I suppose that even though it's been refuted again and again on the websites listed to the right (as well as countless others not listed), and by numerous authors in major best-selling books, articles, columns, videos, and blogs, I guess I'll have to make my own rant for those not yet aware of reality.
America was NOT FOUNDED ON CHRISTIANITY!!!!
Please don't take me yelling it as a reason to trust it. I'll prove my point with evidence.
Nature's God
I will not deny that a lot of our Founding Fathers were religious; many were Episcopalian, some Presbyterian, even a Catholic or two. In reality, there were over ten different "faiths" among the lot.
But most were Deists. A Deist believes in a God who created the universe and everything in it (including humans), and then just sort of "let it go", like a wind-up toy. The Deist God doesn't answer prayers, write holy books, or care about your sex life. Some modern Deists take the explanation of evolution by natural selection as the way that this "First Cause" God set things up. I think Deism a cop-out answer, because there's no evidence for the claims of God, but it's one of the steps most people take when reconverting from a religion where God cares what you think.
But we're not talking about Deism today, and I'm not suggesting that America's founders were idiots or deconverters. I wanted to make it clear that most of these men thought of God in the Einsteinian sense of "Nature's God"; an idea synonymous with the way nature works. This obviously has nothing do with anyone being nailed to a cross because the first humans ate off-limits apples. It has nothing to do with any religion.
The 10 Command-stutions
Of course, the Christians never cease with there claims that America is a Christian nation, and anyone who doesn't agree should just leave. They also claim that the Framers of the Constitution used God's 10 Commandments as a cornerstone to our nation's laws.
Really? Let's look at a couple real quick:
Commandment #1 (about not worshiping anyone 'cept Jesus's Daddy) is contrary to our right to freedom of religion and against the establishment of State-sponsored religion. As Dan Barker puts it in his book "Losing Faith in Faith": This is better suited to establishing the nation of Israel, not the USA.
Commandment #2 is contrary to freedom of speech, and the Catholics don't seem to mind it at all!
Commandment #3 is also against free speech, and dissenting opinion is what built this country.
I'll cover the rest in an upcoming post more suited to attacking these commandments, but needless to say these are not good morals, wise guidelines, or American law.
The Words of our Forefathers
The Fathers of our country understood what it was like being ruled under a theocratic dictatorship. They knew how it felt to have absolutely zero church-state separation, and having to support the religion of the King. They wanted to be free to worship as they saw fit and to think and debate concepts of God and other taboo conceptions. They knew that in order to have freedom of religion, there must also be freedom FROM religion. These brave men deliberately set up a secular Constitution--which makes no mention of a God, and certainly no Christ.
Sure, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that men are endowed with inalienable rights "by their Creator", but this document did not establish US law. The Constitution does.
And the Puritans wanted a Christian Nation, but they preceded the founding of the nation by more than a century.
"In God We Trust" was established as the national motto in 1956, the phrase "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 (62 years after Francis Bellamy wrote it) -- all as a reaction to "godless communism" during the Cold War McCarthyism era.
Let me allow our Forefathers speak for themselves:
"What has been Christianity's fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." -James Madison
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." -John Adams
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness." -George Washington
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." -John Adams, Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11
One Nation, Indivisible
Freedom of religion helps churches -- you're free to go into any church anywhere and believe whatever the hell you want (or don't want). Think of what life would be like if the Constitution said that we must support Jainism.
If you honestly have a "love it or leave it" mentality toward people of opposing faiths, I'd implore you to look into the empathic teaching of your own religion. Sure, the Founding Fathers weren't 100% right or "good" in everything they did (Washington, Jefferson, and others, owned slaves). But that doesn't mean that we have to accept things the way they are. Why not "make it better"? That's what those men (and indeed, women) of the past fought and died for. For our freedom to believe, to question, to think, and to change.
And just because the majority of Americans are Christian doesn't make it right to call the United States of America a "Christian Nation". The majority of Americans are also white. Does that make America a "white nation"?
