On the matters of faiths, beliefs, sciences and worldviews.

I never though that the colour gray could be the subject of such lengthy discussion, but everything’s possible if you’re a rationalist. Case in point: The Fallacy of Gray.

My favorite part is this:

If science is based on ‘faith’, then science is of the same kind as religion – directly comparable.  If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars.  It would make sense to say, “The priests of science can blatantly, publicly, verifiably walk on the Moon as a faith-based miracle, and your priests’ faith can’t do the same.”

It seems the theists arguing against things like evolution are so hungry that they want to have their cake and eat it too. That may be a miracle God could have performed (had he existed), but it’s certainly an impossible task for mere humans.

In one of Ray’s latest posts, he discusses morality. Yes, again. He still holds the opinion that without God, people are completely free to redefine morality however they want, so that war is peace, murder is life and hate is love. Of course, anyone with a speck of intelligence knows this just isn’t true, that society can’t just make anything “moral”. However, the examples that Ray chooses to give tell us something about him. Let’s look at one…

If the government (society) says homosexuals marrying each other is good, it moves from one generation believing it is evil and it becomes good and acceptable.

…and then another.

If the government says it’s okay to kill blacks, Jews and homosexuals because only the fit should survive, what is morally evil changes to that which is morally good in their eyes.

In the first example, homosexuality is portrayed as something bad, something that one generation “believes” is actually evil. What Ray sees as a decline in moral integrity is the fact that homosexuality is more and more tolerated (and, as we all know, tolerance has no place in Christianity!). In the second example, he describes a government that sees black, Jewish and homosexual people as “unfit”, taking care not to insinuate too obviously that he could think the same. I suspect that the only reason homosexuals are even in the list of people that it currently is immoral to kill, is that not even Ray has the balls to wish those who disgust him dead publicly.

In essence, Ray has no problem calling homosexuals downright evil, but he draws the line at actually killing them for that reason alone. How noble of him.

Now, let’s discuss his premise of good and evil, shall we? Ray is under the impression that society or governments are free to define anything they wish as moral or immoral, on opinion alone. This is far from reality, as with most of Ray’s rabid rantings. His first example of something that is today “bad”, but in tomorrow’s Godless society would be “good”, is abortion. Abortion (or “killing babies”, as Ray so colorfully describes it) is never a “good” thing, and I don’t know anyone who’s ever made the claim that it is. It is, and always will be, an “evil” in the traditional sense. However, modern, intelligent people are able to realize that sometimes it is a necessary evil, a negative act that can sometimes lead to good and positive results. A young girl, impregnated against her will, can be allowed to live instead of being sentenced to a horribly cruel and painful death. It will likely never be a “good” thing to take a life, in any way, shape or form, but it might often be necessary.

Equal rights for homosexuals is one of those hot-button examples that everyone uses just to get attention. However, being gay or lesbian has nothing to do with morality. One has to wonder why homosexuality is so prevalent in society today, but among those who think it’s disgusting or immoral, not a single person identifies as gay themselves. Statistics alone almost conclusively proves that it’s more about self-hatred and fear, than actual Christian values or morality.

Lastly, the killing. Not the killing of blacks, Jews or homosexuals specifically, but killing altogether. Has anyone ever claimed that murdering another person was “good” or “moral”. Even Hitler? Again, I maintain that killing another human being (or even another animal, for that matter) is always a bad thing – evil, but sometimes nonetheless necessary. Not in the sense that it’s necessary to ethnically cleanse human populations, but in the sense that we often allow killing in self-defense and as capital punishment, and we allow the killing of animals for sustenance.

So in conclusion, this is another straw man non-issue, a made-up argument from Ray Comfort to refute something that doesn’t exist. Secular nations have no problems with morality, and in fact, the numbers rather show a correlation between secularism and increased tolerance and decrease in violence. Apparently, being good doesn’t mean anything to Ray unless you’re also Christian, which I suspect is really the heart of the problem: It’s not morality and goodness that is on the decline, it’s religion. It’s Christianity. It’s his particular faith that is losing in numbers, and that’s what scares him.

Oh, and those damn gays, of course. Mustn’t forget them gays…

This is a re-post of a story that reddit user assfly0 posted in the atheism subreddit, which I thought was so good that I wanted to share it with as many more people as possible. Enjoy!

Today was a dreary, drizzly Sunday. Wet, cold and raw, it decided. I lounged in the house, eating breakfast, completing my easy homework assignments, looking outside at the rain, wondering about a good time to get a run.

Hours went by and the rain went on, unrelenting. Unbelievable, I thought. It cannot last much longer. It can’t! I have to go running. Running is the only thing that can remedy a spell of smashed asshole syndrome (SAS), which is what I felt like.

