Religion

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.

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 response to my last couple of posts - which implored Americans to vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming US Presidential election - those who disagree with me (both here and via email) often put forward arguments that basically amount to one thing: that I should have a better understanding of conservative “middle America” (of course, when they say “conservative” in this case, what they really mean is “Christian fundamentalist”). Indeed, they seem to think that everyone across the world should try to gain a better understanding of them. Well for one thing, understanding is a two way street: one of the biggest problems the outside world has with fundamentalist middle America is their apparent unwillingness to try and understand the rest of the world, and the effect of US foreign policy on it. Besides, they seem to be confusing understanding with agreement - just because we don’t agree with them, doesn’t mean we don’t understand them. Indeed, I suspect the majority of people understand fundamentalist middle America quite well, as they are - let’s face it - so simple.

They believe in the complete, literal word of the Bible, and that those who don’t are “evil”, or at least “misguided”. Hence they always vote Republican, because only Republicans are willing to accept the literal “truth” of the Bible. They also think America is the greatest country in the world, and that everybody else thinks (or at least should think) the same way. This leads them to think that the US has a God given right to impose its values on the rest of the world, and that anybody who disagrees with this must be “anti-American”. There is no room for anyone to criticise any aspect of US foreign policy, because the US can do no wrong, as it is on a mission from God. In short, they have a very simplistic, black and white, good versus evil, “you’re either with us or against us” kind of attitude to the world. Yet the real world simply does not work this way, and this not only creates problems for people outside of middle America, but ironically - indeed, especially - also for middle America itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, of course, marks the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. Coming as it does in the midst of an American Presidential campaign, I thought it might be a good idea to reflect on whether Americans have learned the lessons of these attacks, specifically with regards to their vote in the upcoming US election.

So what did September 11 teach us? Fundamentally that - even when your military superiority is so enormous that you are the world’s only remaining super power - no one is impervious to terrorism. Indeed, terrorism has actually come about as a means of attacking and (literally) terrorising an opponent who is too powerful to attack militarily. This in turn obviously means that military force alone is totally insufficient for dealing with terrorism - and as we can’t just deal with it militarily, we clearly have to find another, more effective way to deal with it if we really want to put an end to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, well, well. John McCain may be the most progressive Republican Presidential candidate we’ve had for a very long time, but at the end of the day, he’s still a Republican. That means he has to tow the party line, which in turn means - very concerningly - that he has to pander to the religious right.

Hence his selection of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate. She must seem like a dream come true for McCain: a woman to try and grab the Hillary vote, and an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christian to please the religious right. If there’s any disaffected Hillary voters reading this though, please be aware that her sex is probably about the only thing she has in common with Clinton. Like all good conservative Christians, she is anti-choice - Palin will do nothing to advance the rights of women in the US (if anything, she may even set them back). And even more worryingly, she is also a staunch creationist, who advocates the teaching of creationism alongside (although I’m sure she really wants it to actually be instead of) evolution in science class. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Here’s George Carlin to provide us with a little comic relief again, as usual with a healthy dose of truth! I’m just disappointed he didn’t say anything about “thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ass”.

This video is courtesy once again of Kid A.

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 »

After the last two very serious posts, I thought it might be a good idea to post a more humorous perspective on religion, from the late, great George Carlin. Sad part is though, everything he says is absolutely true… A very big thankyou to Kid A for bringing this brilliant video to my attention!