:: gia’s blog ::

FYI, the Catholic Church has said that it’s not clear whether Judas was damned. So if that’s your only reason for being Atheist, then you should reconsider ;)

Again, in light of Catholic Theology (I’m just pointing out some facts for you and your readership, I thought you might find it interesting. I’m not trying to start a religious flamewar or anything — I understand you disagree, I just want to make sure you understand the Catholic position on these matters)

If Judas was damned, it probably would NOT have been because of his betrayal (for that matter, Peter also betrayed Jesus THREE times, but was later made head of the Church). It would have been because he committed suicide and thus presumed that God would not have mercy and forgiveness. Taking your life and presuming God’s Will are, unfortunately, final acts and you actually take away God’s opportunity to forgive you and damn YOURSELF.

In summary, it’s not clear whether Judas was damned (the Church never declares anyone damned, it only declares that someone is in Heaven [i.e. a 'Saint']). Again, that’s the Catholic take on things, just to make sure you understand.

One other thing, you said that the more you learn about pagan myths, etc, etc, the more it all sounds unlikely. I’ve heard many of these types of arguments and allegations that Christianity is an amalgamation of prior ‘art’ but these accusations are usually not definitive. Most of the theories I’ve heard along this line usually fall apart quickly because they’re based on some myth or another that turns out didn’t appear until AFTER Christianity. The research on a lot of these things is pretty shoddy and, ironically, the efforts of the author are usually based on the very thing that they allege: That their conclusions are set to match what their beliefs are.

Finally, I’m delighted that you’re so interested in science because it was, after all, Catholic monks who invented the Scientific Method in order to more fully understand God’s creation. Sure, there were some dark times in the middle ages where bad Popes and zealots persecuted some scientists, but for everyone of those there were a thousand brilliant scientists advancing knowledge by leaps and bounds — all funded and encouraged by the Church. And, despite modern atheistic (note the small ‘a’ here) scientist’s best efforts, so far no one has ever been able to explain what caused the Big Bang (or what caused the cause of the Big Bang, or what caused the cause of the cause of the Big Bang… it’s turtles all the way down).

Anyhow, great list of books. Some really good, well written and researched authors. I applaud your DEDICATED pursuit of knowledge and understanding. I know many people who call themselves ‘atheists’ but really are ‘agnostic’ and just don’t want to believe in God (or don’t want to do the whole religion thing).

It’s refreshing to see someone who is taking their beliefs seriously and really trying to find Truth and seek out all avenues of understanding.

If Dawkins’ mention of children and morality grabbed your interest, then I heartily recommend Stephen Law’s “The War for Children’s Minds”. As the blurb on the front cover says (by Philip Pullman, no less): ‘Should be read by every teacher, every parent, and every politician’. This book deserves to be on your list.

Rebecca, I think the biggest problem for most atheists is that there are as many definitions of “God” as there are people who believe in Him/It/Them. When I talk about the Christian God, I tend to mean the average, generic God who created the Universe, gave the Earth his son, is Pure Good, answers prayers, micro-manages Human Beings, is Omniscient and Omnipotent and resides in Heaven where he and his son wait for us to join them after we die. I understand that isn’t what all Christians believe, but it’s the middle ground. If, however, I am discussing religion with one person specifically, then I always, always, always ask them to tell me what *THEY* mean by God. Cos only when I have an idea of what they are talking about, can I have a genuine conversation with them.

Also, I use the ‘Positive Atheism’ definition of atheism: “The lack of a God-belief.” It’s not that I ‘deny the existence of God’, it’s that I lack BELIEF in any deities whether I have heard of them or not. It’s the proper definition of the word actually. ‘Theism’ means ‘belief in the existence of God or Gods’. The prefix ‘a-’ means ‘without’.

I am ‘without belief’. Give me proof… and a 2,000+ year old book written by people is not “proof” any more than ‘Harry Potter’ books and films prove the existence of magic. ;)

Hello - you left a comment about Sagan on my Flickr and here you are talking about him again, how marvelous. Though it’s a shame that my this comment is going to have to be a slight disagreement, as your blog looks very interesting.

First, I suppose I should clarify that I’m not an atheist. Perhaps it would be nice to have that kind of certainty about the universe, but I don’t. I’m a little-a agnostic sliding gently towards some kind of deism. I find it strange, that even though I hate Fundamentalism and Dogmatism of all kinds, in these endless internet arguments, I find myself being forced to defend Theism against Atheists.

My father is a scientist, my mother is a priest, so I have the unfortunate curse of being able to see the good in both sides of the human experience. But what I see more clearly is that this is not some kind of dualistic opposition - it’s not just comparing apples to oranges, it’s like comparing apples to combine-harvesters.

