Belief In God = Misplaced Hope & Comfort

The shock and fear of my son becoming a diabetic shook me very deeply. So deeply, that I found myself reacquainted with that frightened little voice in my head that yearned for a sort of parental comfort and protection from the perceived demons of the world. The voice was saying, “Please don’t take him from me. Please make everything turn out alright”.

It was a momentary lapse that was quickly dispelled with a little dose of rational thinking and the reminder that millions of undeserving people are inflicted with suffering every day. This undeserved suffering that’s been happening over hundreds of thousands of years is just one indication that there is no god.

The horrible experience convinced me that emotions like fear and hope evolved with strong connections to an often supernaturally based yearning for protection and comfort - we didn’t understand the world, so we looked to the mystical realm for help. While this may have been helpful to us in the past, in my mind, that approach is today a distraction. Hope and comfort are now better sought out in our own growing knowledge of the universe - of how things work and how things can be fixed.

Bringing it back to this personal experience, my kid gets to live because of humanity’s growing knowledge of biology, and I feel grateful to live in a time and place where my family can benefit.

Fear gives way to hope and comfort in the knowledge that our species is, with growing rapidity, learning to eliminate the suffering many people’s god is either unable or unwilling to end himself.

July 25, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism

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XTC ‘Dear god’ Lyrics & Videos

XTC dear godI trade emails with a group of co-workers and past co-workers. Today, someone in the group said, “God Bless Canada”. Another friend replied with, “What if you don’t believe in god?” (huzzah!) and then followed up with the lyrics of a 1987 song called Dear god by the British Band XTC (probably best known for We’re Only Making Plans for Nigel). I’ve pasted the lyrics below. Not only are they clearly and strongly written from the point of view of an atheist, but they write god without a capital “G”. A nice touch if you ask me.
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Update: I went to submit this post to Reddit and saw the XTC Dear god video had already been posted on youtube so I’m adding that, as well as a Sarah McLachlan version.

Dear god,
Hope you got the letter,
And I pray you can make it better down here.
I dont mean a big reduction in the price of beer,
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet,
cause they dont get enough to eat

From god,
I cant believe in you.

Dear god,
Sorry to disturb you,
But I feel that I should be heard loud and clear.
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears,
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street,
cause they cant make opinions meet,
About god,
I cant believe in you.

Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!

Dear god,
Dont know if you noticed,
But your name is on a lot of quotes in this book.
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
And all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it aint and so do you,

Dear god,
I cant believe in,
I dont believe in,

I wont believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners,
No devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
Youre always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And its the same the whole world round.
The hurt I see helps to compound,
That the father, son and holy ghost,
Is just somebodys unholy hoax,
And if youre up there youll perceive,
That my hearts here upon my sleeve.
If theres one thing I dont believe in…

Its you,
Dear god.

July 24, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, video

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Who Needs To Be In My Blogroll?

I’ve been doing some work on my sidebar and bookmark page. What links am I missing that you think should be in every good rational, freethinking, atheist’s blog?

July 14, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism

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Karma Isn’t The Answer Either

It’s funny how one broken brick can lead to an entire wall falling down…

One of the first aha! moments I had after letting go of my god delusion was the realization that leading one’s life according to the laws (?) of Karma isn’t much better.

The Stoke-On-Trent Humanist Group has it partly right:

These people are deluding themselves. Karma is an Eastern idea, popular in sophisticated quasi-religious philosophies like Buddhism, and is a way of dishing out false hope to the down trodden and wretched without the need to invoke a god.

False hope. Sound familiar?

What’s also familiar to me is the idea that the good and bad stuff you do is being recorded somewhere. Only, instead of gods doing the tallying, the universe somehow is. Make no mistake however, that you are being judged. Everything you do goes into a score book which will be used to determine your reward (coming back as a more enlightened human) or punishment (coming back as a dung-beetle).

I think a lot of people who let go of gods replace them with mysticism of this sort - the supernatural idea that, somehow, the universe has taken a personal stake in your moral behavior. To me, karma sounds a lot like sin.

Let’s stop the madness and give up this perverse idea that someone or something is watching us and judging for the purpose of determining where we fit in after we are dead.

July 12, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism

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Who’s Your Nomination For The Fifth Horseman?

I downloaded the Four Horsemen from richardawkins.net a couple of nights ago, and got to wondering who the fifth horseman might be. Even though I like to think I have the occasional original idea, I decided to Google the matter here and here and found that there were at least a few people wondering the same thing.

For the record, here are my top three choices:

Pat Condell: This guy makes Christopher Hitchens look like a beat-around-the-bushes mambie pambie pussy. ‘Nuff said. You can find Pat on his web site and Youtube channel.

