Atheism Offers Nothing

Due to recent conversations, I've been challenged to provide an answer to the religious-based question: "What could atheism ever provide?"

I can only answer this question for myself, because there are no tenants to atheism.  It’s not a structured worldview, a philosophy, or a religion itself.  It has no creed or set of values.  It is simply a rejection of theism.  That said, what has atheism provided me with?

An afterlife?

Nope.  Not for me, anyways.  Like I said, the only thing that it takes to be an atheist is a lack of belief in gods (just like all it takes to be bald is to lack hair).  After that, anything goes.  Some people who don’t believe in the existence of a god still hold to the idea of an afterlife, either through reincarnation like Buddhists, or by some other supernatural means.  But atheism doesn’t offer that to me.

A sense of security?

Nope.  I’m secure in the idea of reality; I no longer fear death or other natural processes.  I don't become wracked with moral turmoil when a loved one experiences a life-threatening illness.  Religion offers a false sense of security…the idea that God is watching over you and will protect you from harm, and has a grand plan for your life.  It can be scary – but humbling – to understand that there’s no ultimate creator being that has the whole world in its hands.  Like Julia Sweeney said, it’s terrifying to realize that the earth is just spinning around the sun all on its own…you wanna run outside and catch it.  I do, however, feel secure in reality.  It’s comforting to know that all is “as it should be” more or less, and that you’re not some chess piece or plaything.  There's no script for you to follow, with consequences good or bad for failing to follow it.  It’s nice to know that death and suffering isn’t caused by the will of any all-powerful consciousness.  I think I would find it more frightening to think that a God neglectfully lets bad things happen to good people.  It can be scary to lose that false sense of security, but it makes you stronger when you open your eyes to reality.

Absolute morals?

Nope.  That’s another thing that religion offers, not atheism.  Without a god to give us morals, we come to them on our own.  We realize that as social creatures, humans must be cooperative and beneficial to survive.  We also have brains that evolved the power of empathy.  Therefore, any society that contains members who act against the general welfare won’t or even can’t function properly.  It's obviously more complicated than a few sentences, but the end result is simple: we don’t need a God to be good – we just need each other. 

A sense of community?

Nope.  At least, not in a formal, structured sense.  Atheism isn’t a religion, but as a collective group (grouped only by our lack of theism), atheists can create communities on their own.  There are several online communities and several physical organizations that promote atheism and give the nonbeliever that sense of community that is often lost when they reject their faith.  We can still be social and have meetings or events together, and share in the fellowship of like-minded people, but this is something any individual can achieve for any reason they desire; it's not granted by atheism.

Ultimate answers?
Nope.  There are no answers given simply by rejecting the demonstrably false ones of others.  Too often I'm asked what boils down to, "if not God, then what?".  And a great deal of the time, the answer to that question is, "I don't know".  Whatever the answers to life's ultimate questions, it's probably not a supernatural father-figure that cares about what cloths you wear.

Removing the Cancer

Atheism isn't meant to "provide" anything.  I often liken it to asking: after you remove a cancer, what do you replace it with?  While religion was a disease I carried for many years, when I left it behind, I suddenly realized that my pre-packaged beliefs all had to be re-examined and re-evaluated.  Here’s what learning to think for myself made room for:

Reality
Since becoming a nonbeliever of any gods, I've been able to see the world for what it truly is.  All aspects of nature and natural processes shine brighter than if they were just “made” by some powerful creature.  I have more of a respect for the universe and my place in it than I ever had thinking it was all made for me or my kind.  I no longer hold to a false sense of security or a false sense of knowledge.  What I observe and experience is no longer colored by a religious worldview.  When I see a mountain, I think about the natural processes and all the time it took that led to its formation, about where it's been and where it will go...I don't think about Matthew 17:20.  I see reality as it really is.

Respect for Life
I no longer think that I will survive my own death.  I do not believe in an afterlife, and therefore every second I spend alive becomes infinitely more valuable and precious.  I can't afford to waist time on silly ideas such as prayer or religious rituals.  I have a greater respect for all life in general.  I am no longer afraid of death.  I cherish every breath I have to spend with those I care about and to learn about the universe around me.  I have to make amends to those I hurt now -- I don't get a second chance.  I have to say what I need to say to people, and spend time with those I need to, now.

Hunger for Knowledge
It's funny how thinking you have the answer is vastly less fulfilling than actually honestly searching for the truth.  When the hollow-feeling “knowledge” was gone, I began to fill the void with real knowledge.  I started craving an understanding of how the world works (if God isn't holding the world up, what is?), and I started to actually understand science.  Religion sought to provide me with an answer to everything, and I didn’t even have to understand the answer to accept it.  I sought knowledge backwards: first accept something as “truth”, then go and find evidence to support that conjecture.  After truly understanding what knowledge is and how it's obtained, I began to crave the answers of the universe.

