I had a discussion briefly with several atheists on other blog that fancied themselves critics of Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

The blog-owner himself claimed that he had been an Objectivist for seven years, before realising the philosophy was flawed.  One of his reasons for rejecting Objectivism was of its notion of intrinsic values.  Later on, he clarified that the paper he wrote debunking Objectivism (which of course was highly praised in the Philosophy community) was actually an attack on Libertarianism.

Objectivism REJECTS intrinsic values.  Objectivism is NOT Libertarianism.  So, once again we see that those who pretend they have found a flaw with Ayn Rand don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

The only thing I can’t understand is why Objectivism should meet such a vociferous reaction; atheists like this slaughter theists when the latter make ridiculous claims about evolution and science; yet every other New Age Atheist feels themselves qualified to attack Ayn Rand on philosophical grounds when they haven’t the slightest clue what they’re talking about.  It’s pretty embarrassing.

One point that was raised again and again was: why is life the ultimate value?  One commenter even asked me for empirical proof to justify this statement, a question that belies gross philosophical ignorance.  Again, I wouldn’t criticise somebody for just being ignorant – what I criticise is those who pretend to know what they’re talking about and cover it in all the usual postmodern philosophical rubbish to make it seem like they do.  (If you want an example of this nonsense, wait until one of these philosophy students says something like “but how do you even KNOW you exist??”)

Since this “ultimate value” issue seemed to be the biggest bone of contention, I’ll deal with it here, and then encourage discussion in the comments below.

First of all, what is a value?  A value is that which one acts to keep and/or gain.  To quote Rand:

“The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.”

Where there is no valuer, there is no value.  The concept “value” means something only in relation to a living being, because only living beings face the dichotomy of LIFE OR DEATH.

Ayn Rand again explains this better than I can:

“Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.”

To even ask the question “why is life the ultimate value?” is to assume that there can be value without life!  This is the fallacy identified by Rand of “concept stealing”.  It is the philosophical equivalent of bungee jumping without a rope.

Life makes value possible.  And all sub-values exist precisely because one is alive and needs things to further one’s existence.  Ultimately, every value one pursues either has a positive or negative effect on one’s life.

I’ll let Miss Rand have the closing remarks:

“To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.”

Once we understand the correct concept of “value”, we can understand the meaning of the terms “good” and “bad” – but good and bad, for whom??  “Good” and “bad” are moral concepts that presuppose a living being for whom something can have a positive or negative effect.  But an effect on what??  That entity’s life!  Therefore, the standard of morality is life.  It is not duty, sacrifice, authority, consensus, society, god, or ‘others’, which define morality.  What defines morality is that which is of value to the life of a rational being: that which benefits such a life is the good; that which harms such a life is the evil.

…and only in England could it snow in April!!

well, apart from Iceland, Greenland, the Arctic, Antarctic, Russia etc etc…

Welcome again, gentle reader! This post might take a little longer than I’d like, so please bear with me. Rest assured, this has nothing to do with my ability as a writer and everything to do with your ability as a reader. To this end, I’ll try not to use too many big words, as I appreciate this can be somewhat incommodious and cumbersome. If there’s any part of this article that you don’t agree with, feel free to email me evanescentisneverwrong@mac.com. Thanks.

There must be something worth living for.

There must be something worth trying for.

Even some things worth dying for.

So go the words of Beth from Jeff Wayne’s musical version of the War of the Worlds. Granted, some of our real life problems actually feel worse than being invaded by Martians, especially to those who live in Manchester. Big, ugly, slimy beasts with lipless slathering mouths and writhing tentacles, Mancunians do have hard lives – but that’s not the point.

I was in the pub the other night, drinking with friends. A pint of Guinness, thanks for asking. Yes, yes it was nice. Thick, dark, and with a rather large head, the bartender is known for serving a good pint. Towards the end of the evening one of my friends (after I’d paid them extra for staying a little longer) despondently mused “is this all there is to life?” His point was basically along the lines of: if I die, and I’ve contributed nothing, and left nothing, does it really make a difference whether I was alive or not? I should point out that although he might have held this opinion, I believe he was playing Devil’s Advocate somewhat, and saying that even if you or I are optimistic, some people would have every right to feel that way.