-STA
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
God Is My Hairstylist
I was sitting around the other day and one of my relatives was commenting on how curly her young child's hair was. "Where did you get such pretty curly hair?" asked the relative. "Say, 'God gave it to me'," instructed the mother.
I of course held my tongue to keep the peace, but it was another slap in the face to science that made me cringe. I took issue with the remark on two levels.
Sins of the Father
First off, I mean really, has it not become common knowledge by now that we get our physical make-up from our genes?
Practically speaking, most people say things like, "Oh look, he has his father's nose," and "I got this round ass from my grandma!". Yet it is also common to hear the occasional "God did it", especially when the question is deemed too hard.
The major issue I had with her remark is rooted in the grounds of teaching a child--one too young to even comprehend the answer--that they should respond to questions like that with an appeal to something called "God".
On page 340 of his best-selling book 'The God Delusion' professor Richard Dawkins talks about this activity as a form of child abuse:
Our society, including the non-religious sector, has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them - 'Catholic child', 'Protestant child', 'Jewish child', 'Muslim child', etc. - although no other comparable labels: no conservative children, no liberal children, no Republican children, no Democrat children.
...Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether any are 'valid', let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.
A Gapping Problem
Now, I realize that not everybody understands how genes work, especially not this child. But by answering the question of 'How come your hair is curly?' with 'God' promotes a fallacy called the God of the Gaps (no, not the chain of stores).
For millennia, anything we didn't know we'd give credit to a god of some kind. What causes the rain? Why do we get sick? Where did the plants and the animals come from? Who created the Big Bang? These questions can all be answered with: God did it.
Even when we discover that rain isn't caused by any deity, but by the condensation of evaporated water, there are still more gaps in which people stuff god into: Where did the water come from? Who set up the rules to determine how heavy the water needs to be before it falls? Who made gravity?
God is just inserted into the gap as a non-answer that stops all questions from being asked. Once you silence yourself with, "Well I don't know, I guess God did it," you stop right there. You don't inquire any more about it. You stop caring about what the real answer is.
Why do some people feel that it isn't okay to answer something you don't know with 'I don't know'? The insufficient explanation of 'God' is a cop-out answer, because you must explain how and what exactly this 'God' is.
Like I said before, I know that not everyone understands or can understand the nature of the universe and everything it in. As we learn more an more about how things work--through the use of science--we close up more and more gaps for a god to hide in. One day, perhaps god will have no place left.
"From momma," would have been a more proper answer.
-STA
I of course held my tongue to keep the peace, but it was another slap in the face to science that made me cringe. I took issue with the remark on two levels.
Sins of the Father
First off, I mean really, has it not become common knowledge by now that we get our physical make-up from our genes?
Practically speaking, most people say things like, "Oh look, he has his father's nose," and "I got this round ass from my grandma!". Yet it is also common to hear the occasional "God did it", especially when the question is deemed too hard.
The major issue I had with her remark is rooted in the grounds of teaching a child--one too young to even comprehend the answer--that they should respond to questions like that with an appeal to something called "God".
On page 340 of his best-selling book 'The God Delusion' professor Richard Dawkins talks about this activity as a form of child abuse:
Our society, including the non-religious sector, has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them - 'Catholic child', 'Protestant child', 'Jewish child', 'Muslim child', etc. - although no other comparable labels: no conservative children, no liberal children, no Republican children, no Democrat children.
...Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether any are 'valid', let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.
A Gapping Problem
Now, I realize that not everybody understands how genes work, especially not this child. But by answering the question of 'How come your hair is curly?' with 'God' promotes a fallacy called the God of the Gaps (no, not the chain of stores).
For millennia, anything we didn't know we'd give credit to a god of some kind. What causes the rain? Why do we get sick? Where did the plants and the animals come from? Who created the Big Bang? These questions can all be answered with: God did it.
Even when we discover that rain isn't caused by any deity, but by the condensation of evaporated water, there are still more gaps in which people stuff god into: Where did the water come from? Who set up the rules to determine how heavy the water needs to be before it falls? Who made gravity?
