Happy Darwin Day 2014

In honor of Darwin Day this year, I wanted to take a little time to encourage those of you who haven't given creationism or evolution much thought to do so.  Picking a side isn't the point.  It's a bit like voting: both sides have a stance on something.  The "winner" of the argument will go on to affect change in your world.  Therefore, getting to know the stances of both sides helps you to make informed decisions about things that will effect you, and aid you in realizing in what context information in the future is being presented.

On A Lack of Substance
If you've never really thought much about the Evolution vs. Creation discussion before, I encourage you to take some time to look into each side in as much depth as you can.  Maybe you're on the fence about which side you agree with.  Maybe you're a Christian or a spiritual person and think that necessarily means you must be a Creationist.

Evolution has nothing do say about any God.  To accept the fact that things change over time doesn't mean you have to not believe in a Supreme Being.  Evolution doesn't talk about how life began, only how life changes.

The biggest arguments against it as an means of explaining life boils down into these fallacies:

#1: God of the Gaps
All throughout human history, there have been things we don't understand.  Even still, there are lots and lots of things we don't yet fully understand, and even more things we have no clue about at all.  The problem is that these gaps in our knowledge are a great fit for God.  Any time we can say, "I don't know" or "I can't explain it", a believer in some kind of deity will answer with their god, even though that explains a mystery with an even bigger mystery.  Where our knowledge ends, religion and god-belief begins.

2: Personal Incredulity
If you've never really thought about evolution before, you might be thinking, "I can't imagine how that works".  This is a common starting point for a lot of Creationists, and indeed before Charles Darwin uncovered the method in 1800's, it was the starting point for all of humanity.  But simply not being able to understand how something works doesn't make the thing nor its explanation any less valid.  That's like saying, "I just can't believe people could build a rocket ship!" is a valid refutation of the 1961 orbit by Yuri Gagarin.

3: Not Enough Time
When it comes down to it, a lot of Creationists today accept evolution -- they realize things change over time.  They just stop before one thing changes into another.  That is, given enough time, an organism can evolve into a separate species.  Yet Creationists claim that no one "kind" of animal changes into another "kind".  The problem they have is simply with time.  Evolution works given enough time, but due to a human's relatively short time to live, this idea makes it harder to put into perspective, because we don't see change occurring fast enough.  And since the hard-core Creationists believe the literal interpretation of the Bible and only allow for 6,000 to 10,000 years, they don't allow for the millions or billions of years such a change needs.

The Parnell Building at the University of Queensland, Australia, houses the world's oldest continually running experiment: a funnel of tar pitch (bitumen) sits inside a glass case at room temperature.  The pitch looks solid (and in fact it can be shattered with  a hammer) but it actually flows at an extremely slow rate.  It takes about a decade for it to drip.  The experiment was set up by a physics professor in 1927, and it as dripped eight times, and is due to drop very soon.  The rate is very slow in our perspective.  The continental drift of Australia is ten times faster than the flow of this stuff.

A Creationist looks at the time it takes for evolution in much the same way as someone who, for example, could have taken the pitch-drop experiment home with them, lived with it, perhaps got a Ph.D in something along the way, and every day looked at it and concluded, "it doesn't drip".

We can't generally see evolution occurring because it takes generations to work.  We do, however, see it occur in bacteria because they go through generations within a matter of hours.  Following the evidence, we see that Earth is millions of years old, 4.5 billion in fact.  Even without the evidence for evolution (fossil record, comparative biology, DNA, etc.), it should be easy to see that small changes over a time on that scale could result in great diversity.

Dig For Yourself
This blog post by no means should convince anyone of anything.  Its purpose is to encourage you to start looking into things for yourself.  Read and watch all that you can on both evolutionarily science and Creationist information.  Ask critical questions of everything you find.  Try to falsify, try to debunk, try to dismantle every argument you hear.

Think for yourself.


-STA

Grand Designs

Since I've decided to make a new effort to blog again, I've been reviewing some old drafts and talking points that have been accruing dust.  Yesterday, I came across a post that I never got around to finishing.  It was written when Ray Comfort called into the Atheist Experience show near the end of March in 2011.  I just heard that Matt and Ray are supposed to debate again this coming Friday, and since this is the eve of the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham "debate", I thought it fitting to finish up the post for you.


Bananas!
As I press play on a video of the Atheist Experience TV show, I find myself reaching for a stress ball.  This is a special episode in which evangelist Ray Comfort calls the program.  I'm familiar with Ray and his favorite arguments for the god of the bible, and I'm more than certain he's going to use one that falls into the category of PRATT (Previously Refuted A Thousand Times).

Sure enough, Ray began his argument from design right out of the gate.  In Ray's view, anyone who has a brain and eyes should be able to look around at the world and see design.  How this apparent design points to his particular god is still a mystery, but the flaws to this argument are not.

And while you might think I'm about to list all the reasons why this argument is flawed, I'm not (you can find those on your own).  Instead, I'm actually going to -- for the sake of this post -- concede that nature has been designed.

"STA, have you lost your godless mind?!" No, no yet anyway.  But if we analyze this "designer" vis-à-vis its "design" we can examine the aptitude of this being.  It's irrelevant if this designer is the god of the Bible or the Qur'an, Zeus, Baal, FSM, or shape-shifting lizard men from the Andromeda galaxy.  If we assume that whoever created and/or designed life as it exists on our planet was indeed a conscious designer (or group of designers) that has a mind either dependent or independent of a body, we can examine its work and know it, as Matthew 7:20 states.

I Don't Need No Proof
I'm a somewhat musician and I love to sing and strum to a variety of songs, several of which come from a band called Live.  (At the time of writing, Live has disbanded and apparently the lead singer has now fully embraced Christianity.)  My guitar-playing buddy and I used to cover one of their songs entitled Heaven, whose chorus lyrics are:

I don't need no one to tell me about heaven
I look at my daughter, and I believe.
I don't need no proof when it comes to God and truth
I can see the sunset and I perceive.