Yes, Christian texts have lots of internal contradictions. Bits of the Bible were written by a semi-literate tribe that took 40 years to find their way out of a desert the size of Texas. The final format of the book wasn’t even properly decided until several hundred years after its principle protagonists died - in the midst of a political power grab between factions of the movement. As my mum (the priest) explains, “god inspired these people to write it, but he didn’t make them poets or logicians.” (I was lucky enough to grow up within a very liberal and intellectual church - Church of England - do we worship god? No, we worship England - that encouraged critical thinking and study.)

Yes, the Bible is a big fat myth, loosely based on older mythologies and some other mystery cults that were floating around at the time.

But because something is a myth, that doesn’t make it a lie. A myth is a story that, although not strictly true, still reveals or attempts to explain something about human nature or the world at large. Myths are “imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world… (and) shape its meaning.”

I am fairly well educated, and I’d like to think of myself as intelligent, (I’m a mathematician by trade) but I can consider myself to be religious, as well, because I understand that things can have *symbolic* meaning as well as literal meaning. Reading more than one layer of meaning is not the same thing as being deluded. Different people interpret the world around them in different ways - some literal, some multi-layered and symbolic. Maybe there’s a link between religion and schizophrenia. There’s also a well established link between creativity and mental illness. Are you proposing we should get rid of imagination, too?

And you’re talking about just one set of myths, from one religion. Every single culture in the world has its own set of myths, whether that’s been codified into religion or not. And there are hundreds - if not thousands - of different religions in the world, some very very different from one another - and there are vast variations even within individual religions. (Some don’t even have deities to object to.) There’s something uncomfortably Eurocentric in the way that atheists go after Christianity (and occasionally Islam in more recent years) and hold it up as if it is the only religion or way of addressing spirituality in the world. That’s an awful lot of stuff you don’t know to dismiss it with one brushstroke.

Whatever religion is, it’s a human invention. Now I can’t say whether god is a human invention or delusion. (Lots of delusions that are purely down to neurochemistry and cultural indoctrination continue to be useful - romantic love is a fairly recent invention that boils down to oxytocin and kin selection, but lots of people still get married and have children quite happily under the influence of that particular delusion.) But I can say that certain needs that I would tag with the label “spiritual” are pretty universal. The political problems that infest organised religion infest almost every successful human institution. The problems lie with humans themselves, and their dominant power structures, not in the existence or non-existence of deities.

If you didn’t stop reading when I used the g-word, I’m going to recommend you a book by the Philosopher of Science (and Ethologist), Mary Midgley, called “The Myths We Live By.” It’s a well-written, clear and concise book about how reductionism has been been misused, about false dualisms and how they arose from outdated Enlightenment thinking. (Reductionism itself is based on the myth of perfect, indivisible atoms, when physics has discovered existence at the subatomic level to be a much weirder and more complicated realm of complexity and uncertainty and particle-waves.) In short - scientific method: classic, weird ideologies of omnicompetence based on supposedly “scientific” thinking: dud.

I’d highly recommend it for anyone interested in these kinds of issues. Personally, I’d make it required reading for anyone who considered themselves a scientist.

Masonic Boom- Hiya! There’s very little of what you said that I can disagree with… *I* don’t think science and religion are at all similar. I don’t think they cross over at ALL. They are, as you said, like apples and combine harvesters… You aren’t, however, a ‘normal’ religious person. ;)

I *LOVE* mythology (in fact, in Brian’s next Horizon, he started off in Mexico learning about the Mayans’ myths about Time because I suggested it). I don’t consider the Mayan myths to be *lies* because no one is claiming they are *the truth*. If, however, someone started beheading people daily based on the Mayan belief that people need to feed the Sun human blood in order to ensure that it traveled across the Sky, I doubt you could say that their actions weren’t based on ‘lies’.

The difference between ‘myths from other cultures’ and modern Abrahamic religions is, of course, that we don’t have people trying to insist our children learn- **IN SCIENCE CLASS**- about…say… how a black bird, Nyx, laid a golden egg. When this egg hatched, Eros, the God of Love was created. The top half of the shell rose up to create the Sky, the bottom half became the Earth. Eros named the Sky Uranus, and the Earth Gaia, and made them fall in Love. Their great-grandchild Prometheus was sent to Earth to create humans in the image of the Gods. “And that’s the real truth of how the world was created, kids. Nothing to do with all that Big Bang, Science stuff.”

We don’t have leaders of countries saying that Zeus spoke to them and told them to invade Iraq.

We don’t have people blowing themselves and others up because they take Norse mythology literally.

We don’t have people committing human rights abuses against women, and ‘unbelievers’ because of a myth about Amaterasu.