God is just inserted into the gap as a non-answer that stops all questions from being asked. Once you silence yourself with, "Well I don't know, I guess God did it," you stop right there. You don't inquire any more about it. You stop caring about what the real answer is.
Why do some people feel that it isn't okay to answer something you don't know with 'I don't know'? The insufficient explanation of 'God' is a cop-out answer, because you must explain how and what exactly this 'God' is.
Like I said before, I know that not everyone understands or can understand the nature of the universe and everything it in. As we learn more an more about how things work--through the use of science--we close up more and more gaps for a god to hide in. One day, perhaps god will have no place left.
"From momma," would have been a more proper answer.
-STA
Friday, October 19, 2007
Fallacy Friday: False Dichotomy
Love and Marriage
Today's fallacy is also known as the 'Black-or-White Fallacy', the 'Excluded Middle', or the 'False Dilemma'. The False Dichotomy is a fallacy of distraction, because it is used to limit the number of options to two, when in reality there are many. The phrases "America: love it or leave it" and "Jesus says you're either with him or against him" are examples of this fallacious reasoning.
Of course, in cases where the two options are in reality the only two options, then this line of reasoning is not fallacious. But when you have two extremes and you're saying that it's got to be one or the other--that there's no middle ground--you need to check your logic.
Suppose you want to buy an iPod and your mom (or wife, depending on who controls your finances ::wink::: ::wink::) says:
"Either you decide that you can afford an iPod with the money you have now, or you decide you are going to do without music for a while."
This seems like sound logic at first glance. But give it a moments thought and you realize that those are not your only two options--not your only two ways of listening to music. You can stream it off the internet, you could listen to your CD player, you could go to a concert, or play your piano. The argument against you offered you two choices, yet while they are legitimate, are not your only two choices.
All That Glitters
Creationists love to use a form of this ruse in the 'fallacy of negation'. Here, they attempt to discredit one side of an argument (say, evolution) in the hopes that the opposition must accept the other side of the argument (say, creationism). This pet ploy is weak because a theory needs to be supported via evidence in favor of it, not via evidence against its alternatives. Any proposition -- not just creationism -- must stand on its own two feet. Even if there is no support for the opposition to a claim, this is NOT justification for the claim itself. Creationism, or theism for that matter, is not the victor "by default". There is no "by default"; you must PROVE your claim.
I can feel this growing into a topic for a different post, so I'll calm down for now. The lesson for today is to be sure and check for a bogus dilemma when forming your argument's statements. Intermediate possibilities often do exist within the spectrum of two extremes.
-STA
Today's fallacy is also known as the 'Black-or-White Fallacy', the 'Excluded Middle', or the 'False Dilemma'. The False Dichotomy is a fallacy of distraction, because it is used to limit the number of options to two, when in reality there are many. The phrases "America: love it or leave it" and "Jesus says you're either with him or against him" are examples of this fallacious reasoning.
Of course, in cases where the two options are in reality the only two options, then this line of reasoning is not fallacious. But when you have two extremes and you're saying that it's got to be one or the other--that there's no middle ground--you need to check your logic.
Suppose you want to buy an iPod and your mom (or wife, depending on who controls your finances ::wink::: ::wink::) says:
"Either you decide that you can afford an iPod with the money you have now, or you decide you are going to do without music for a while."
This seems like sound logic at first glance. But give it a moments thought and you realize that those are not your only two options--not your only two ways of listening to music. You can stream it off the internet, you could listen to your CD player, you could go to a concert, or play your piano. The argument against you offered you two choices, yet while they are legitimate, are not your only two choices.
All That Glitters
Creationists love to use a form of this ruse in the 'fallacy of negation'. Here, they attempt to discredit one side of an argument (say, evolution) in the hopes that the opposition must accept the other side of the argument (say, creationism). This pet ploy is weak because a theory needs to be supported via evidence in favor of it, not via evidence against its alternatives. Any proposition -- not just creationism -- must stand on its own two feet. Even if there is no support for the opposition to a claim, this is NOT justification for the claim itself. Creationism, or theism for that matter, is not the victor "by default". There is no "by default"; you must PROVE your claim.