I have to admit that once I truly became aware of my disbelief in a god, I could no longer perform this song -- even though I still perform many songs that reference ideas about heaven, god, angels, etc.  This song embodies the argument from design (in some ways a subset of the argument from ignorance) so completely that I can't bring myself to perform it for people.  It's still a good song in its own right, with a great hook, catchy melody, and it's well performed as many of Live's songs are.  But the narrator of the song (and now the actual singer, apparently) believes that God exists because things like sunsets and babies are beautiful.

Pay No Attention to the Flesh-Eating Bacteria

This kind of argument is put forth almost every time I ask a theist to give me reasons why they believe in god.  The response usually goes something like, "Look at the trees, birds, and the magnificence of a baby's eye and tell me how you don't believe in a god!"

But what about the very unpleasant in the world: ichneumon wasps, childhood leukemia, necrotizing fasciitis.  It's always amazing to me that I have to point out this bald-faced cherry picking of nature.  They might say, "look at this wonderful flower!  Only a God could have made it!" and then I turn over the flower and find ten kinds of bug that can kill you ten different, horrible ways.  Where's the credit go then?

Were we to examine the enumerations of our world's supposedly grand designs, we would see that a better design could be easily proposed.  Neil deGrasse Tyson said it well:

As Mr. Tyson points out, the world doesn't seem designed with us in mind.  Indeed, even our own bodies are lacking when it comes to functionality.  There are a myriad of ways to die without the aid of external forces, such as choking to death.

The theistic claims generally rest upon the idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing designer, and the fact that we, a supposedly fallible and broken creation, could suggest a design that is better than "perfect" should be a red flag.

It is not hubris to claim that the designer could have done better.  For the "designer" is blind.

The Blind Watchmaker
Nature has been designed -- by nature herself.  The puddle of rain was not designed for the divot in which it rests.  The hand was not designed for the glove.  Creationists too oftentimes put the cart before the horse.  Had enough metaphor yet?

The "designer" simply used the tools that were available, molding and shaping fauna and flora by jerry-rigging haphazardly working with what it has.  It's like giving a child a set of blocks and telling him to build various things with them. Whereas the child is given only a finite number of blocks, a truly omnipotent designer wouldn't have to stick with the pool of resources to create, it could simply create from nothing the parts it needed.

Only in reality, the "designer" is mindless.  There is no direction or goal to the design.  It's not a true design in the sense that we know it, and that's one of the main problems with the watchmaker argument, a favorite of Ray's.  But we can look around and easily see how much of the universe isn't designed for us.  We can examine ourselves and discover problems with our parts and systems as a whole.  We see design because life works and we're used to thinking that things can't work unless they are created with a goal to do so.

If a designer made nature, it could have done better.  Fortunately, we have found that by putting the evidence first -- not the conclusion that we are designed -- we find life changing and evolving without the need of a designer.  The results look designed, but only in the same sense that the puddle looks designed for the hole it lands in.

I Look At My Daughter
Even if evolution were to somehow be disproved, some kind of intelligent designer wouldn't automatically win the top spot for explanation.  Instead it must be proven on its own merits that this designer made things like trees, birds, cholera, and eyeballs.

Since the time of this writing, I have had a daughter.  The first time I saw her, I was filled with emotion and love.  She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  Now, looking back at this post, I'm reminded of those lyrics in the song.  I don't need anyone to tell me a god designed us.  I look at my daughter, and I perceive the little shifts that life took, over millions of years, to "design" such a wonderful thing.  To claim that a god poofed her into existence is to deny facts and evidence we've gathered through diligent study, not reading from a book.  And we I look upon a sunset, I believe that humanity can and will learn more through the use of science and the eschewing of religion and ideas of intelligent designers.

But I'll admit my version's not as catchy.


-STA

Reasons for Everything

My mother is fond of saying, "Everything happens for a reason."  I agree with her, but not in the way you'd think.

She, unlike myself, is a theist.  The "reason" she attributes everything to ultimately boils down to nothing short of a divine plan authored by some all-knowing being.  As a loud, snooty man on Fox News is fond of saying, "the sun goes up and comes down", and that's enough to ascribe an invisible father figure to it all.

I'm somewhat of a determinist.  Now I don't think there's an ultimate plan for anything -- I'm no fatalist.  But I do think things happen for reasons we can either explain, or can't (yet?).  Say, casting a handful of dice.  Natural forces determine how the dice will fall; everything from the strength and angle of your hand, to its height above the table, to the material makeup of the dice and the surface, to air pressure, to the tilt of the earth, and any number of other factors.  But that does not mean that it's written somewhere ahead of time "On March 21, 2011, STA will throw a 2, 4, and 5 on 3d6."  We can't really process all the factors in a seemingly random event, like a dice throw -- that's why we use them to determine random outcomes.  If we really could process it all, it wouldn't seem random.

Therefore, I don't really believe in randomness. We might not know or understand all the circumstances for an event, but I don't think we can accurately say a thing just randomly happens.  Even quantum mechanics might have some extenuating circumstances that lie beyond a certain complexity boundary for its seemingly random goings-on.  I see randomness as a label that we put on too-hard-to-calculate events.

Sure, things happen for a reason.  But those reasons have reasons themselves, and they've nothing to do with gods or magic.  There may be a reason for everything, but it's just a whole lot bigger than you or I can comprehend...without the need for God.

-STA

Pickin' Cherries

Do you like Red Lobster?  What about homosexuals?