Eventually, the rain subsided into a mere sprinkle. I figured, Ah, it’s going away. I better run for it and take my chances before it’s too late. So I put on running pants, my black hoodie, my Nikes and my mp3 player and took off in the rain.

Pretty soon, I realized it was coming down harder than I thought. Fuck! It’s too late. Can’t turn back. I’m already running, and I’m only doing four miles. About two miles in, it really starts coming down, soaking my shoes, saturating my sweatshirt heavy. God! Cock! Shiiiittt!

This makes no sense. It was raining all day and then it lets down to make it seem like it’s going to stop. Then I decide to run and when I’m too far out on my route to justify going back, it begins pouring worse than all day. What the hell? What’s your god damn problem, God? Huh? Are you enjoying this? You slimy omnipotent turd!

This is what was actually going through my mind at the time. I really and truly felt as if there were some mocking entity out there doing this to me, if for only a brief moment. For that fleeting time, Descartes’ evil prankster was doing this to me.

Thankfully, a moment later, I remembered that I don’t believe in God. I’m a semi-Christian turned agnostic turned militant atheist. After I realized this, something remarkable happened: my anger evaporated, like steam off my hot face. There was nobody doing this to me, no reason to be angry; there is only apathetic, negligent mother nature—god bless her. There is no reason to take anything personally. It wasn’t my fault or anyone else’s; there is only circumstance, like everything in this world.

It was during this time I insighted why people believe in God. They believe in him because it is so fucking easy. It is automatic. It is so natural when feeling pain or hate or any strong emotion, to attribute human qualities to anything, even when it doesn’t make sense. It feels incredibly, extraordinarily good to personify things. We see faces in everything, in clouds, blankets, even three dots—two on top, one of the bottom—can make us think of a face. Our cars, computers, or anything that requires our input, has a “personality.” In a highly emotional state, cognition is hijacked by more primitive and dominant neural pathways, which negotiate social interaction. Personification reflects this regression or crosstalk of circuitry.

Much of our nature is defined by the environmental significance of the other. Our brains in particular, have evolved so quickly and to such great heights largely to accommodate for language ability, so to better anticipate and manipulate the other. Our brains are wired to understand the other and the extent that we do this is nothing short of remarkable.

Our brains are, thus, specially configured to understand phenomena in terms of humans. Of course, then, there is a God!

written by assfly0

In the beginning, God created the world, all the animals, and ultimately a man and a woman, right? Whatever went through the minds of the only two people in existence at that time had to have been put there, explicitely, by God, right? I mean, unless someone else was involved in the whole creation thing. Ok, but one of the things that God put in the brain of Adam and Eve was the, now infamous, capability of free will. This meant that they were both able to make choices, either this or that, go left or go right. Remember, God put that ability into Adam and Eve himself. He hadn’t created himself as Jesus yet, so there’s really no one else to blame at this point.

This is where the fun stuff happens. Adam and Eve, using some of that splendidly glorious free will that God explicitly made sure to put into their heads, ate a single fruit off of a single tree, the one and only tree in the entire garden of Eden that God told them they couldn’t eat of. The ironic part is that this fruit came from the tree of knowledge of right and wrong. Yes, boys and girls, God told Adam and Even not to do something that he would think was bad, before they had the ability to tell bad from good, right from wrong. They also used their free will, something God probably put into their heads to be used, not ignored.

So what happened? Oh, we all know what happened, don’t we? God punished Adam and Eve for doing what they couldn’t possibly know not to do, since they couldn’t know that what they did was wrong and God himself made them capable of choosing whether to obey or disobey, thanks to free will. But he didn’t settle for punishing those that wronged him, nooo… He punished all of mankind, forever! Because, apparently, that’s a fair punishment when you’re God.

The ridiculousness of the Christian creation myth isn’t what bothers me the most. All old cultures and religions have their own explanations for things that they, at the time, couldn’t understand. What bothers me is how they ignore the complexities of choice, morality and free will. They think it’s all black and white because their book says it is. They think that automatic damnation for each and everyone is a fitting punishment for doing, well, what you were made to do. I don’t see how God can have created us, and therefor alone bear all responsibility for how we turn out, yet punish us for doing exactly what we were supposed to do.

God, infinitely omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent as he is, could have created the world without choice, without free will. Had he done that, we wouldn’t have disappointed him by making the “wrong” choice (which he already knew we would, omniscient as he is) and both of us would have been happier today. After all, we humans are only aware of the choices we know about, so we’re still blissfully ignorant of all the choices we never knew about. Imagine how blissful we would have been without the knowledge of any choice whatsoever!