Higher Standards of Love
I once thought that I was loved by people in my congregation out of the goodness of their hearts, but after denouncing my faith, I find that some people only "love" someone if they think God tells them to.  Obviously, God doesn't want his disciples to listen to the "lies" we apostates spew, and therefore we are not to be trusted or cared for any longer.  And I was guilty of the same thing.  I claimed "love" for my fellow believers simply because they believed like I did, and didn't conflict with my ideas.  It was more of an in-group, tribal thing than actual love.  Many religious people claim a feeling of absolute love from God, but it turns out that it's more a projection of what they hope to have -- a sense of being looked after and cared about.  Since leaving the faith, I've felt a love greater than any God could grant.

True Peace and Happiness
Being a believer carried a lot of baggage with it.  I was expected to be oppressed by nonbelievers and stalked daily by the Devil.  I was expected to always struggle to live "in the world, but not of it".  I had to ask God for anything and thank him for everything.  I had to rationalize any event to either be a work of God or a plan from Satan.  My life was full of tests, tribulations, and leaps of unquestioned faith.  I had to pray for others, as their lives (and after-lives) were my responsibility.  I had to feel guilty for being human, guilty for thought-crimes, and always subject my worthless self to a Supreme Judge and beg for pity at the throne of my Master.

After throwing off the shackles of faith, I realized that none of that was true.  Feelings of guilt and torturous thoughts were burned away by the light of reason.  I learned to let life in -- to experience it fully and completely, the good and the bad.  And I am happy.  No longer do I lay down my faculties of reason in the place of blind obedience to anything.  After you are brainwashed and mentally abused by a mindset as vicious as religion, you realize after it all just how bad it really was.  I’m sure we can all relate to being young, then getting older, looking back and realizing just how dumb you were.  It’s similar with religion…I can’t believe I believed some of things I used to.  I know now that I should have known better, and I’m happy that now, at least, I do.  I’m truly happy.

Atheism didn't provide me with anything, but it opened the ways that were blocked by the dogma of theism.  A lack of belief cannot provide you with positive beliefs -- you can't get from "I don't believe in any gods" to anything else without adding some new facet.

Each atheist must decide on their own about everything.  We're not handed a prepackaged set of beliefs, morals, arguments, or tenants.  In short, atheism offers nothing, but it opens the world up to you.  We each must make up our minds about life, the universe, and everything.


-STA

Relationships Need Input

I'm often encouraged by my opposition to "seek a personal relationship" with the deity they espouse.  And indeed, that sounds like a good idea to someone who is curious about a particular god.  Despite the fact that I was a tongue-talking Christian for a lot of my young adult life, I'm implored by the religious to get into a relationship with their savior.

1 John 4:8, 1 Corinthians 13:4, Exodus 34:14
But what exactly does that mean?  A relationship has at the least, two people.  Unless a "personal" relationship is akin to the way a stalker feels about his victim.  And since I'm hard-pressed to find a theist who believes their god is a physical person, it seems like the latter is the direction one has to go in.

In an actual relationship between two people, each party grows, changes, and effects one another.  Each participating member benefits from the others' involvement.  It is possible to be in a relationship and not contribute to it, and those relationships don't last long.  I realize that from a theistic standpoint, one can hope to change and grow "in God" or "in Jesus" or "in Minerva", but that really only proves the case for a one-sided relationship.

What can a changeless, all-powerful, all-knowing god hope to gain from a relationship? Gaining something itself implies a lack of something in the first place.  If the god knows all in the future, no excitement or surprise can come, so there's no benefit there.  Such a deity can't change, can't grow, can't be effected.

I realize at best I'm arguing for deism here, and I don't intend to.  Let's turn the focus back to the idea that each worshiper has their own "personal relationship" with God.  I don't think I can do a better job of illustrating the flaws with this idea than what has already been done by YouTube user NonStampCollector:

Put simply: there wouldn't be so many differing views on the wishes of a (supposedly) singular entity if all those who profess to engage in a personal relationship with said entity actually did so.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.  Find someone -- a real person -- with whom you have an actual, personal relationship with, and spend some time with them.


-STA

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

Slurping Ken Ham's Solipsistic Soup

In the first video of my series reviewing the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate, I summarized an argument Ken made with an illustration of a falling pen.  According to Ken, we can’t assume the rate we measure an object (such as a pen) was the same 100 years ago or 5000 years ago.  Well, we can assume it, but Ken would call that "historical science".