Most bible-believing Christians don't realize that the same chapter that condemns homosexuality also prohibits eating shellfish.  The point being that many Christians (as well as believers of other religions) pick and choose what they believe.  They'll say "well, that was the Old Testament" whenever atrocities such as genocide, rape, incest, slavery, or murder are brought up.  Yet, they'll cite things such as the Ten Commandments or the condemnation of homosexuals without care that they're referencing the very same Old Testament.

I've been thinking a lot about this buffet-style approach to faith recently, and I'm sorta on the fence.  One the one hand -- and this is probably due to an afterglow of my once held faith -- but I generally tend to look down on wishy-washy believers.  (Here's an old semi-tongue-in-cheek post on moderates.)  They can't commit to the whole meal that they ordered with their chosen faith.  It's like saying you're a KKK member only because they have great barbecue parties, and ignoring "all that bad stuff" they do.  They can't stomach the evil or idiotic doctrines in their faith, so they pretend like they're not there.

To me, you should be aware of the where and the why for the things you believe about your god.  Those who claim to be "not religious but spiritual" come to mind here. It's strange to think that someone can have all these words, phrases, and ideas without realizing where those things originated, regardless of how much the believer alters them on their own.  In a way, it's just rebooting and rebranding a story, and I guess that tends to irk me (thanks, Hollywood).

On the other hand, I see it as the only possible way a sane human being can live in this day and age and still believe in the nonsense of religion.  As Matt Dillahunty frequently points out, science has dragged religion kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.  Just look at Galileo, the man that proved the earth rotated around the sun and was not, as the Church vehemently claimed, at the center of the universe.  Now, in the modern world where things like the germ theory of disease and the heliocentric theory are practically common knowledge, you see religious people trying to claim that they had it right all along, and that those other people weren't True Believers™.  Religious people in the modern civilized world are bearing such a huge cognitive dissonance that they almost always have to cherry-pick parts of their faith's cannon in order to function.  Imagine a religious doctrine that goes something along the lines of "Water can't freeze.  Everything in this book is the word of the creator of the universe, and is 100% correct."  Now think of the mental hoops that someone living today would have to jump through in order to adhere to that belief and still be an otherwise rational, sane person.  When you know for a fact that certain claims made by religions can be proven wrong to a monumentally high degree of certainty, but you believe with all your heart that the evidence is contradicted by what you think is the direct word of God, there are only so many ways the situation can resolve itself.

For many, realizing those claims are a mix of fairy tales, folklore, misunderstandings, allegories, and attempts by ignorant people to explain nature is enough to drop the "100% Truth" label altogether.  For others, their interpretation concludes with some of it being allegory and some being truth, and the current unknowns get to remain "true" until science show them to be otherwise, then they get become "allegory-all-along" in the believers mind without skipping a beat.  The moment science advances and shuts a gap that God had previously filled, the believer must either accept reality or ignore it.  Often enough, once ignoring it becomes impossible, they claim their religion had it right all along.

So yeah, I find myself coming down on both sides: you should be a fundamentalist if you're going to believe in a thing.  Don't half-ass it; try to understand everything it encompasses and do everything that entails.  On the other hand, it's a good thing to be a moderate believer.  You're showing that you're not a complete nut-ball, and that you understand how reality can be determined.

-STA

We Know What We Don't Believe

A new survey given by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has shown something I have found to be pretty much the norm: atheists know more about religious than believers do.  Yeah, we know about the claims of religions -- that's why we're atheists!

Questions were asked to people of all faiths, including atheists and agnostics.  While most of the reports I've seen stat that on this survey label "atheists" as "people who say there is no god" and "agnostics" as "people who just aren't sure".  If you're a long-time reader (or someone who's remotely familiar with the issue), you'll know that those definitions aren't entirely correct.  But for the sake of this survey I'll let it slide.  The study found that that on average, most atheists and agnostics scored higher on all questions (average 21 correct out of 32 questions), while religious people scored poorly on questions about their own religion and even worse on questions about other faiths.  These were multiple-choice questions where things like, "What religion was Mother Teresa?" or "In what city was Jesus born?".

We atheists tend to be a thinking bunch.  We are generally well-educated and highly analytical.  As Pew director of research Alan Cooperman said, "[Atheists] are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

And we do.  We care more about whether or not what we think is true rather than if it makes us feel good.  We want to know how the world works.  We listen to claims of religions (and scientists, politicians, ghost hunters etc.) and we think critically.  Most religious people either can't be bothered to -- or have been trained to -- not analyze what they're being told.  The just accept it as truth and repeat it.  In Brian Flemming's documentary, "The God Who Wasn't There", he asks random church-goers questions like "Have you ever heard of Dionysus?" or "Who was Mithras?" and the believers just respond with umms and aahhs and "All I know is Jesus, man; it's just all about Jesus!"

Some believers also seem to think that they can spend two minutes on the internet and are thus qualified to tell a field scientist he's wrong.  This is particularly popular with Evangelical creationists, but no believer is immune. 

So if you are a believer, ask yourself why.  Ask yourself if you can name one of Hinduism's holy texts.  Do you know who Joseph Smith is?  What were the first Ten Commandments given to Moses?  In what century was Mohammad born?  You don't have to be highly intelligent or all that educated, just learn when you don't know something, and learn how to look into it.

Actual survey here (PDF) or test yourself here.

-STA

Who Really Needs God?

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving weekend went well.  How many of you nonbelievers had discussions with religious family members?  I'm betting a lot of you 1) sat quietly through the prayer before dinner, and then 2) listened to your aunt bitch about how Obama is the Muslim Communist Antichrist.  I was lucky enough to only have to deal with a few racist jokes this year; and all-in-all fairly good Thanksgiving.

This time of year always gets me thinking about why people cling to the ideas they have.  What makes these otherwise kind, sane, decent people feel the need to uphold barbaric, antiquated, immoral concepts?