Ok, I began this post with an actual point, and I’ll try to make before sending all of you to sleep. The mythical story of the vengeful God that punishes man for something he made us do is one thing, but the more modern apologetic interpretations of the implications of God’s actions in that myth are completely senseless. They go against all logic, reason and evidence, and is maintained purely for the sake of scripture and people’s own sense of satisfaction. People want the ability to choose, but want to blame God’s “mysterious ways” whenever something goes wrong. They want to have “absolute” morality, but still want to be saved from the inevitable punishment. It bothers me that they don’t understand how oxymoronic it all is, that they don’t even want to understand. Ignorance is one thing, and defensible, but willful ignorance is, in my opinion, unforgivable.

On Ray Comfort’s latest post, user Prestor John posted some really great gems that I sincerely hope he doesn’t mind if I re-post:

Believer: I can give you irrefutable scientific proof for the existence of God!

Skeptic: I’m listening.

Believer: First, if you will indulge me, a small preamble (Trust me, this argument is going to knock your socks off).

Skeptic: Go on.

Believer: Your house… do you believe that someone built it?

Skeptic: Well, I met the contractor, observed some of the construction process -

Believer: So you do believe there was a builder?

Skeptic: I don’t think “believe” is the right word…

Believer: Excellent! On to my next question; Your car… do you believe someone built that?

Skeptic: Ah, judging from the manufacturer’s information… Okay, I think I can see where this is going. With your ham-fisted Socratic Method you seem to be reaffirming Paley’s “watchmaker” design argument. I’m sure this was much more convincing two hundred years ago, but it hasn’t aged well.

Believer: Paley? No no no, you don’t understand. You see, in the same way that houses and cars have builders…

Skeptic: I understand perfectly. Homes have builders, paintings have painters, blogs have bloggers. All this succeeds to prove is that human artifacts are made by humans. I knew this already. If you wish to conclude that things that appear designed were designed by some other intelligence (namely God), then that is purely conjecture and does not constitute proof.

Believer: But a creation must have a creator! That is scientific proof of God’s existence!

Skeptic: Now you are just playing word games. The universe was only called a “creation” on the presupposition that God created it. You can’t use that fact as proof of God’s existence. You may as well rename the universe “God’s House”, and conclude that God must live there. It’s just semantics.

Believer: [pause] Why do you love sin so much?

Skeptic: [exasperation]

This is exactly how I perceive every single “creation proves a creator”-type argument. “Creation” is a word of one of the many human languages, not an objective property of the universe. Without the human mind existing, no one would be calling it a “creation” to begin with, and thus it wouldn’t be one. Therefore, “creation” only “proves a creator” under the circumstance that you’ve first proved that there is, in fact, a “creation”, to begin with. Since no one has ever managed to do that, this particular argument is immediately rendered moot.

This second one is just as good, hitting at exactly what I feel every time I speak with a True Christian™:

For your amusement, I have distilled a typical dialogue between opposing viewpoints:

Believer: Why do you doubt God?

Skeptic: I have no good reason to believe such a being exists.

Believer: But God is the creator of all that is good, he is the source of all righteousness!

Skeptic: That’s funny, because the way you have previously described him, he seems like kind of a jerk.

Believer: Well, it only seems that way to you because you have no concept of divine justice. God’s wrath is necessary punishment for our sins.

Skeptic: Justice? Your God creates a moral code so rigorous that no human can possibly follow it, then awards eternal condemnation for the slightest infractions. Sounds more like despotism to me.

Believer: Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. For you see, God will commute your sentence if you only believe and follow Him.

Skeptic: So God disregards justice in favor of the abject devotion of his subjects? I would call that corrupt.

Believer: What? No, well… Hey, if you don’t believe God exists, why should you care about what kind of God he is? Aha! Now I’ve gotcha!

Skeptic: I could make the same observations about Emperor Palpatine, but I don’t see millions of people devoted to worshipping him. There’s nothing inconsistent about a hypothetical judgement of a fictional character.

Believer: Right… Well look man, you better cast aside your pride and put your trust in Jesus. Otherwise death and unending torture await you!

Skeptic: [sigh]

Sigh, indeed. Circular and/or fallacious reasoning won’t work with us, no matter how many times you repeat it. If Christians understood this, that would be a great first step towards further enlightenment and understanding. Unfortunately for us, True Christians™ aren’t interested in enlightenment, nor understanding. They are blissfully ignorant by choice.

On that note, I’ll end this post with another quote, but not from Prestor John this time…

You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

- Author Unknown