We don’t have people using their belief in Khepri as a justification for hating and killing gays and lesbians.

If none of the modern believers in the Abrahamic religions took their religions literally- AS THE TRUTH- then there wouldn’t be an issue.

Your advanced theological thoughts are NOT what most American religious people believe. African Anglicans certainly are nowhere near that. If you were Muslim and said what you said about the Koran, you’d be murdered for being an apostate.

Those kinds of people aren’t using their religion to “reveal or attempt to explain something about human nature or the world at large”. The vast, vast majority of religious people use their religion in order to justify their hate.

I think of all of this like the issue of guns in the States. The minority of gun-owners are in the NRA. I believe that the majority of NRA members *are* responsible gun owners… The problem is, of course, that the majority of gun-owners AREN’T in the NRA, they AREN’T responsible, they are FREAKIN’ DANGEROUS… But the NRA keeps campaigning successfully to keep guns legal… and the irresponsible gun owners keep on killing.

Same exact thing with religion.

@GIAGIA

RE: People blowing themselves up, set.

So your argument is basically because there are stupid people who happen to believe in religion doing stupid things, we should abandon religion?

So tomorrow religion is gone and all these stupid people are now atheists. Will they really become un-stupid? I seriously doubt it.

And, I know of quite a few stupid people who happen to be atheists that do dumb things like kill people and commit atrocities. Should we then say that atheism is wrong because of that also?

Your logic doesn’t make any sense. Stupid people will be stupid people no matter what belief system they follow. They use their belief system to justify their stupid actions. This is a universal human trait and not limited to the confines of religion, unfortunately.

RE: Guns - Same kind of argument. Taking people’s guns away won’t stop people from killing each other. Sadly, people were quite effective at killing each other before guns entered the scene (even more so, you might suggest).

At any rate, most places in the world have very strict gun rules and it seems to have very little effect on violent crime involving firearms. Gun violence is a symptom of a much deeper problem. Banning Guns to solve Gun violence is like banning sex to cure AIDS. Sex isn’t the problem.

@Mary:

In a sense, yes. By that reasoning, you can go back to early Egyptians and Greeks who had sets of rules very similar to the scientific method. But I consider the true foundations in modern scientific method as those that were established by people like Roger Bacon, Galilelo, Francis Bacon, and Descartes (all Catholics). Yes, yes, I’m well aware of the unfortunate events surrounding Galilelo. But in spite of all this, Europe’s dominance in scientific endeavors after the middle ages are due in a large part (through funding, encouragement, and special favors by various Popes) to the Catholic Church.

I’m not trying to say everyone should be Catholic, I’m just saying that one shouldn’t be too dismissive of religion or consider it contrary to religion because it is most certainly not. In fact, we wouldn’t really have any concept of science or scientific method if it were not for religion (specifically Catholicism) seeking to better understand the world in which we live and the magnificence and awe of God’s creation.

Hey RJ!! Re: ‘atheism as a religion’. That’s why I prefer the proper definition of ‘atheism’ - ‘lack of belief in deities’- than the religious establishment’s definition of ‘denial of the existence of God’. I can’t logically deny something I don’t understand. Again, this gets back to the fact that there are as many versions of God as there are believers. To some people “God” may be Spinoza’s or Einstein’s definition- ie “EVERYTHING”, so not only the Laws of Physics, but the stars, the Sun, the Moon, you, the computer in front of you make up “God”. How can anyone sensible argue with that? But that version of “God” isn’t a supernatural being which intervenes…

So if one defines themselves as ‘One who doesn’t believe in God’ (or they BELIEVE in the non-existence of God), then I accept that that is a kind of ‘religious’ belief. I would posit, however, that they’ve not really thought about it all that much and are erroneously using religion’s framing.

Richard Dawkins is not someone who ‘believes in the non-existence of God’, he lacks a God-belief. If, however, there was *proof* of God, he would happily accept that. As would anyone sensible.

Chad- I don’t think we ‘abandon’ religion. Like the NRA, I think religious establishments need to accept certain restrictions. In the same way that I think the NRA needs to accept that no decent, responsible person has a need for a semi-automatic weapon, religious establishments need to accept that their authority has certain limits.

Instead, we should (in our Western liberal democracies, at least) move past this place we are in right now where we promote the idea that every belief or opinion is of ‘equal value’.

I’ve written before that I don’t think everyone has the right to be ‘listened to’ (which is different from having the right to say what one wants). This is based on the idea of ‘authority’.

We, as a society, accept that trained lawyers and judges have ‘authority’ as far as law is concerned, football coaches have authority as far as training a team is concerned and film directors have authority as far as making films is concerned. When it comes to things a bit more complicated, like science and medicine, ‘we’ have started to think that ‘we’ know better.