He claims that it depends on your starting point.  Observations we make are filtered through the lenses of the perspective we start from.  He freely admits several times that he’s starting from the belief that the bible is true and accurate.  He claims Bill and the rest of us are starting from the belief that evolution must be true.  Then both sides find evidence to support their “historical perspective”.
 

That’s simply not true.

It's true for Ken Ham and others like him who admit (just as he did several times during the debate) that they start with the Bible being true.  But that's not how rational, reasonable, scientifically minded people do things.

We don't start with the idea that evolution is true.  We observe things in the world around us -- fossils, DNA, comparative biology -- and that evidence points us in the direction of the truth.  There is no "historical science vs observational/experimental science"...there's just science.  The method is the same even when it comes to history.  We make assumptions and inferences by how things work in the real world.

Ken's starting with the "the Bible is one hundred percent true", and in doing so, he misses the first step.  I've covered how the Bible isn't accurate many times on this blog over the years, and you can find a lot of great sites out there as well, so I won't refute it here.  This post is about making sure people realize that if you're just going to hold to a solipsistic idea like, "we can't know things weren't different in the past", then claiming pigs flew 3,000 years ago is just as valid as claiming people lived to be hundreds of years old just a few generations ago.  At that point, everything is on the table and we can't make sense of the world.

Luckily for us all, we don't hold to such ridiculous beliefs.  The fruits of science that each of us uses is based on the idea that nature has laws.  If they changed radically, they wouldn't be laws (not to mention we probably wouldn't be here in the first place).

-STA

Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham: First Thoughts

There's a new video up on my YouTube channel in which I discuss the recent Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye creationism debate.  In fact, I’ll probably be making it a small series so that I can review the various facets of the debate, parse it out, and give my thoughts on it.

First off, what is it good debate?

Well, I thought it was a good thing.  It wasn't really a debate, and to his credit Bill Nye didn't engage a lot of Ken Ham's bungled rhetoric.  It might have been better (and certainly more entertaining) to watch the two debaters address each other's points directly, and though they both did on occasion, the format didn't really make for that sort of thing.

I know a few people have reviewed it saying it was amazing and the best they’ve ever seen.  I don’t agree. I think the Science Guy did a decent job of stating, "science works, so kids, go learn it" and Ham’s main point was "the Bible is 100% true, can't tell me otherwise".

I think it was good for the public to get a refresher in science.  My favorite parts were when Bill explained how we know what we know.  I think that for debates like these -- especially where people are advising against debating creationists or conspiracy nut jobs because it makes them appear on equal footing when they’re not -- a good thing for the public in general.  Look, 31% of people in this country say that their faith directly influences how they vote.  And the percentage of people in this country who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God: 22%.  So when you have a debate like this, where you’re at the creation museum and perhaps a large percentage of the audience is fundamental theists, when you explain how science works and how we know the facts we know, it’s likely the first time a lot of them are hearing it, and it can sway a lot of minds.   

Bill didn’t do that often, he just assumed people would look things up and stated them as fact, but the few times he explained, those were my favorite times.  Lawrence Krauss’s talk at FreeOK 2013 was awesome and I realize Bill couldn’t possibly give a complete science lecture, but it might have been better if he did.  Just give a quick remedial science lesson to the room and recap here’s why we believe the Big Bang, here’s why we believe Evolution, here’s why we trust and use the scientific method.  Because again, I doubt many people really understand these concepts because of how poorly science is taught.  

I know I didn’t fully grasp it when I was in high school because it was presented as, science is a collection of facts and figures along with the other subjects where you just memorize and parrot back.  Here’s how long division works, here’s how cellular mitosis works.  Here’s how a circular saw works, here’s how volcanoes work.  There was never any emphasis on the method and how we use science as a tool, it was just about, "Here’s the way the world works, if you’re interested in it, go into a scientific field"…much like, "Here’s how a lawn mower engine works, if you’re interested in that, become a mechanic."

I didn’t intend this to be a full review, just a few bits on what I thought about it overall.  At least it was good to get the scientific point out there again (it seems we need to do that every few years), Bill didn’t really have to do anything other than state facts and let Ken Ham destroy himself with statements like “I’m starting from a viewpoint that the bible is a true account of history” and “there is no hypothetical situation in which he could be wrong”.  I mean, at that point you can’t do anything to debate against that besides what Bill did, which was state scientific fact and tell people, we know these things, now go learn about it before the United States gets left behind!

-STA