Atheism

Here’s a brilliant parody of the ludicrous idea that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God would send somebody to hell simply because they didn’t believe in the Bible, no matter how good a person they were. This video’s creator (Edward Current) has several other funny religious parodies as well.

As it is Thanksgiving in the US tomorrow (although we don’t celebrate it here in Australia), I thought it might be an appropriate time to discuss how I feel about Christmas, especially as I am an atheist, along with the fact that the launch of my new online store and DVD have obviously been timed for it.

First of all, there are the obvious practical and commercial considerations: this is the time of year when sales will be maximised, and my fans simply want and expect new stuff to be available from me at this time, so I obviously have to respond to that. However, even though I don’t personally believe in Christmas itself, I still think it is a good thing to have something like it at this time of the year. Indeed, I’m sure that even if humans never invented religion, we would still invent something like Christmas. I think many of us need some time off at the end of the year to take a break from work, and reflect on the year that was. I also think it is appropriate that many of us will wish to spend that time with family and friends. However, this is where I start to disagree with Christmas as it is now.

For one thing, the natural desire of many people to spend time with their family at Christmas has become an obligation. This not only takes the fun out of it, but also potentially generates enormous amounts of stress - we don’t all get along with everyone in our family, and Christmas is often the one time of year when we are forced to come together. Even worse, it makes those people who don’t have a family to spend Christmas with feel left out, lonely or even rejected by society. This potentially creates enormous stress as well, particularly as the modern world is becoming increasingly single. Read the rest of this entry »

In an attempt to counter pervasive and disturbing religious advertising, writer for guardian.co.uk Ariane Sherine proposed an interesting idea: running the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” on the sides of London buses. She chose the phrase “probably” to try and ensure the ads don’t run afoul of the Advertising Standards Authority (never mind the fact that Christians can run whatever Biblical quote they want!). After receiving an overwhelmingly positive response to the idea, the atheist bus campaign was launched on October 21. And it raised £83,000 in only two days! Apparently the donation web site, JustGiving, had never received so much support for a campaign before! It just goes to show that atheists do have money to spend, and can organise themselves to counter the religious juggernaut if they want to. We really need to see more of this!

It is also interesting that the slogan picks up on the fact that atheists are usually happier and more content then theists, contrary to what most people think or expect. There is a great happiness in the freedom that not having a God looking over your shoulder (and especially the threat of hell) brings!

Thankyou to Joe Miller for bringing this story to my attention!

Check out this Republican attack ad on the Democratic senate candidate for North Carolina, Kay Hagan (to me, it comes across more as a promo for a better, more sensible America that really does separate church and state!). All secular Americans really ought to show their support for Godless Americans PAC, and let Kay Hagan know that her support of them means she has your support as well. You can make your voice heard by donating to Kay Hagan’s campaign, and letting her know that you’re doing so because of her support of Godless Americans PAC. Otherwise, American politicians may be even more reluctant to associate themselves with the secularist agenda than they are now.

In my previous Faith vs. Belief post, I discussed the fact that an important reason atheism cannot be considered a “faith” is that nobody actually wants to be an atheist - people only become atheists because they feel they have to. We all take comfort in the idea of a God taking care of us and looking after things, and especially the idea that we will go to eternal paradise when we die. An atheist has to actively fight against these deep seated desires and instincts, to accept the cold, harsh reality that there is no God to love us and take care of us, and that when we die, we really do just die. This is why - despite the extreme objective irrationality of a belief in God - most of us just cannot let go of this belief. I know I couldn’t - it took me years to simply accept what the facts were telling me, and embrace the reality that there is no God, no afterlife, and no higher meaning to my existence. It was a very slow and painful process. But astonishingly, once I was finally able to let go of that last vestige of belief, I suddenly found I was happier than I ever was at any other time in my adult life!