Is he right? Is life pointless since it is undoubtedly the end?

Before I answer that, let me give my reason for why many people can and do feel this way – as I was once one of them. I may be wrong, but I’m not. What I’m about to say will get a little philosophical, so if you’re under 12 / not very intelligent / a fan of reality TV, feel free to close this window and get back to watching Big Brother repeats or TabooSexStories.com (page 20 is a good one). Actually, that’s a bit harsh of me, since if you’re a fan of reality TV shows you’re automatically either one of the other two options anyway.

Morality. Morality is a branch of philosophy that attempts to deal with the questions: “how should I live my life? What is good for my life and what is harmful?” Unfortunately, philosophy in general today is in terrible hands, because the “intellectuals” who teach it are riddled with perverse anti-rational anti-human anti-moral contradictory notions. I’m not going to go further into this here, but as an example, how many times do you hear the experts tell us that we cannot know anything; that reality is subjective; that man can never achieve certainty?

Getting back to morality: society in general (as a result of famous philosophers and especially religion) holds one thing as its standard. What I mean is, the measure by which an action is considered virtuous and noble. That standard is: sacrifice. It is the belief that the more an action is directed towards others, and the less it is directly for personal selfish benefit, the more moral it is. The more you serve and live for others, the better a person you are – so says society in general. This is because the underlying philosophy on which this morality is based is the following: your life is NOT an end to itself. Your life has no purpose, and has no meaning, and cannot be given one by yourself. Therefore, the only reasonable worthwhile thing to do is live for others; give up what you have; sacrifice for the good of others; create a legacy, make the world a better place; disown yourself.

I’m not saying ignore others, and don’t better the world, and don’t help people, and don’t be kind and generous – the difference is this: one morality tells you to act with OTHERS as the primary beneficiaries of your life. The other tells you to act with YOURSELF as the primary beneficiary of your life, your actions, your choices.

Humans can die. We are mortal beings. In order to live, not just as animals do from one moment to the next, seizing whatever meal comes along and never planning ahead, you must realise that there are things that are of objective value to your life as a human being. It is precisely because you are mortal that things can make a difference in your life. It is your mortality that gives rise to values – and a value is that which one acts to keep or gain. It is only because the possibility of death is present, that you MUST constantly act in accordance with the antithesis – life. And whether you like it or not there is no alternative here. You are either moving toward life or moving toward death. Life is a constant process of self-generated action. Even if you stand still, you move toward death.

Inasmuch as you choose, implicitly or explicitly, to live – you must discover those values that your life as a human being, as a rational being, needs. But, this would require a morality that tells you to act in accordance with those values – to NOT sacrifice them. But whose values? YOURS!

Those who ask the question: “what does it matter what I do if I just die?” have already conceded the argument – they have already given up their morality. Those who say that your life is not an end to itself, that you have no right to live, that the best thing you can do is give your life to the service of others (like a man on a street returning a wallet that didn’t belong to him) – they have already won. They believe that life is pointless because their lives have no point. They believe life has no meaning because their lives have none. They teach that only having kids is the answer, only giving all your money to charity is the answer, only spending your life in the service of others is the answer, living like a priest and walking to work and never polluting the air is the answer, doing something that “makes a difference” is the answer. Notice the premise they have smuggled in? “Make a difference” – to whom? “What does it matter” – but to whom? “Mortal life is pointless” – to whom? The premise they have smuggled in below your radar is this: other people are the standard for right and wrong. Other people can judge your life as a success or not, even after you’re dead. And no matter how you live your life, you are forever striving after the ethereal recognition, the approval, of others.

This, is the “morality” that you need to reject. This is the subjective capricious code of “ethics” that takes other people as the standard – which also goes by the seemingly harmless and benevolent expression “altruism”. Which people? Doesn’t matter – just others, and the more the better. Until this backward evil premise is rejected, people who ask the questions we began with will never understand how life can have meaning, because they are looking for OTHER people to give it to them.