The problem is that we can have opinions on whether a legal ruling was correct, whether a football coach has chosen the best starting line-up or whether a film is good or not… ‘opinion’, however, doesn’t come into it when you are talking about DNA, Carbon Dating, the Forces, chemical reactions etc.

Whilst I am delighted to accept that religious people have authority as far as *religion* is concerned (there’s not a religious person I’ve met who has a) told me that *I* understand religion b) been able to explain why religion is ’so much more’ than I see it to be), why is it so difficult for religious people (and some others, but that’s a slightly different discussion) to accept the authority of scientists? Why does religion demand authority over religion AND science?

Also, the whole ‘the Catholic Church is responsible for the scientific method’ stuff is slightly disingenuous. The *only* literate people at that time were in the Church. The only *wealth* at that time was in the Church. Just as the Church wasn’t responsible for Michelangelo’s beautiful paintings - he would have painted just as well if he hadn’t been paid to paint for the Church - Scientists at the time would have been just as capable of discovering the things they did outside of the Church had there been universities or whatever outside the Church.

Look, Gia, I’m scared sh*tless that one of the superpowers of the earth (yes, the one with its finger on the nuclear trigger) could be democratically ruled by a man who thinks he can repeal the Law of Evolution. That terrifies me.

However… I may have poor social skills, but even I know that the way to win people’s hearts and minds is *not* by insulting them, calling them deluded fools, or accusing them of child abuse. (Isn’t that really the oldest propaganda in the book when it comes to demonising opponents whose ideology one disagrees with? “The Jews! they eat babies, you know!” etc.)

Human beings do not need religion as an excuse to kill or oppress one another. That’s an overly simplistic notion, and easily countered with this old chestnut: Look at the great 20th Century secular states - were the Soviet Union and communist China great bastions of rational pacifism without any conflict or bloodshed?

Almost all human conflict is caused by power struggles over resources (food, land, water, oil, breeding partners) between varying ethnic or cultural groups. The most obvious signifier of cultural difference between similar ethnic groups is religion. Hence it takes the rap.

Scratch the surface of the examples you give, and there are conflicts which have little to do with religion. It seems unlikely that Zeus or anyone else told Bush to invade Iraq - however, it seems depressingly likely that the controlling interests of Halliburton told Bush that god told him to invade to get all that oil and those lucrative reconstruction contracts.

People who take Norse mythology seriously tend to blow up Norwegian churches, but that’s another story. The important thing is, no one ever bombed Norwegian death metallers. The violent turn of some branches of Islamic fundamentalism is hugely troubling. I’m more interested in questions of *why* it’s gaining ground. Religious fanaticism may fan the hatred and desperation that drives people to such acts, but it didn’t *create* it. (That would take a couple of hours to explain, long-running conflict between Jews and Arabs, exacerbated by imperial interests of the US and its allies.) In that situation, Radical Islam is one of the few sources of a comprehensive ideology totally opposed to the negative, imperial aspects of American overseas policy.

Men don’t need Christianity, or Hinduism or Chinese 1-child policies or any other ideology to justify the oppression of women. That comes from viewing your breeding partners as property rather than human beings, as above.

Culture and religion are inextricably linked. People who blame religion for conflict have made that fundamental schoolboy scientific error of mistaking correlation for causation. Isn’t it just as likely that negative religion is an expression of a culture’s underlying racism, sexism, etc. - as much as the cause of it?

Maybe I’m not a ‘normal’ religious person. The irony being, as you hinted at, that it was non-normal religious persons, starting with protestant reformers, who fought for and won our very ability to be having this conversation. Freedom of religion (including the right not to have one) is something worth fighting for, because religion is a cultural signifier that describes a culture’s moral and ethical values.

I wonder what it is, in America, that is driving the revival of fundamentalist right-wing Christianity. To me, it’s more useful to find out the cultural mythology behind it. I don’t know that human beings can, or should be cured of religion - I think a more useful answer is working towards a more humane and humanitarian religion. Because this same human creation - religion - that drives some people to suicide bombing also inspire other people - such as the Quakers - to organise and protest against unjust wars.

Perhaps your NRA analogy has some usefulness - but at the same time, Chad’s rejoinder about banning sex to cure AIDS is apt.

I have a lot more respect for people like my mother, and her colleagues - who reach out to some incredibly marginalised people, and try to educate and empower them - teach them the aspects of this religion that can be a source of community and inspiration and love, instead of hatred and division - than for people who call for the impossible abolishment of religion. Because a religion, like any other aspect of a culture, although it can be shaped by external influences, can only really be *changed* from inside.

Subscribing to a religious belief and an appreciation of science do not have to be the slightest bit incompatible - and I question the political motivations of anyone (on either “side”) who says that they are.