I can feel this growing into a topic for a different post, so I'll calm down for now. The lesson for today is to be sure and check for a bogus dilemma when forming your argument's statements. Intermediate possibilities often do exist within the spectrum of two extremes.
-STA
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Unholy Word: Alcoholism Leads to Slavery
After finding another religious tract on a park bench where I was dining, I decided it was time to do another rant on the Unholy Word of God. This time we'll look at Noah, the guy with all the cute little animals.
Righteous Insobriety
Chapter nine of the bible's first book describes the events of one of that book's (supposedly) most righteous humans. This man called Noah was such an honorable man that God saw fit to save him and his family from his holy extermination. Some time after that, when the earth was replenished and the smell of billions of bloated carcasses had subsided, Noah gets drunk and, as a lot of people tend to do in that state, passes out naked. His son Canaan comes into his father's tent and sees him and then runs outside to tell his brothers, "Haha, dad's in there shit-faced and naked!"
A couple of Canaan's brothers walk into the tent backwards so they can't see Noah's nakedness, and cover him up with a sheet out of respect. At this point, like most bible stories, you should just quit reading if you want to get a good moral message out of it. Unfortunately, like most bible stories, it gets insanely worse.
Like a Good Father Should
When Noah wakes up from his drunken stupor, he finds himself lying there naked under a sheet and thinks, "Hmm...those kids must have come in here and covered me. That means they saw my hoo-hoo!"
Noah goes outside and gathers his sons, and finds out that Canaan saw him naked but the other two who covered him up did not. Because he was such an honorable and righteous man of God, he does the only rational and noble thing a good father could in that situation: he curses his son Canaan and declares that Canaan and all of his descendants will be slaves to his brothers and all of their descendants. And Noah, being so upright in the eyes of the Lord, lived to be 950 years old.
Christians, I'm not making this shit up! It's in your holy book. Read Genesis 9 and tell me if you think Noah did the right thing. Fucking sick book.
More to come soon. And stop leaving your religious tracts in places where I'm trying to eat!
-STA
Righteous Insobriety
Chapter nine of the bible's first book describes the events of one of that book's (supposedly) most righteous humans. This man called Noah was such an honorable man that God saw fit to save him and his family from his holy extermination. Some time after that, when the earth was replenished and the smell of billions of bloated carcasses had subsided, Noah gets drunk and, as a lot of people tend to do in that state, passes out naked. His son Canaan comes into his father's tent and sees him and then runs outside to tell his brothers, "Haha, dad's in there shit-faced and naked!"
A couple of Canaan's brothers walk into the tent backwards so they can't see Noah's nakedness, and cover him up with a sheet out of respect. At this point, like most bible stories, you should just quit reading if you want to get a good moral message out of it. Unfortunately, like most bible stories, it gets insanely worse.
Like a Good Father Should
When Noah wakes up from his drunken stupor, he finds himself lying there naked under a sheet and thinks, "Hmm...those kids must have come in here and covered me. That means they saw my hoo-hoo!"
Noah goes outside and gathers his sons, and finds out that Canaan saw him naked but the other two who covered him up did not. Because he was such an honorable and righteous man of God, he does the only rational and noble thing a good father could in that situation: he curses his son Canaan and declares that Canaan and all of his descendants will be slaves to his brothers and all of their descendants. And Noah, being so upright in the eyes of the Lord, lived to be 950 years old.
Christians, I'm not making this shit up! It's in your holy book. Read Genesis 9 and tell me if you think Noah did the right thing. Fucking sick book.
More to come soon. And stop leaving your religious tracts in places where I'm trying to eat!
-STA
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Day In The Life: God Bless You
Yesterday was a horrible day. Vehicle problems, money problems, phone problems...a really bad day. After several trips to the nearby Wal-Mart, I was about to lose my mind.