The moral person knows that their life is an end to itself. That the admiration and consent of other people does not equal morality. That giving away your values is not the key to happiness but the destruction of it. That your life is not the means to the end of others. That your life belongs to you and no one else. That we are not just the product of an evolutionary process that implies: be born, procreate, die. That the highest moral purpose you can pursue is not the happiness of others, but the happiness of yourself.

But it takes a break from convention and an objective rational philosophy to ground one’s morality on these foundations – the exact sort of “radical” unconventional thinking that society today denounces.

Rather than being the “me me me” attitude that this may appear, it is actually the only proper way to live your life. By acting with your life as the ultimate value, you will take care of all the other values that make it possible: your health, your money, your family, your friends, your lover, your music, your car, your holidays, your books, your hobbies, your pets. These values you must discover for yourself – and they are selfish. Selfish, and good. And don’t let anyone tell you differently.

That is why the question: “if we’re just going to die, what does it matter?” can be seen for how vacuous it is. For a start, “what does it matter?” – well, my life matters to me! And it matters to those people I value and those who value me. The rest, I’m not too bothered about!

There is only one way to live – to value your life and act accordingly, and that is how to achieve happiness. If you don’t choose to pursue happiness, you are not choosing to pursue your values. And since values have their ultimate goal in life – the rejection of values, of the pursuit of happiness, has only one other goal: death. If you can’t see the point in being happy, you might as well kill yourself now, otherwise you’re living a contradiction. If you live, pursue happiness. It’s your right. In fact, there is no other purpose in life.

In my opinion, there are very few pleasures in life greater than music. Okay, there’s friendship, love, sex etc. But I’m not even sure how you’d classify the pleasure you can derive from listening to a song you love. A great song, a great voice, great lyrics, can be pleasurable emotionally, intellectually, and even physically.

It is so hard to pin down exactly what it is about music that can make it so addictive and why humans would evolve to invent and then appreciate it, that it seems almost magical, almost irrational. But I believe it is anything but. If there is anything to be said for the human soul, it can be found, and evoked, in music, as in other forms of art (something that is seriously lacking in the world today). After all, animals have no appreciation for music. Music has meaning, and songs have power, but only to a being that can draw inferences from sound, and tie lyrics and tunes to memories, emotions, and fantasies. In other words, it takes a conceptual mind. It takes a rational mind, an intelligence.

A life without art, without music, would be no life at all. It would be soulless.

The hit count on my blog has just smashed through the 40,000 barrier in just under 12 months, and although I’ve not researched this properly, I’m pretty sure that makes it the best blog ever written, ever.

Here are some not so interesting facts about the number 40,000:

It comes after the number 39,999

There is a game called Warhammer 40,000

A man took 40000 ecstasy tabs in a nine year span

It comes before the number 40,001

40,000 is a round number

Asteroid 40000 has the provisional designation 1998 HZ87 and was discovered on April 21^st 1998 in Socorro

40,000 is the only number to end with four zeros and start with one four

A footprint of early humans found in Mexico was 40,000 years old

40,000+ is the visitor count of popular, intelligent, and witty writer Evanescent

I originally posted my blog on MySpace as a way to rant incoherently about football and everyday things that pissed me off in an attempt to look cleverer than I was. That’s not me anymore – I’ve stopped writing about football.

I’ve moved from just “atheist” to “humanist” to “anti-theist”, before discovering Ayn Rand, and I proudly identify myself as an Objectivist now. Not only has this been of great personal benefit to me, I think it gave my blog a whole new lease of life. I’ve also had the dubious pleasure of having many political and ethical debates as a result.

I haven’t posted much recently as nothing has moved me to write an in-depth article, and I’m also drafting a perennially-planned work of fiction. I’ll release more information about this in the coming months. Needless to say this will make me rich and famous, but I won’t forget you my readers, the little people, for putting me where I am.

Welcome to the 32nd Objectivist Round-up.  I must apologise for the lateness of this week’s post; the time difference is always a factor.  I will endeavour to post much earlier next time!