Religion Binds Culture
Religions tend to contain directives that are divisive and harmful.  They are prone to being used by people who are willing to take the necessary actions suggested by them.  Take the passage of "thou shall not suffer a witch to live".  That passage is toothless until someone comes along who is of such character as to accept it as an authority and then act upon it.  Therefore, the passage (or the religion, moreover) becomes a reflection of that individual's character.

Not only that, but religions change -- and poison -- the culture they're in.  They increase the likelihood that people with these characteristics will be cultivated.  Cultures change over time if left to their own devices.  The problem is that a religion, upon its creation, encodes the current culture.  Once locked in, it attempts to maintain the status quo.  This is why the believers of the Bronze Age ideals of Christianity and Islam are trying to keep their outdated ways of thinking in the norm.  Religion shackles culture, inhibits progress, and encourages stasis and stagnation.

Breaking The Chains
So who needs religion?  Many people feel that without religion humanity would have no sense of right and wrong.  Some even feel that its impossible to breath without God.

A lot of the ideas modern folks have about God, prayer, and religion has grown out of the mindset of the contemporaries of their belief systems.  As stated above, religion naturally assumes the state in which it is founded.  Those who hold Bronze Age beliefs come from a long line of people wanting a better life.  The average poor person in America would be considered rich by the standards at the time the New Testament was written.  The average tween probably knows more and is generally smarter than anyone who lived over two thousand years ago.

But even by comparison, some people today still feel like the world is against them.  They covet the positions of the rich, feel like the "good guys" are loosing, and see the world as doomed.  Most people still cling to hopes for a better life.  I suppose in some sense that will never go away; no matter how good things get, there will always be a need to find something better.  Religion thrives on this idea.  It tells you that things are guaranteed to be better for you, if not in this life, then in the next.  It's the ultimate "grass is greener" mentality -- something that's extremely appealing to the downtrodden.


We have to eliminate the need for god.  We have to realize, as a whole, that together we can accomplish amazing things.  With the scientific discoveries of the century, we've discovered microbiology, cured major diseases, and even walked on the moon.  As long as our society neglects people, as long as there is major injustice and suffering, god will be there as the last resort and the empty hope for surrendered minds.


-STA

Same Camp, Same Colors

A Mild Delusion
I sometimes hear from Christians that don't accept the ways of the fundies.  Though we can both agree on their outrageous antics, we disagree when it comes to who takes the blame.  That's where I put moderates in the same bucket as the fundamentalists.  It doesn't matter what the amount of delusion is, it's the problems at the core that tie them all together.

Moderate and liberal believers act as a safe house for fundamentalists and provide a shield for them.  Whenever the majority becomes comprised of relaxed moderates and anything bad happens that would cause them to think God is angry with them or the world or whatever, the moderates begin thinking, "What did we stop doing that would cause God to be vengeful?  What changed?"  They most often find the answer in fundamentalism.

If You Can't Beat 'em, Keep 'em Around
I used to be a fundamentalist Christian, growing ever increasingly moderate all the way out.  Even though my tactics and reasoning were changing, I still had a mindset of a core fundamentalist.  I'd see someone going "a little too far" on something, but I always knew their heart was in the right place.  We had an elderly couple who began to grow more and more vocal over the choice of clothing the girls in the youth group wore to church: the dreaded and sinful pair of jeans.  "That's no way for a woman to dress!" they could be overheard exclaiming as the congregation filed out of services.  I didn't think God gave a damn about something as materialistic as pants, they backed up their objections with claims from the bible.  I don't recall any particular passages, but it's not uncommon for a believer to say, "well, that's Bible!" when it comes to something they firmly believe -- whether or not it is actually stated in there.  The point is that none of us less-sexist of the flock could shake the couple's certainty of the sin being committed, and we couldn't show them otherwise using the same "logical" tactics and arguments from the bible and faith.  Those types of disagreements always come down to, "I'll have to pray about it".

The harboring of fundamentalist ideals is performed by all believers, be they liberal, moderate, or extremist.  It's because the ideological framework is built using the same wood from the same tree (if you'll pardon the labored metaphor, and those that follow).  The scaffolding may reach differing heights, but the foundation is the same unfounded illusion.  Until the entire structure is torn down and can be rebuilt using actual knowledge and sound critical-thinking methods, the intellectual groundwork of moderates is indistinguishable from even the most delusional fundamentalists.


-STA

Wedding Hells

I recently attended a wedding reception and there was one thing that bothered me (enough to sit down and rant about it today).  And no, it wasn't the "blessing" that was given before people ate the buffet.  A song was sung to the newly-weds; a narrative offering advice on how to stay together.  A line in the song suggested, in effect, when times get tough to turn to God and he'll fix it.

Bad Chord
I'm finding several issues I personally have with the otherwise great original song.  First off, like so many other theistic pronouncements, it assumes that a) the speaker's God and the audience's God are the same, and b) that the audience even has a God.  It's akin to singing a poignant song about real-life things such as love and marriage, then including a line about finding leprechauns grading gold at the end of rainbows.  It kills the mood of the song and makes you look small-minded.

Keep-Away
The biggest beef I have with it is the idea itself.  Let's look at it from both the viewpoint of the believer and the atheist.  First, the former.  Using the idea of the Christian God, one may easily see how seeking His guidance is obviously the route to take.  He is all-knowing, after all.  According to their theology, God has a plan for everyone.  Thus, when a couple's marriage is on the rocks, a quick voice-mail up to the clouds and all should be well.  But how many Christian marriages fail, even with the fervent prayers of not only the betrothed but often times their families and friends as well?  If the answer is as easy as asking God what to do, and getting the sense that the answer is "be kind to and TALK with each other", then why do over half of all theistic unions fail?