This false science-religion dichotomy does a lot of harm - it distracts people from genuine issues. Discount science, and you can bury your head in the sand and pretend that things like climate change aren’t happening. Discount religion, and you exclude exactly the people you need on side to affect change.

I think, in a lot of ways, you and I probably do agree on a lot of things. We’ve just had very different experiences which lead us to different conclusions. There’s a correlation between ignorance and “bad” religion. You say, get rid of religion, I say - no, get rid of ignorance. The more I find out about the universe, the more I’m filled with a deep sense of wonder, and awe, and yes, a spiritual feeling of the kind you attribute to Einstein.

Carl Sagan was a brilliant man, not even because of his intellect, but because of his ability to express incredibly complex ideas in ways that were easy for the layperson to understand, and because he was able to present these ideas with charisma and enthusiasm which captured the popular imagination. Science - and not just science, but our world - needs more people like that. (One of the reasons I admire your husband is because he has that populist touch.)

Looking forward to what he makes of the Mayans!

Masonic Boom - believe it or not my husband’s ‘populist touch’ is probably more to do with me insisting that people have a ’spiritual’ side! I don’t think he’d ever deny that when we first met, he had no interest in nor appreciation for that and was only really interested in ‘the science’. I think it all changed when we were sitting in our hotel bar in Hanoi 4 years ago and I was trying to explain what I meant when I said ’spiritual’:

I don’t mean ‘magic’. I don’t mean ’supernatural’. I don’t mean ‘ghosts’. I mean ’seeing the bigger picture’, ’seeing that we are both insignificant and the most important things in the universe’, ’seeing that there is absolutely NO difference between you and a Vietnamese woman who works in a hotel bar’, ‘recognising that we all feel exactly the same emotions with exactly the same intensity’, ‘we all are children’, ‘we will all one day die’ ‘We all share the ‘outside’ with one another, we are all connected, yet ‘inside’ we are all, each of us, completely alone.’ ‘Recognising that you are not the centre of anyone else’s universe except your own.’

I don’t need “God” to tell me those things… and in fact, in everything I’ve read in the Bible and the Koran, he *doesn’t* really say any of those things- apart from the Golden Rule, which is brilliant, but in no way unique to nor invented by Christianity.

And I totally, totally agree: get rid of ignorance. If you get rid of ignorance then you remove a lot of trouble… The problem is, of course, that by being all ‘groovy’ and thinking that no ‘harm’ at all can come from religion we get creationism taught in UK state schools. That is NOT getting rid of ignorance.

Masonic boom: you rule. Nice to hear from someone else who understands this the same way.

I’ve been working on a project with people who’s beliefs range from Islam through all kinds of new-agey stuff to unswerving atheism (like me). They all understand religion in pretty much the same context as you and the results have been fascinating and inspiring for everyone involved. Keep at it.

I see ‘religious people’ in the same way I see ‘drug users’. They can do what they want to themselves, in their own space and in their own time. And actually think they should be free to do so. I can respectfully refuse to take part in their activities without making judgments on their personal choices. The moment, however, they step over a very clearly defined border (ie when their personal choices start to impact others who don’t have a choice in the matter- theft, violent crime, telling my children that their choices are the RIGHT choices), then I step in and step in hard.

What I hear from way too many ‘defenders of religion’ is that I am somehow *wrong* for fighting against this very obvious step across the clearly defined border that religious people are taking more and more, the excuse is always ‘because people *need* religion’… (yea, we all have our addictions, kids…)

Now, I could easily say that cocaine/heroin/meth users are pretty fucking stupid and completely ignorant and perhaps a media type will come here and say, ‘Hey I take cocaine every weekend and it works for me! Don’t knock it until you try it!! It’s GREAT and so am I!!!’ and then I can mention people I know personally who have had their lives almost completely destroyed by those drugs and still those people will say, ‘Well that’s rare. No one *I* know has a problem with it’ and then I can say, ‘Yep, there was a time in *my* life when I didn’t know anyone who ended up in rehab for cocaine abuse/on the streets of King’s Cross chasing the dragon/working as a ‘money collector’ for drug dealers to fuel their Meth addiction/overdosed’… ‘Well, that’s rare.’

Yea. Admittedly, it’s only a small percentage of the people I know who’ve done drugs, but those are very, very serious SERIOUS problems and they shouldn’t be swept under the carpet and you shouldn’t think that it’s only a ‘certain type of person’ who gets into trouble… Everyone should be aware that they, too, could end up in that position if they choose to go down that path.

Then I can point out the percentage of thefts and violent crime committed by serious drug users and how there is a seriously negative impact on the communities within which drug use is rife, ‘Yea, but no one *I* know is a serious drug user. All my friends and I can handle it… So….’