Flibbert presents: “Gay Marriage: I’m still for it”

And says: “This week’s post was actually spawned by the discussion that Ari started with his carnival submission last week and it’s really a reprisal of arguments I’ve stated in the past, but it’s been a while since my blog has gone explicitly gay, so I figured it was time to trot out the gay marriage pony again. Now, if you do read this post, please be sure to read the second post I made in which I discuss a particular aspect of marriage unions that does not apply to other contractual agreements. This is important because I owe y’all a follow-up post to both of these to address some more challenging concerns that Qwertz has mentioned on his blog. (How’d you like that? I pimped not only two posts of my own in here but TWO other blogs as well. This is why I’m a marketing professional. Do not attempt this at home.)”

Stella at ReasonPharm presents: “ Want universal healthcare?  Get ready to quit drinking”

 “How government meddling in health care is leading, as it inevitably must, to government meddling in citizens’ lives in Britain.”

AriArmstrong presents: “A Fertilised Egg is not a person”

 “Legally defining a fertilized egg as a person is a terrible idea, so of course Mike Huckabee endorsed it.”

Evanescent presents: “Free speech versus Respect”

And says: “Since freedom of speech is an undeniable necessary individual right, those who claim that it must be exercised with restraint are contradicting themselves – and are claiming illegitimate rights. “Limited free speech” is a contradiction in terms.”

Ergo at Leitmotif presents “The Right to Property”

Here’s a taster: “To live, man must use his mind in dealing with reality. He must therefore be permitted to act freely on the directions given by his mind, his reasoning faculty, in order to tackle the task of survival. This includes being left free to create, fabricate, invent, or procure by means of free trade property that he believes might help him in achieving his goal.”

Thanks to all for some excellent articles.  The next carnival is on March 6th.  You can submit your article here.

For those of you who can count past ten, and fundamentalists, I invite you to play a little game with me.  (In the figures below, I have actually taken the most conservative estimate on dates and numbers.)

Imagine that one second represents a thousand years.  We’re about to count, and count back in time.  As you count, the years fly by in reverse order.

1

That’s all for now.  One second.  In the blink of an eye we’ve just skipped past every football match ever played, the landing on the moon, the first and second world wars, the invention of the aeroplane, the advent of guns, the renaissance; the germ theory of disease by Pasteur, the discovery of the circulatory system by Harvey, the skeletal structure by Galen.  The works of Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Bach.  The beauty of masterpieces by Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Monet.  The Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Black Death.

We’ve come a long way haven’t we?

Let’s look at things from a biological point of view.  Count with me…

1…2…

We’ve just gone back in the time to the wolf, when there was no breed of domestic dog currently alive today.  Every single variety and nuance of canine has evolved from the same ancestor. Except, in the case of dogs, humans have played the role of selector, as oppose to nature.

In that same time, just 2 seconds, we journey back to the supposed time of Jesus.  Perhaps there was a real man who started the myths (actually there were probably many at the time!), or perhaps there wasn’t.  Here we have a small frightened cult that preached brotherhood and salvation for all convertees, in its infancy.

1…2…3…4…4 and a half…stop!

4 and-a-half seconds takes us back in time to about 2560 BC.  At this point in our travels, we’ve just seen the last stone being laid at the Great Pyramid in Giza.  What a magnificent site.  Can you imagine seeing it before you?  Feel the sand on your feet.  Feel the baking sun beat down on the back of your neck.  As you stand here, in the time machine of our thoughts, you contemplate that you won’t exist for another four and a half thousand years.

Count to 20.

We’ve travelled back to a time where no record of writing exists.  There are no major cities, no civilised cultures.  The human race is largely nomadic.  Language is very primitive.

Now, to count back to the emergence of the human race itself, you would need to keep counting for only 3 minutes!  Does that not fill you with a sense of awe?  Here we are, the human race, and everything we have ever done in our entire history, can be converted into 3 minutes of counting, if we take one second as a thousand years!

Is that an unfair scale?  Not when we consider that to see Homo Habilis, our earliest ancestor, we must count backwards in time, one second for every 1000 years, for 17 days straight!  (And some say there wasn’t enough time for evolution.)

But 17 days is just to see our earliest ancestor.  What about the Earth itself?  You would have to keep counting, every second of every hour of every day of every year, for the next 146 years to arrive back in time when the earth was just forming.

