torment, it’s amazing that we see so few murder cases from obedience to the bible.

The simple fact is that nobody — believer or non-believer — really gets their morality from the bible. We all get it from the same place — society. If someone chooses to say they got it from the bible, or their parents, or from watching daytime television, we may not be able to change their minds. But they are wrong. And isn’t it fantastic!