And it can go on and on… All the while *they* think I am making judgments about people who use drugs or that I am somehow ‘anti-drug’ and want the law tightened etc.

Can ANYONE see how it’s possible to both *accept* that people have the right to choose to do drugs AND *HATE* the very negative, damaging problems that can happen? Can anyone accept that I might not want the government to listen to drug addicts when restructuring the benefits system ‘we need more tax money set aside to pay for our crackdens’ rent’? Can anyone accept that the idea of having schools partially funded by my tax money and partially funded by a drugs cartel would be offensive to me, especially as they would only really accept the kids of cocaine users (though legally 10% of the parents take heroin, crack or meth, and there’s never any room for the kids of ‘occasional glass of wine drinkers’. And now the government is funding Khat schools?! Honestly, who’s going to send their kids there?!)? Can anyone accept that I wouldn’t want people teaching my son in HEALTH CLASS that taking methamphetamines is a really good way to lose weight?! ‘Works for me!!! *twitch**twitch*’…?

Why exactly is it impossible to simply map this way of thinking onto religion? I don’t care what people think or believe (or do to themselves). I do care if their (entirely subjective) beliefs impact others who don’t have a choice in the matter. Simple.

James, you don’t have to be religious to feed and house homeless people. Atheists can do that, and do. Compassion for other human beings doesn’t come from God. You do, however, have to be religious in order to believe that if you blow yourself and a bunch of innocent people up, you will gain your place in Heaven.

Yes, I do think religious people are deluding themselves. If you *don’t* think that, you must, I’m afraid *prove* the reality of God, miracles, the Virgin Birth, the existence of Heaven - if you’re Christian. And if you’re Muslim you luckily don’t have to prove the Virgin Birth, but you must prove that the Koran is the unalterable word of God.

If you can’t prove them, yet you *still* believe in them as *fact* then you are, I’m afraid, deluding yourself.

That isn’t a *judgement*, it’s a fact. In the same way that someone suffering from schizophrenia may genuinely, honestly, seriously *believe* that the birds in the trees around their house are taunting and threatening them with a violent attack, religious people may genuinely, honestly, seriously *believe* that there is a Sky God looking over them who intervenes and helps them out when they ask (sometimes).

Let’s go back to the schizophrenic who is receiving messages from the birds. If you saw that person, what would you think of them? Would you feel they were inferior to you? OR would you find it incredibly sad that this person was living with the torment of their delusions? I would hope your choice is the latter.

The difference with religious people, however, is that by all accounts and purposes they are *not* mentally ill by our current definition. They are, however, actively, purposely deluding themselves. Again, that’s sad, but I have less sympathy for *willful* ignorance, I’m afraid.

You asking me to *only* concentrate on the *good* that comes from religion is like a drug addict asking for people to only look at the *good* that comes from drug use. It’s sweeping away the main source of, for example, crime in our society. As a religious person, you *must* accept the bad elements of religion as well. You *must* accept that they happen.

Re: communism. The promise of Christianity and Islam (they are the biggest problems) is of everlasting existence in Heaven after death. Heaven is a perfect paradise… The promise of Communism was a Utopian society here on Earth…

In order to attempt to create this Utopia, the Communist regimes had to take away personal freedoms, murder people who opposed them, use propaganda, fear and threats in order to control the population, portray the leaders as “perfect”… That is not a ‘Utopia’… And the way religion operates is extremely similar.

To me a world where *everyone* can think what they want, believe what they want, make their own choices about how they live their life is as close to “perfection” as humans are capable of. For me living in a society which *only* accepts Christian ways of thinking is as terrifying as living in a society that *only* accepts Muslim ways of thinking or Communist ways of thinking.

In order to allow a place for *everyone* we MUST structure our society in a way that allows *most* people freedom to choose how to live their life. I say, ‘most people’ because there are ways of thinking that should not be given room to flourish in a society… and one of those ways of thinking is that anyone different from you or who thinks something different from you or who does something different from you should be ‘eliminated’… And some fundamentalist Christians and Muslims believe that anyone different from themselves should be ‘eliminated’ as do some racists.

As it is right now, as an atheist, I am a target for murder because some people believe in their delusions. Why should I accept that?

I’ve gotten a lot of crap in college about evolutionary biology but giving and helping people has evolved to make us more social animals. Just a few thousand years ago people lived in groups of only hundreds of people where everyone knew the other, thus helping someone in this group was often met with a returned favor. Evolutionary psychology shows us that you may justify an act however you like it still doesn’t hide the fact the animals strive to reproduce and nothing is done without at least a subcounscious expectation of returned help.