As I was leaving the store (around trip number three) I was confronted by an elderly woman in the parking lot. She was very short, in her 60's I guessed, and fairly well dressed -- nothing old and ragged, anyway. "Excuse me, sir," she said as I opened my door. "Could you spare a dollar?" She didn't look homeless or overtly poor. She even had a Wal-Mart sack with a few things in it already; I thought a couple of cans of tuna. She didn't look lost or helpless, mental or an experienced beggar. And she didn't smell of cabbage.
Those Three Little Words
"A dollar?" I asked. "What'cha need a dollar for?"
"Groceries," she said, folding her hands. I reached for my wallet.
"Don't smoke, don't drink." I got nothing against either one of those, but I understood that she was telling me that she wasn't going to spend it on booze.
Now as I've said, I was having a horrible day; but this was also payday, and after some troubles to get it, I did have a pocket full of cash. I gave the little old lady one more look over.
"Here," I said. "Take two."
"God bless you!" she said with a smile. Did I jump all over her and tell her that God isn't real? Did I yell at her for assuming that I was only a Good Samaritan following Jesus's teachings in Matthew 5:41, or that I was hoping to gather up some good karma? Did I ask her, "Which God? Zeus? Brahman? Amun? Ngai? Mot? I wouldn't want Mot blessing me..."
An Atheist Volunteer
No, I didn't say that and I wouldn't have -- ever. Even if this horrible day I was having had been thrice as worse. This stranger, this elderly person, asked for my help and was thanking me the best way she knew how. If I were visiting some distant tribe in the jungle somewhere, and they had asked their god to bless me, I would feel honored. I may not agree that it meant anything supernaturally, but it was a gesture of thanks and I took it as such. I just smiled and got into the car.
So why did I help this little old lady? Did I do it for Atheism? Of course not. I didn't do it "in the name of not believing in deities". I did it because I could. I saw a fellow human in need, and I could help that need. Something that all of us should do, not because some God says so, not to get something great in return, not even to further a cause or make a point; do it just because you can. And you know what? It made my day a little bit brighter.
-STA
As I was leaving the store (around trip number three) I was confronted by an elderly woman in the parking lot. She was very short, in her 60's I guessed, and fairly well dressed -- nothing old and ragged, anyway. "Excuse me, sir," she said as I opened my door. "Could you spare a dollar?" She didn't look homeless or overtly poor. She even had a Wal-Mart sack with a few things in it already; I thought a couple of cans of tuna. She didn't look lost or helpless, mental or an experienced beggar. And she didn't smell of cabbage.
Those Three Little Words
"A dollar?" I asked. "What'cha need a dollar for?"
"Groceries," she said, folding her hands. I reached for my wallet.
"Don't smoke, don't drink." I got nothing against either one of those, but I understood that she was telling me that she wasn't going to spend it on booze.
Now as I've said, I was having a horrible day; but this was also payday, and after some troubles to get it, I did have a pocket full of cash. I gave the little old lady one more look over.
"Here," I said. "Take two."
"God bless you!" she said with a smile. Did I jump all over her and tell her that God isn't real? Did I yell at her for assuming that I was only a Good Samaritan following Jesus's teachings in Matthew 5:41, or that I was hoping to gather up some good karma? Did I ask her, "Which God? Zeus? Brahman? Amun? Ngai? Mot? I wouldn't want Mot blessing me..."
An Atheist Volunteer
No, I didn't say that and I wouldn't have -- ever. Even if this horrible day I was having had been thrice as worse. This stranger, this elderly person, asked for my help and was thanking me the best way she knew how. If I were visiting some distant tribe in the jungle somewhere, and they had asked their god to bless me, I would feel honored. I may not agree that it meant anything supernaturally, but it was a gesture of thanks and I took it as such. I just smiled and got into the car.
So why did I help this little old lady? Did I do it for Atheism? Of course not. I didn't do it "in the name of not believing in deities". I did it because I could. I saw a fellow human in need, and I could help that need. Something that all of us should do, not because some God says so, not to get something great in return, not even to further a cause or make a point; do it just because you can. And you know what? It made my day a little bit brighter.
-STA
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