And if you wanted to witness the Big Bang in the time machine of our minds, you would have to keep counting for around 434 years!

What work of fiction or product of myth can compare with the wondrous facts of our universe?  Isn’t it humbling to see man’s place in the timescale of the cosmos as less than a molecule of a drop of water in the ocean?

Indeed, if the entire age of the universe was spread across one solar day, one year would take place in 0.00006 of a second (6 nanoseconds).  Another way of looking at it is for every second 160,000 years would pass.  The human race would have existed for just the last 1.6 seconds.

There are those who say that science is arrogant, or doesn’t have all the answers.  Or cannot find answers to deeper human needs.  These are the same people who might believe the earth is only a few thousands old, or believe that all of this was made especially for humans.  How provincial!  How parochial!  How conceited!  In fact, how rather dull!

What New Age belief or holy book comes close to the wonder of the real world?  What ancient text, metaphysical rambling, or liturgy compares to studying creatures millions of times smaller than us, or stars billions of times larger?  From the beauty and terror in nature to the everyday usefulness of clean water and mobile phones, look at what science has to offer.

And our 1.6 second ephemeral presence in the Day of the Universe should make us feel lucky that we can see our real place in the cosmos, and understand it.  There is plenty of wonder to be had just around you in things that are real, than in all the mystery and contrivances of things that are not.  Your infinitesimally short lifespan is a gift from the universe.  I think the least we can do is know more about our Cosmological Mother.

If the history of the entire human race is 1.6 seconds on our Universal Day scale, your life is 0.0004 (that’s four ten-thousandths) of a second long.  Doesn’t that make every single real second of your life precious?  Doesn’t that make every 86,400 seconds (one day) worth living, because they’ll never come again?

I’d like to close with the words of Richard Dawkins, quoting from his book Unweaving the Rainbow:

“We are going to die.  And that makes us the lucky ones.  Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.  The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.  Certainly these unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.  We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.  In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

When I first started to self-identify as an atheist, I held several positions that I have since rejected. An example of one of these was the notion that science answers “how” questions and religion answers “why” questions. Although I was unaware of him at the time, I would have agreed with Gould’s non-overlapping magisterium. Now I don’t. I don’t actually believe religion has anything worthwhile to say on anything.

Religion never shied away from making bold claims about the world when it was talking to an ignorant unscientific audience. If religion doesn’t overlap with science today it is only because the religious are rightly afraid to compete with science; a battle they have historically always lost.

Some fundamentalists aren’t happy to remain on their side of the playground however; they actively undermine legitimate science and try to have their view of reality supersede any other. Finally, religion makes numerous claims that are incompatible with scientific knowledge. Some theists rationalise these incongruities by appealing to symbolism or non-literalism. That’s their choice, but I don’t think you can justify every contradiction, and indeed if religion was true, why would you have to?

Another position that I used to tacitly hold is that religion can do whatever it wants, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. That is after all, one of my universal principles for living: do as you wish, as long as no one is harmed. In theory, if religion also lived by the same precepts, I would have little problem with it. I don’t agree with everyone’s worldview, but I would hate to see a world where any worldview was imposed. In my ideal world, free speech, free inquiry, and freedom of belief (or non-belief) would be permanent inalienable human rights. The reason I am so opposed to religion is because it embodies everything that civilised society should not want to see realised on any scale.

I see no reason to believe in anything supernatural, which obviously includes god. That makes me an atheist. But what about anti-theism? You don’t have to be an atheist to be an anti-theist strictly speaking. One could fully believe in a god and also be opposed to him and his regime. One assumes that the character of Satan is an anti-theist. Being an atheist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an anti-theist either. I don’t know many atheists personally who self-identify as anti-theists, but this might just be because they don’t know of, or like to use, the expression. I will explain why I’m an anti-theist.