How on earth could this be? It was certainly an enormous surprise for me! Although I believed in God, I never followed any established religion, so I wasn’t really subject to the sorts of restrictions they put on people. Yet the first thing that struck me was how much more empowered - and just plain free - I felt as an atheist. I was never aware of how restricted I was by the idea that I wasn’t really the master of my own destiny, and that everything, including me, was under God’s control. Before, I was basically just a pawn on God’s chessboard, but now I was able to make my life into whatever I wanted it to be, because I was in control. This was an important factor in making me feel confident enough to launch my own web site, and express myself - in any way I saw fit - to the entire world. Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous Agnostic Extremists post, I discussed how atheism is not a faith - or if it is, then every other belief is a faith too, including the belief of these “agnostics” that we can never know whether God exists or not. And as I pointed out in that thread, this makes the word “faith” utterly meaningless. So to clear up this confusion, it seems we need to figure out exactly what faith is.

I think the central problem here is that theists - and theistic apologists - like to use the words “faith” and “belief” pretty much interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. But they do not. It is true that all faith is a form of belief; however, it is not true that all belief is a form of faith. Faith is in fact a subset of belief: it is believing in something primarily because you want to believe in it - even to the point of denying the facts, or at least twisting them to suit your chosen belief system. But if you believe in something simply because that’s what the facts indicate, that isn’t faith at all.

This begs the obvious question though: how do we know whether somebody believes in something because they want to, or because of what the facts tell them? First of all, we need to determine a reasonable and logical starting point for establishing this. Common sense dictates that we should start with the assumption that something doesn’t exist until its existence is proven, at least to a reasonable certainty - and this is especially true when we are dealing with an extraordinary claim. For example, we don’t really need to prove that we have great grandparents, even though many of us have never seen them. The mere fact that we exist demonstrates to a reasonable certainty that our great grandparents must have existed as well. On the other hand, if I were to tell you there was a monster standing behind you, what would you do? You would turn around and look of course. If you see there isn’t any monster behind you, but I keep insisting there is, what would you say to me? You would demand that I prove it of course! No reasonable person would expect you to have to try and disprove there is a monster standing behind you - that would be totally nonsensical and ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned in my post from yesterday, I decided to contribute to the The Blasphemy Challenge because I believed in their objectives of promoting open discussion about atheism and religion, and encouraging atheists to “come out of the closet”. It was of course no surprise that many Christians found this objectionable; what was more surprising was that many people who called themselves “agnostics” did as well. In theory, all agnostics should also be atheists, as they don’t believe in God - the definition of the word atheism itself is simply a=lack of theism=belief in God(s). However, there is a particular breed of “agnostic” - who I will call agnostic extremists - who like to say that atheism is just as much a religion as any form of theism, and who feel they are logically superior to atheists.

Of course, when Thomas Huxley originally coined the term “agnostic”, he really didn’t think he was in any position to determine the existence or non-existence of God. He certainly knew the Book of Genesis was wrong - he was “Darwin’s bulldog” after all! But like Darwin, he was unable to imagine how the universe could have come into being without some kind of “higher creative force”. At the time, this was a perfectly reasonable way to think, as we didn’t have anywhere near the knowledge of physics and astronomy that we do now. I’m sure that if Huxley and Darwin were alive today, they would call themselves atheists; and even with the knowledge that they did have, they clearly didn’t believe in God in the conventional sense anyway. Also, I don’t believe they ever said that we can never know whether God exists or not; merely that they were unable to determine this themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Although we’ve been planning to launch this blog for some time, a major motivation in finally getting it up was the fact that I could no longer link to my main site from my MySpace page, as they are now blocking all links to adult sites. This is also one of the reasons we decided to separate my blog from my main site, and keep it strictly non-nude, so that I could reach as wide an audience as possible. However, even when I have covered up my “naughty bits”, I have still been subjected to censorship. One example of this was the removal of my contribution to The Blasphemy Challenge by YouTube.

The image above links to a high quality version the video we originally posted (in MPEG4 format - you’ll need either QuickTime or 3ivx to view it). As you can see, anything that might be considered “offensive” is strategically covered by my hair (we also posted an extended fully nude version on my main site). Yet YouTube took it down within hours of us posting it! In response, my webmaster Lee whipped up a ridiculously censored version of the video, and posted that on his YouTube channel. Read the rest of this entry »