My problem with religion is not that they believe something but that they are constantly attempting to undermine science in USA’s schools. Good thing I live in California, but places like Kentucky have parents wasting government resources on arguing a purely philosophical and unapplicable position that evolution is no different than religion.

And James, if I remember correctly 50% of the USA are Christians and 50% of the prision population are Christians. 10% of the population is atheist and less than 0.1% of the prision population are atheist. It’s probably not the good book that’s responsible for their crimes but there is something statistically significant about that low percentage of actual atheists in prision.

Lots of things don’t stand up logically AT ALL AT ALL AT ALL. What you want for lunch. What shoes to wear to a party. What football team you support. Who you fall in love with.

With all due respect to Marx, there’s some problems with that religion = drugs argument.

It’s drawing from a quite narrow definition of “drugs.” Some manmade (and naturally occurring) drugs are very harmful in some situations. Others have absolutely turned around the quality of human life. Drug *abuse* is bad, for example - taking opiates as an addition is terrible waste. However, having major surgery without opiates would be a horrific experience. (As is going through a profoundly dark night of the soul without some kind of spiritual framework.)

Myself, I have to take certain drugs every single day in order to maintain a normal life, and although it’ s not ideal, I thank science that they exist, because they have expanded the length and quality of my life. I would not like to get rid of the entire pharmacological and botanical catalogue because some people abuse some of them. Some people get high on the chemical ingredients in inhalants. Would you like to go through your next asthma attack without one?

Different strokes for different folks. Some people have a glass of wine or beer with dinner every night without a problem, some people’s lives are ruined by rampant alcoholism. You find Buddhism helps with your dark nights of the soul. Some people find the prayer and ritualism of Catholicism meets the same purpose. Some people get drunk on religion and use it to justify their hatred instead of using it to de-stress and connect with their community/universe.

We agree that no one has the right to force their beliefs on the matter onto other people. However, that doesn’t gel well with your proselytisation for atheism. You *sound* like you are on a crusade, trying to convert people to think like you do, or they’re stupid. It’s just more of the old “stuff that works for me = good, stuff that I don’t understand or agree with = bad.” I have no time for that.

Please stop using “religious person” as a synonym for “fundamentalist Christian.” That’s as absurdly narrow (not to mention insulting) as equating *all* scientists with eugenicists who worked for the Nazis. That kind of stereotyping smacks, as James pointed out, of some kind of cultural -ism. (Elitism?) Lazy, bad generalisation weakens your arguments.

You continue to rail on and on about this straw man of what you believe *all* religion to be based on your particular fears and inner demons. That kind of generalisation isn’t helpful to anyone. Least of all people fighting against the ignorance and greed and hatred that *is* fuelling the problems.

It’s pointlessly divisive.

There are FAR more pressing problems in the world than whether someone believes the universe was caused by hydrogen atoms, inflating Calabai-Yau spaces, some mythological deity with a white beard or turtles all the way down. Climate Change, unequal distribution of world resources, overpopulation, etc.

There was more, but it was wandering off topic into Kohlberg/Piaget’s theories of moral development (what about the 50% of the world that have an IQ below 100? How are you going to reach someone with sophisticated logical arguments when they struggle with elementary maths?) so I deleted it.

It’s not what you believe, but how you act. Believing that the world was created by a man with a fluffy beard can lead people to act as if “hey, what does it matter, god created dinosaurs, he can create more oil” and others to act as if “GOD MADE THIS BEAUTIFUL PLANET AND HEY Y’ALL ARE DISRESPECTING YR MAKER BY F*CKING IT UP!”

I’ve, personally, seen some beautiful transformations in the *quality* of people’s lives brought about by good, enlightened religion. Some are Catholic, some are Anglican or Quaker or Buddhist or Rational Humanist, depending on their personality as much as their upbringing. So I’m not prepared to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

“There are FAR more pressing problems in the world than whether someone believes the universe was caused by hydrogen atoms, inflating Calabai-Yau spaces, some mythological deity with a white beard or turtles all the way down. Climate Change, unequal distribution of world resources, overpopulation, etc.”

Yep, and I would argue that a disbelief in science, a mistrust of ‘intelligence’ and the idea that the highest authority on any matter is some made-up guy floating around somewhere and a book that he either inspired or wrote is the MAIN reason those and many, many other problems exist.

No one is saying religion does not have a means and a desire to spend vast resources, instead I am talking about those who do not use it to better the world but to hinder scientific progress that ultimatley provides a more effective and affordable means of supplying aid. Stopping stem cell research because it’s against God’s destroy’s the only hopes of millions of people. Stopping abortions forces children to be bron into broken homes that leads to increased crime rates. Stopping real science education in schools prevents people from studying science to one day fix the very problem the religious groups are trying to solve.