Assuming God does exist with all the superpowers generally attributed to him, it goes without saying that such a being is, for lack of better terminology at the moment, a giant prick.  In fact, those reading this right now, be they theist or atheist, are probably more moral and ethical than the Christian deity.  For how many of you would, if you knew the answer to healing the hurting hearts of two people, would refuse to administer your aid until asked?  Would you wait to poor out your miraculous blessings upon the hungry until all of them sought your help?  Would you withhold a cure that would strike leukemia from a dying girl until not just the girl asked for it, but her family, the whole ward floor, the entire hospital, town -- or continent -- agreed you could?

It Takes Two -- Me and You
Since I am one of the millions who do not subscribe to such egotistical bullshit, I will say that the obvious course of action is not to turn to some imaginary friend to fix your martial issues, but instead turn to each other, the flesh-and-blood human being with whom you committed your life to.  Seek the problem at its source.  Talk with each other.  Listen to each other.  Find out what the hell is going on and do not cower from it.  If you need to involve beings from outside of yourselves, turn to your family, your friends.  I'm sure there's at least one person every married couple can talk to (we all had at least one witness, right?).  Find the bug.  Hunt it down like a heat-seeking missile.  The point is that the answer is within you; it's not going to come from some mysterious force outside of you.  Both of you -- whether you knew it or not -- took the necessary steps to fall in love.  It's going to take both of you again to stay that way.

And if he's reading this, let the songwriter know that this is in no way an attack on him directly.  He's one of the best and most upstanding guys I know, and a wonderful friend.  The contention is merely with the message and wording of his outstanding and touching song -- a small disputation, yet one I think worthy of mention.


-STA

Happy bEarth Day!

Way back in 1658, Archbishop James Ussher determined that the world was created precisely at 9am, October 23, 4004 BC.  So today is the official creation day and the earth is a ripe young 6012 years old!  Men of God have faith, and that counts just as much as evidence, right?


-STA

God is THE Answer

I occasionally need a quick laugh and while traveling, nothing is easier than flipping on a Christian radio talk show. This particular one had me listening in for a few minutes, intrigued by the conversation between the host and a caller. The topic was the seemingly-out-of-place book of Ecclesiastes, a rather hard book for Christians to read without adding and changing the wording to make its message of "life is meaningless" mean something different (even though the book itself explicitly warns not to add to the book). The show's caller asked something regarding the mysterious ways of God. The host's response made me choke on my Skittles: "God doesn't give us answers, He gives us theology."

Not On Your Own Understanding
In the effort to once again tie atheism with nihilism, the Christian radio host continued to spout of claims that a life without God is a meaningless, hopeless life. These claims were of course not supported by anything other than the same words spoken with different inflection. But we've heard that song over and over and have proven it false. The thing that truly bothered me was how crass and willfully ignorant that statement was.

Now I've known first-hand how religion works and I talk with religious people on an almost daily basis, yet every time I hear this stuff I want to rip my hair out. They say things like "don't question, just accept" and claim it is the smartest thing you could ever do. They tout incredulity and gullibility as their highest virtue.

The radio preacher's words reminded me why I make videos and posts and why I talk to people about religion. The harm it causes to not only the believers and their family, but to the rest of the world, now and future generations. Not being able to think critically about ANYTHING is a greater risk to public safety than worrying about seat-belt laws. Those with this mentality of "we don't need answers, we just need God" scare the Jeebus out of me.


-STA

The Terror of Ignorance

Most people are stupid. I've probably said a thousand times by now that the education in this country is atrocious, and our critical thinking skills are about on par with those of common mouse turds. I'm not entirely sure of it, but I'd be willing to bet a small fortune that religion (or at least, religiously-based thinking) is at the root of our collective ignorance.

"Duh buybull sez..."
That ignorance is of the most terrifying molds: self-imposed. The fact that ignorance is necessitated by religion, coupled with the modern life-altering "gifts" that science, technology, and otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable people have given us, should alone be enough for any sane person to loudly cast religion aside. As I've said in an earlier post, I feel that one of the worst things you could possibly do to yourself is to willfully shackle your mind. Evidence -- pure, unadulterated, on-the-nose evidence -- still isn't enough to make some people see the light, as it were.

So the story goes for the idiots in Waco, Texas, where atheist Bill Nye was literally booed during a lecture where he said that the moon reflects the sun's rays and gives off no light of its own. I mean...wow. Stop and think about that: there are actually grown human beings in this day and age...people with kids...who don't, can't, or don't want to understand that the moon doesn't make light. I suspect the latter, because it's not from a lack of education or some serious head trauma or something. It's because they believe in God. They think their God wrote a book and because it says that he "created two great lights" that any physical evidence, no matter how strong and solid, won't convince them otherwise.

"Jesus, please save us....from your people!"
The knowledge that people like that make up a majority of the electorate, are raising children, and have a say in the education of future generations makes me physically ill. After typing the above paragraph, I actually had to stop and go outside for a bit. Just like when politicians or judges simply ignore rules clearly stated in our Constitution, the realization that some (most?) people can't seem to put two and two together makes me wish there was another habitable continent on this planet that wasn't already filled with the likes of them.

Religion is to blame for the ignorance in Waco, surely. Religion is synonymous with ignorance; it means ignoring evidence and reason in favor of "this-is-how-it-is" doctrine from other morons who don't know what they're talking about. Christianity's book starts out with humans being ignorant, and the first attempt at knowledge warrants damnation of their kind. And think a little more on just how that story went down: you have two ignorant humans listening to opposing discussion (by a snake, no less). Now forget the symbolism, ridiculousness, and supposed sacredness of the text, and ignore the idea that the snake wasn't lying, etc. Just think about what the story implies. The worst thing you can do is talk to someone who doesn't believe what you believe. Ignorance is bliss.

And IGNORANT!