Bart Ehrman: I think it would be safe to say that most other candidates for the fifth horseman are not Bible experts. Ehrman fills this void. His knowledge of Bible history and textual criticism is mind blowing. I especially like his there are more mistakes than there are words in the Bible quote. Ehrman has written several books - his most well known probably being Misquoting Jesus. Here’s a video of Bart Ehrman speaking at Stanford.

PZ Meyers: Through his Pharyngula science blog, PZ Meyers has become one of the most vocal and convincing atheist voices on the web. The guy is right up there with Dawkins in terms of his ability to explain science and obliterate his opposition. PZ’s blog is updated daily - sometimes several times a day - and is enormously popular.

Time to vote!

Who is your choice for the fifth horseman?

View Results

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July 11, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, poll

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The Five Most Important Days for Atheists

Head on over the Hemant’s for an interesting 10 year retrospective.

July 10, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism

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The Problem I Have With Atheism

It’s a negative thought. That is, it merely takes a position against something.

And, while I proudly call myself an atheist - a person with no belief in gods - I am a whole lot more than that. Aren’t you?

I now fully realize this as the purpose for this blog - to explore all that I stand for and, hopefully, to get you thinking along the same lines. Previous posts are consistent with this purpose. Now, I’m stating it explicity.

A plan for this blog - and my life - is starting to come together.

July 10, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, finding meaning

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U.S. Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Fundie/Creationist Crap

Much of the ridicule aimed at fundamentalists and creationists is directed at the US Bible Belt. I’m not from there. I’m Canadian.

And while many people are correct to say that Canada has much less of this garbage going on, there is one province that is the exception. That province is where I make my home - the province of Alberta.

Alberta is known as the most conservative province in Canada. There are good reasons for it being included in a recent variation of the United States of Canada and Jesusland map.

After all, we have our very own Big Valley Creation Museum. Yay Alberta.

dinosaurs among humans

July 7, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, religion

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My Atheism Advocacy Rating - What’s Yours?

Following up on yesterday’s post, here’s where I’m putting myself on what I’ve decided to call my Atheism Advocacy Scale (I should probably update the graphic):

  • Atheism: 6 out of 7 (using Dawkins 7 point scale, I am a “De facto Atheist”)
  • Antitheism: 7 out of 10
  • Evangelism: 8 out of 10
  • Militancy: 5 out of 10 (hopelessly non-committal - give me some time!)

I rate myself 30 out of 37 possible advocacy points. It’ll be interesting to see where I put myself on these scales one year from now.

(I’m really starting to think this would be a cool survey)

July 6, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, finding meaning

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What Kind of Atheist Are You? Place Yourself on the Atheist Advocacy Scale

After my de-conversion to atheism, I was compelled to contribute - to share the great joy of being freed from religion. I decided to start blogging about atheism, naively thinking there didn’t seem to be many atheist bloggers. How wrong I was. There are hundreds - perhaps thousands of us!

Knowing there were many atheist bloggers with far more experience and knowledge made me wonder how I could possibly contribute. I finally realized I can contribute because I am new, am exploring the basics and can relate well to new atheists or those exploring atheism.

With that in mind, today I’m exploring my role in the spread of atheism. What got me thinking about this is the often heated debate that goes on among atheists. We have the “leave religion and religious people alone and live your life” camp versus the “religion must be eradicated because it is hurting people and could lead to the destruction of our world” camp. Each of those camps - and shades of grey atheists between them - have ideas about the activities that should/should not be engaged in to promote atheism.

First, Some Definitions

Atheism is non-belief in gods. Atheists can be divided into strong versus weak atheists (see Richard Dawkins 7 point theism-atheism scale for something more thoughtful)

Anti-theism is opposition to belief in the existence of a God, and belief that theism is destructive.

Militant atheism is anti-theism in action - not only being philosophically opposed to theism, but actively involved to end it.

Evangelical atheism is also anti-theism in action. However, its focus is to spread atheism, rather than to end theism (the militant focus).

Atheist Scales

With the definitions above in mind, I created a few scales to help me decide my level of atheistic advocacy. I’ve labelled the left ends with extreme anti-advocacy statements, and the right ends with extreme pro-advocacy statements. Of course, there are imagined points between the ends - the shades of grey many of us will identify with. I like thinking about these as 10 point scales.

I included a strong versus weak atheist scale because I think the others are all somewhat dependent on one’s placement on that scale. Feel free to challenge me on that one - the scale is based on assumption. At any rate, the scales help me sort things out. Let me know what they do for you (if anything!).

Ok, enough talk. Here are the scales (click on the image to enlarge).

Please let me know your thoughts on this. Also, please let me know if I should make this into a survey - it might be neat to measure the responses.

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Edit: I’ve decided to call this my Atheism Advocacy Scale. Click this link to see how I rate myself.

July 5, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, finding meaning

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