Just becasue the religous groups are the only ones there does not mean there are not hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, lawyers, politicians, and others working on a cure or a cheap laptop so that every child can have thousands of text books rather than sahre a few.

You can keep providing aid to countries in hopes of saving a fraction of the people, but you NEED to focus on a global solution and the only one this world has come up with is scientific advancment. When you can provide third world countries access to the same education and technology the rest of the world can then you see vast imporvments in the education and quality of life.

—–’Why you, as a Buddhist, would be defending ‘Theism’ is beyond me. As I always say, ‘Buddhism is Atheism with better Art.” If you think that Buddhism needs ‘faith’, has a ‘Creator God’ or is, in any way, ’supernatural’, then you have, perhaps, learned a Western (bastardised) version of Buddhism or probably - because of your ‘distracting’ comment- Zen which will mean you’ve not really ‘thought’ about things much as Zen isn’t about ‘thinking’.’——

Again, you have misinterpreted my argument. I am not defending theism, per say, merely pointing out that your view of theism is very one-sided. Many, many Christians abhor the Iraq, many Christians believe in evolution. Why mention only those who don’t believe in evolution and who support the war Iraq? (Can a true Christian ever support a war?)

When you talk about theists there is a definite bias in what you say. I’m therefore also guessing that when you meet theists, you don’t meet them with an open mind. Now I’m sure you ‘d agree that is something that does not really bode well with Buddhism, which is why I brought it up on the first place-so you could better understand where I am coming from. Theism, or just the concept of a God, is something which clearly bothers you. You have gone out of your way to assure yourself of your atheism and, equally it seems, you have gone out your way to assure yourself that theists are people to be pitied-certainly not people to trust at least.

Why do you feel the need to compare all theists to drug users? ‘Ah’ you say ‘because like drug users, theists need a God. They need their weekly fix; they have deluded themselves to the point of being dependent on something that doesn’t exist. Not only is their “addiction” dangerous to themselves, but worse, like drug users their selfish habit is having negative effects on wider society. This is evident in the way creationism is being given an equal footing in schools as evolution and in the way stem cell research is being kept down by the religious right.’

I am simply suggesting to do you that if you go round with this belief in your head that all theists are selfish, deluded and trying to force their beliefs on you, you a) causing yourself unnecessary stress and b) being unfair to theists. Theists do not ‘need’ their God even if they do choose to believe in one. Now I’m not denying that believing in a God also brings a sense of happiness and peace which some people crave. As a Buddhist, this is something I disagree with. To even care for an afterlife let alone crave one is detrimental However here again, just because a theist believes in a God does not mean they also believe in, let alone seek, an afterlife. Forgot not as well, those who believe in God do not look to God to make them happy but in fact look for ways they can make their God happy and share the joy to which he has brought to their lives.

Hopefully you see I am not defending theism, however I think I will take the chance to defend my Buddhism and my beliefs. You suggest that to associate theism with Buddhism is to accept a bastardised western view of Buddhism. On what do you base that? If you look at the Far East, Buddhism is very much tied up with ideas of spirituality, faith and ‘the soul’. I would suggest it has much more to do with Hinduism than atheism. In fact, there are those who believe the Buddha could manipulate the very fabric of the world around him as he had become so in tune with nature. Hence there are inevitably stories of him walking through walls and so on. Doesn’t mean of course that the Buddha didn’t exist and it doesn’t mean I have to believe those stories to believe in his messages.

Who knows, maybe the miracles of Jesus were exaggerated by a loving and adoring public-Chinese whispers gone mad? Does that lessen Jesus message of compassion? Just think about it as a logical atheist for a moment. Do you think their could be any truth behind the gospels? Why else would such stories come about unless their was at least a kernel of truth somewhere? Do you not think it amazing that 2000 years ago there was a man who martyred himself so that his messages of love and peace would echo throughout the centuries I might even say I love Jesus for what he did. Does that make me a Christian, I do not know. But I do know that I certainly see no harm in people singing his praise every Sunday. Many Christians do forget forget the message of Christ and hence support wars or unduly impose their beliefs on others, yes. However, for me personally, the true Christian message of love and compassion is one to be celebrated. Christians are my friends.

But none of this matters of course. Unlike other religions, there are no ‘laws’ except perhaps those that suggest we should seek to enlighten ourselves and understand the outcomes of our thoughts and actions. You say that true Buddhism is paramount to atheism, and who am I to argue? Although my response would be that questioning the existence of a God is an irrelevant concern. There are many Buddhists who DO in fact believe in God as there are many who don’t. So what? We disagree, but I think that to not believe in a God is a choice just as much as believing in God is. Agnosticism is perhaps the only true ‘non choice’ as to define yourself as an agnostic is t