-STA

What It Takes These Days

The more conversations I have with "Christians", the more I learn about what it takes to be one these days. What does it mean to call yourself a Christian in the days of science and technology? Well, I've noticed two different types (the fundies being a standard and obvious third), and talking to them is what drives me to drink.

There are those who claim that they have no religion, or despise religion, and yet label themselves as Christian. These people hold to the ideals of a book or a legend and profess Christianity, but wouldn't say they are part of a religion. I got news for you folks: you are in a religion, morons! Maybe you don't like the way the institution is expressed or maybe you just mean to say that you don't like the organization. Hell, maybe you want to pick and choose from the Christian religion and form your own religion from it! Whatever the case is, the fact remains that Christianity is a religion. Eddy Goombah knows what to call you.

Then there are those who label themselves Christians, yet know little to nothing about the religion itself. It's amazing that somebody would profess to be a member of a group without first understanding that group's tenets. Yet I find Christians (and others, for that matter) proclaiming their religious membership without ever having read the manual or understanding what it even means.

Now that I think about it, I think it's a possibility that one group creates the other. "Hey, I'm gonna call myself a Nazi (because my family is Nazi), but I don't know a thing about them. I know they like to barbecue and play backgammon, so they're alright with me. Yep, I'm a Nazi! What's that? Do what? I don't hate Jews....I don't hate anybody. Yeah I'm a Nazi, but I don't practice all that other stuff! It's all about brotherly love for me!" Is that how it happens?

Happy Green Beer Day!


-STA

God is Prince Charming

We idealize love from a young age. Disney movies ingrain in us the fantasy of romanticized fairytale love. We enter the hormonal turmoils of adolescence with this notion and discover the not-so-charming reality of courtship. Many people enter into marriage with this fantasy, and divorce rates reveal the honest truth.

Don't get me wrong; I believe love exists, but it's certainly not this storybook romance that movies and antique rhymes make it out to be. It is sometimes hard to give up a fantasy even with a hard dose of reality. Many people still cling to childhood wishes, no matter how fairytale-ish or delusional. As we get older and more immersed in reality, we start losing the idealism we've held in many aspects of our lives. We learn that the girl at the fast food place is a real person; we discover that our math teacher has a life outside of the forty-five minutes we see him each weekday.

I see theism in this respect. Belief in God is a fairy tale. The fantasy stories of living after you die in a palace made of gold and mansions full of ever-virgins are just that -- stories. Christians idolize Jesus as well, clinging to the idea of a once-lived perfection of humanity. These ideas of perfection and fairytale love are delusions and wishes of our imaginations.


-STA

What to Give Up for Lent

The season of Lent begins tomorrow, and even if you're not a Catholic I challenge you to give up one (or all) of the following for the next forty days (or for as long as you live).

1. Superstitious thinking - Maybe you're the sort of person that thinks walking under ladders or breaking mirrors is "bad", or maybe you own a lucky sock, penny, shirt, or animal foot. Perhaps you're afraid of certain numbers, or think something will happen on a given day just because of the numbers in the date. Maybe you think crackers can become human flesh, or that talking to yourself can help you find your car keys or cure your cold. For the next few days, attempt to willfully break yourself of whatever mental habit you have that can be labeled superstitious. Put away belief in magic and learn about the laws of nature.
   
   
2. Credulity - If you're the kind of person who accepts things you're told without checking into the details, try for the next month to instead check into what you hear. Think about something you feel you know and actively check it out. For many faith is a virtue, but for these next few days, let it be a defect. Instead seek to back up claims you hear or ideas you come up with. The key point here is that you learn the what a reputable source is. The best sources are backed up by evidence. Gullibility won't get you as far as you think in this world.
   
   
3. Apathy (especially towards the "god question") - If you'd rather not ponder on the existence of a Supreme Being, over the coming days I urge you to do so. A lot of people are apatheists; they don't care or just don't ever think about their position on theism. For this season of Lent, take some time and gather your thoughts on this matter. It's important to understand what you think about theology, because if there is no such thing that could be called "God", millions of people are wasting their lives (and hurting the lives of others). But if there is a god, it's the most important thing for us all. If you've already made up your mind on the matter, again toss aside apathy and speak out about it. If you haven't approached the question before, take the next few days and just think about how you feel. Do you really believe in God?
   

-STA

Braving the Storm

If you haven't read it yet, check out Tim Minchin's poem "Storm":

Inner North London, top floor flat
All white walls, white carpet, white cat,
Rice Paper partitions
Modern art and ambition
The host’s a physician,
Lovely bloke, has his own practice
His girlfriend’s an actress
An old mate from home
And they’re always great fun.
So to dinner we’ve come.

The 5th guest is an unknown,
The hosts have just thrown
Us together for a favour
because this girl’s just arrived from Australia
And has moved to North London
And she’s the sister of someone
Or has some connection.

As we make introductions
I’m struck by her beauty
She’s irrefutably fair
With dark eyes and dark hair
But as she sits
I admit I’m a little bit wary
because I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy
Tattooed on that popular area
Just above the derrière
And when she says “I’m Sagittarien”
I confess a pigeonhole starts to form
And is immediately filled with pigeon
When she says her name is Storm.

Chatter is initially bright and light hearted
But it’s not long before Storm gets started:
“You can’t know anything,
Knowledge is merely opinion”
She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon
Vis a vis
Some unhippily
Empirical comment by me

“Not a good start” I think
We’re only on pre-dinner drinks
And across the room, my wife
Widens her eyes
Silently begs me, Be Nice
A matrimonial warning
Not worth ignoring
So I resist the urge to ask Storm
Whether knowledge is so loose-weave
Of a morning
When deciding whether to leave
Her apartment by the front door
Or a window on the second floor.

The food is delicious and Storm,
Whilst avoiding all meat
Happily sits and eats
While the good doctor, slightly pissedly
Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history
When Storm suddenly she insists
“But the human body is a mystery!
Science just falls in a hole
When it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.”