First, I’d like to point out that there doesn’t seem to be one theist who doesn’t dislike the idea of what they believe in. This may seem like a rather obvious point, but is subtly powerful. There are many facts about the world we accept. Some of them we like and some of them we dislike. Some we are glad are the case, and some we wish were different. But we accept it. I don’t like the fact that I will die, but I accept it. I don’t like losing, but it happens (occasionally). I don’t like having to pay so much in taxes, but it’s a fact of life. A nihilist may consider the ephemeral nature of life as inferring that life is meaningless, whereas a humanist would infer that life is even more precious because it is so brief. Isn’t it rather convenient that there isn’t one theist who believes in a god and doesn’t wish it were true? If it were so obvious that a god existed, why are the only ones who believe in him those who wish it were also true?

The following are notions that all monotheisms hold. From Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great, Chapter 15, page 205:

• Presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and credulous
• The doctrine of blood sacrifice
• The doctrine of atonement
• The doctrine of eternal reward and/or punishment
• The imposition of impossible tasks and rules

I am not just an atheist. I’m an anti-theist because I am strongly opposed to the very foundations of religion itself.

Religion lies to people about how the world really is. Where it doesn’t lie, it actively makes claims that it cannot possibly know, which is as much the same thing. It befouls the minds of children (and in many instances mutilates the genitalia of children) with falsehoods and superstitions.

Religion dictates that sacrifices, of some sort of other but nearly always blood, are a necessary part of a believer’s life.

Religion decrees that we must keep atoning for our very nature constantly; that we are wicked, licentious, and depraved, and that our natural desires and bodily functions are shameful and something be repressed. Religion has always criminalised homosexuality and any sexual freedom. Religion has historically been one of the greatest oppressors of women in all times.

Religion offers what it has no right to offer: forgiveness of and for another person. It offers the ultimate reward that it has no possible way to know of. It also threatens eternal torture in the most sadistic and execrable way for those who will not accept the shotgun offer it proposes.

Finally, religion demeans humans by demanding the impossible and then condemning us for not living up to its own warped notions of perfection. There are ridiculous restrictions on diet, entertainment, language, and association. Restrictions on not only who you can have sex with but also in what sexual positions you may copulate.

One or all of the above are symptomatic of all religions. They are the antithesis of the most noble and enlightened concepts that humanity has to offer: tolerance of humans, freedom for humans, respect for humans.

Not only do I not believe in a god, I am glad that the god of monotheism doesn’t exist. Imagine living in a world where the god of religion existed. It would be like living in a theocratic police state, where you can be convicted for the crime of thought; virtually the very definition of totalitarian. Where the entire purpose in your life is to serve and worship and venerate another being; where you owe everything you have to a galactic dictator who you never elected, and you’re born into a system of total mental and physical control that you had no say in choosing.

The central figure in this eternal Dominion is a being who apparently knows you before you were even born, who watches you every single minute of every day of your life, and whose control over you reaches beyond death! As Hitchens observes, even in human totalitarian regimes, or in Orwell’s 1984, at least you can die and escape the regime. With religion, not even death is an escape, and indeed for any supposed crime you commit, an afterlife of eternal torture awaits you.

In this theocratic regime, freedom of speech would be as unknown as the theory of evolution. Who you choose to fall in love with, and how you choose to make love, would be under constant surveillance on penalty of death.

In this regime, you have to accept responsibility for the crimes of others that you had no part of, incur their bloodguilt, and unconditionally receive the only way to be absolved of this guilt: accepting the blood sacrifice by torture of another person that you had no say in at all.

No thank you, I don’t want it. I reject the very absurd notion of original sin; that I have somehow transgressed for someone else’s actions; this is the very opposite of justice. I reject the exculpation offered to me that was supposedly paid for by a process of human sacrifice to appease the blood thirst of the Divine One; a sacrifice that was necessarily the murder of an innocent man, something I would have objected to anyway.

And if I reject this barbaric offer, am I free to live my life my own way and die as all people must? No. If I refuse the “gift” I never asked for and never wanted, I can be promised an eternal live roasting.

This is why I positively reject religion and theism. As a thinking human being I could not, in good conscience, be party to such an inhuman and cruel regime, and I could not worship or love such a dictator. Humans beings with ethics, self-respect, and intelligence, should refuse to submit to any theocracy. That is why the necessity is not just of atheism, but anti-theism.

- evanescent