My hostess throws me a glance
She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance
That I’ll be off on one of my rants
But my lips are sealed.
I just want to enjoy my meal
And although Storm is starting to get my goat
I have no intention of rocking the boat,
Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle
Because - like her meteorological namesake -
Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:

“Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy
They promote drug dependency
At the cost of the natural remedies
That are all our bodies need
They are immoral and driven by greed.
Why take drugs
When herbs can solve it?
Why use chemicals
When homeopathic solvents
Can resolve it?
It’s time we all return-to-live
With natural medical alternatives.”

And try as hard as I like,
A small crack appears
In my diplomacy-dike.
“By definition”, I begin
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue
“Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
You know what they call “alternative medicine”
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.”

“So you don’t believe
In ANY Natural remedies?”

“On the contrary actually:
Before we came to tea,
I took a natural remedy
Derived from the bark of a willow tree
A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free
It’s got a weird name,
Darling, what was it again?
Masprin?
Basprin?
Asprin!
Which I paid about a buck for
Down at my local drugstore.

The debate briefly abates
As our hosts collects plates
but as they return with desserts
Storm pertly asserts,

“Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in heaven and earth
Than exist in your philosophy…
Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality,
It can’t explain love or spirituality.
How does science explain psychics?
Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?”

I’m becoming aware
That I’m staring,
I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped
In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.
Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed
Or the eighth glass of wine I just quaffed
But my diplomacy dike groans
And the arsehole held back by its stones
Can be held back no more:

“Look , Storm, I don’t mean to bore you
But there’s no such thing as an aura!
Reading Auras is like reading minds
Or star-signs or tea-leaves or meridian lines
These people aren’t plying a skill,
They are either lying or mentally ill.
Same goes for those who claim to hear God’s demands
And Spiritual healers who think they have magic hands.

By the way,
Why is it OK
For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?
Is it not totally fucked in the head
Lying to some crying woman whose child has died
And telling her you’re in touch with the other side?
That’s just fundamentally sick
Do we need to clarify that there’s no such thing as a psychic?
What, are we fucking 2?
Do we actually think that Horton Heard a Who?
Do we still think that Santa brings us gifts?
That Michael Jackson hasn’t had facelifts?
Are we still so stunned by circus tricks
That we think that the dead would
Wanna talk to pricks
Like John Edwards?

Storm to her credit despite my derision
Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision
Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition

“You’re so sure of your position
But you’re just closed-minded
I think you’ll find
Your faith in Science and Tests
Is just as blind
As the faith of any fundamentalist”

“Hm that’s a good point, let me think for a bit
Oh wait, my mistake, it’s absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.
If you show me
That, say, homeopathy works,
Then I will change my mind
I’ll spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!

You show me that it works and how it works
And when I’ve recovered from the shock
I will take a compass and carve Fancy That on the side of my cock.”

Everyones just staring at me now,
But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down,
So I figure, in for penny, in for a pound:

“Life is full of mysteries, yeah
But there are answers out there
And they won’t be found
By people sitting around
Looking serious
And saying isn’t life mysterious?
Let’s sit here and hope
Let’s call up the fucking Pope
Let’s go watch Oprah
Interview Deepak Chopra

If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo.
That show was so cool
because every time there’s a church with a ghoul
Or a ghost in a school
They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The fucking janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide.
Throughout history
Every mystery
EVER solved has turned out to be
Not Magic.

Does the idea that there might be truth
Frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon
On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you
Frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural
So blow your hippy noodle
That you would rather just stand in the fog
Of your inability to Google?

Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
If you’re so into Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
That’s ok.
But here’s what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncles and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty
With good-looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
And butterflies on their titties.

And if perchance I have offended
Think but this and all is mended:
We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time,
For all the chance you’ll change your mind.

But How Do You Know?

Day after day, I talk with people who think they understand specific concepts based on the natural way in which the language surrounding those concepts is used. The biggest example of this is the laymen use of "theory". Being one who accepts evolution, I'm often confronted by evangelicals who claim that evolution is "just a theory". Their use of this phrase demonstrates their lack of understanding in what makes a "theory" (and their general misunderstanding of science on the whole).

I think that the majority of problems people have regarding religion, matters of faith, and scientific understanding is a matter of language. It is in the realm of colloquial, idiomatic speech that the confused person is trapped. Some people just don’t know how we know things.


How Do You Know?
There are ways we humans have of understanding fact from fiction. We realize that we can create practically anything in our imaginations, and we know that our senses can be fooled. So we need a way to distinguish reality from pretend. We have these reliable methods (we know they're reliable because we can show them to be so).

Logical reasoning is the primary foundation upon which we build our understanding of reality. We can prove the rules of logic are true, and we therefore make them rules.

Science makes use of logical reasoning, in conjunction with:

• independent verification, to avoid group-think
• repeated testing, for consistency
• falsification, to demonstrate that a hypothesis is reliable and is not producing an incidental result
• and, most importantly, peer review, because we are all fallible. Your work is reviewed by other experts to make sure that your test methodologies are correct, that you properly falsified your hypothesis, and that your tests and results are replicable.

Using these steps, a hypothesis, or guess about something, graduates to the highest level of attainability in science: a theory. When something is called a theory in scientific terms, it means that the idea has been gone through the rigors of the scientific method and shows to be reliable and useful, accurate predictions can be made using the theory. The theories of gravity, sexual reproduction, psychology, music, microbiology, and gene manipulation are among several proven scientific theories.
The problem is that the average person uses the word "theory" to mean a guess or a hunch. While I fail at times, (or I'm forced by language, i.e. "conspiracy theory",) I've resolved to use the term "theory" in scientific terms only, and when I mean "guess", I'll say "guess", or "hypothesis". But the average person will use the term loosely, and those who don’t understand the difference in terminology will get confused when they hear something like “the theory of evolution”.


What Do You Know?
Another general mistake is in the use of the term, "agnostic". When I ask someone whether they believe in god or not, some will say "I'm agnostic". Those who understand the term will realize that the answer given doesn't fit the question; it answers something else entirely. I've demonstrated the differences several times, so I won't go into it further.

The main focus here is that many people get tripped up in what it means to know something, and knowledge--or lack thereof--informs belief. The two aren't the same, but they are tied together.

So, what does it mean to know something? Or, more to the point, how can you truly be an Agnostic?

Well, it depends on what you mean by "knowledge". I’ve show above how we can know reality. If it can be demonstrated that, for example, a thing exists or occurs, and that this can be demonstrated to an incredibly high degree of predictability, then we can comfortably say we “know” it.

When it comes to believing in that thing, you still have options even if the thing can be known or not. Theism and Atheism address what you believe, Gnosticism and Agnosticism address what you know, or claim to know. If you want to define knowledge as "absolute certainty", then I’m an Agnostic Atheist; I don’t know that a god does not exist to an absolute certainty.

I don’t like "absolute certainty"; I think it’s a red herring. We can’t know anything to an absolute certainty. But if you want to define knowledge in practical terms--the way we use it in everyday language where we talk about something to some degree of certainty--if it’s okay to say "I know there’s no such thing as leprechauns", if that qualifies as "knowledge", then an I’m a Gnostic Atheist. In the same sense that I know there’s no leprechauns, I know there’s no god.


Belief vs. Knowledge, Redux
So why all this talk over belief? I mean, isn't what someone believes their own business?

Yes it is. I don't care what anyone believes, though I'd rather they base their beliefs on demonstrable reality. As I said above, knowledge informs belief. But your actions are affected by your beliefs, and that’s what matters. You can belief whatever you want until you start to infringe on others' beliefs/health/etc. That’s the point where your beliefs won’t be tolerated.

I think it’s beneficial to a society if its beliefs and subsequent actions have a basis in what can be shown to be true, and I hope that Earth’s population reaches this level ASAP.



-STA

Arguing From The Bubble

Recently, I was in a pseudo-debate with a Christian on an internet forum. After enduring several claims of "fact", appeals to emotion, and general lack of cohesive reasoning from said Christian, I reached the conclusion that he was either A) too ignorant--and too blissfully therein--to ever understand his fallacies, or B) he was simply disregarding logic and formal rules of argument for the, pardon the pun, hell of it. I hope the latter wasn't the case, but even the former brings me grief to consider. I also hope I planted at least one seed of doubt in him. Whatever the case, it spurred me to make this post.


Does Not Compute
Einstein once said, "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." My Christian opponent had an expansive imagination. He didn't (or chose to discard) the basic principals of logical reasoning, and I'm sure other apologists don't either.

Logic, as the study of the rules of correct thinking have shown, is fundamentally necessary for an argument to hold any weight or be taken as true in any useful sense. For it to remain consistent, an argument must provide set of statements, one of which is the conclusion, and the rest as premises supporting the conclusion. In other words, a statement along with the evidence that supports it. If your conclusion isn't held up by evidence, you've committed some kind of logical fallacy; you've broken the laws of logic. I cover these fallacies on this blog every Friday, so I need not go into them now.

Above I stated that most apologists don't hold to these principals, though I'm sure they all disagree. One might wonder how this could be possible. How could any religion survive for centuries if they aren't logically sound? The answers to these questions cover an extremely large amount of topics that I am not qualified to discuss (biology, psychology, sociology, history, etc.), and besides that it isn't the purpose of my blog. A more simple and purposeful answer: they are.


Superman, Hands Down
Yeah. Some religions are logically sound, but (you really didn't think there wasn't a kicker, right?) they are only sound internally; on the inside. Here's what I mean: If, for the sake of this example, Jesus really was the son of God...

Sorry, I nearly passed out just thinking of the number of leaps of faith that would take to believe. Anyway:

-If Jesus really was the son of God, then walking on water would be simple. He could do it.

-If the Hindu gods really drink soma, the moon would naturally wane because the gods are drinking away some of its properties.

-The angel Moroni must have told Joe Smith the truth, because the angel was from God, and angels can't lie.

-If Adam and Eve were oblivious to their nakedness, then eating from the Tree would indeed open their eyes.

All of the above logically follow from the premise. The problem is of course that the premises must be rejected outright, or at least backed up by something that, in turn is backed up by another thing, which is in turn backed up by another, which is itself backed up by another--how ever many or few steps this takes--all with sound reasoning. This is the labyrinth of logic that theists get lost in.

The point here is that yes, you can argue just fine within the bubble of your religion. This same principle is the reason why Trekkies can argue to the point of exhaustion regarding the layout of the Enterprise, or the inner workings of hyperdrive or whatever the fuck it is. The same goes for arguing a case for Neville Longbottom fulfilling the prophesy instead of Harry Potter, or what would happen if Spiderman fought Superman. The point is: THE SHIT AIN'T REAL.


A Ship of Corn Flakes Upon a Milk Sea
I don't give a fuck if you can convince yourself and your 8-year old daughter that humanity is suffering, and the only way to not suffer for the rest of eternity is to find Jesus. You must still show how any of that shit makes logical sense IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!

I'm sorry for this rather blunt way of putting things, but this stuff really gets in my craw. Of course it's fine to argue and speculate on who would win in a fight between superheroes, or even what would happen if Jesus came back. The problems arise when you take these fanciful arguments as truth without backing up their underlying proposition. Even worse when you start taking actions against others for not agreeing.

It is in the best interest of your children, your countrymen, and yourself to learn to think critically, and learn how to logically get from A to B.


-STA