The media has a really short attention span, because it was just three months ago that they had the same breaking news when Hawking gave an interview in which he stated, “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”

Still, for some strange reason, the media is convinced that Doctor Hawking was a fundamentalist Christian because he stated in his book, “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.” To a scientist, such a statement is equivalent to saying “God bless you,” when someone sneezes.

As for the real breaking news, Hawking stated that the gap in our knowledge which was filled with God pertaining to the creation of the universe has been closed. According to Hawking, based on the evidence there is no reason why a deity would be needed to create the universe. He has actually suggested something similar before, but now he has the evidence to back it up.

This means that a god is not needed to fill the role of a creator and toward the end of the year Sam Harris will show the evidence which will close the god gap in morality. As we keep closing these gaps, God is finding a hard time finding things to have done. In other words, Christians are running out of things to give God credit for. Soon, the only thing left for God to claim credit for will be some touchdown or rap award.

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First, this is illegal and anyone who experiences anything similar to this should contact their local ACLU right away. These types of religious people have no problem forcing their beliefs on everyone else and they are not afraid to break the law to do it. In their view, they are obeying God’s Law.

In addition to the ACLU, there is someone else that should be contacted. I am a member and former board member of the Freethought Society. At the time that I was a board member, we were mainly just a Philadelphia organization, but now the organization is becoming more of a national group. This organization has been trying to document discrimination against atheists. This information might be used in larger national cases down the road, but for now it is just important to document them and make sure they are on the record. Find out more about the Freethought Society’s Anti-Discrimination Network HERE and if you are a victim of discrimination due to your lack of belief, please download this PDF form and send it to Margaret Downey of the Freethought Society.

It seems that the fundamentalist Christian view is that without Jesus, people are bitter and angry by default. Perhaps they believe that only atheists are angry and bitter. It seems to be a stereotype that Christians have about atheists that has no real basis at all. Being in the greater atheist community, I rarely if ever meet atheists who are angry and bitter people. They do exist, but no more than in the general population.

On the other hand, there is a stereotype that many fundamentalist Christians seem to exhibit. It seems that fundamentalist Christians often are as George Carlin put it, “more then happy.” They seem to hide their true emotions and put on a Ned Flanders type front. Underneath the super jolly front, they hid a lot of anger and bitterness.

Maybe these fundamentalist Christians are just projecting their own anger and bitterness on atheists. Or perhaps they see atheist actually express their feelings openly rather then hid them as they do.

The fact is that most atheists don’t donate in the name of atheism. We just donate to organizations on our own as individuals. But how much are we donating to atheist infrastructure?

Almost every atheist organization I know is always in need of funds. Whether it is a local atheist group or larger groups like American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Center For Inquiry, or others are all in desperate need of donations. While it would be great if Brad Pitt and Bill Maher would donate a ton of money to these groups, the fact is that atheists with slightly less money need to donate too; even if that is just a $35 donation every now and then. Consider these donations to be investments in reason.

Speaking of donating to atheist causes, let me remind you that there is a contribution button on the sidebar… hint, hint.

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A number of years ago, I met a young Christian who was telling me his story about how he used to be addicted to drugs, alcohol, and sex. He told me that his life was spiraling out of control and no one he could do could save him. Then along came Jesus to the rescue. Now that he was “Born Again” his life had gotten so much better and he couldn’t have done it without Jesus. So I had to tell him about the one true God, Jean-Luc Picard.

The story that this Christian told me is a very popular narrative and I have heard it or some variation of it many times. Of course Jesus had nothing to do with the Christian’s recovery and Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation made the best argument against Jesus saving these people’s lives.

There was an episode called Devil’s Due in which the Enterprise received a distress single from a planet that was suffering from mass hysteria. The people on the planet have lived in peace and relative harmony for a thousand years and now all of a sudden everyone was in a panic and violence was breaking out. According to the Bible… I mean “ancient scrolls,” a thousand years ago there planet was at war fighting over resources, there was lots of pollution in the air and water, and the planet was in general bad shape. Then the Devil came and offered them a thousand years of peace in return for their immortal souls at the end of the thousand years. Well, not the end of days has arrived and the people of this planet feared the Devil’s return to collect.

Captain Picard of course tried to reason with them and to assure them that there is no Devil, but the people on the planet insisted that they could not have saved themselves and that the story about the Devil was real. To Captain Picard’s surprise, the Devil actually showed up.

Picard of course had to challenge the Devil in a sort of trial and at one point he had the planet’s president on the stand for questioning. He asked him about the state of the planet prior to the deal with the Devil. Again, the president was convinced that the Devil saved the planet and that they couldn’t have done it without the Devil’s help. When Picard asked the President about the actual nuts and bolts of the changes that occurred, the truth was revealed.

Did the Devil wave her magic hand and stop all wars? No, the leaders of the various nations got together and realized that they could not keep fighting over resources so they made a series of treaties. Did the Devil wave her hand and magically clean up the air and water pollution? No, the people switched from an industrial based society to an agrarian based life. Did the Devil hand out food to the hungry? No, with the new agrarian lifestyle they had plenty of food to feed the hungry. Did the Devil “even so-much as pick up a single piece of trash?” The answer to all of the questions was obvious. The Devil didn’t do damn thing, it was the people of the planet that did all the work “all by themselves.”

Now, swap out the Devil for Jesus and the planet’s problems for the problems of drug addicts, alcoholics, etc. Did Jesus magically suck the poisons out? Did Jesus flush away the hidden stash? Did Jesus even pure a single glass of alcohol down the drain? No, the addict did it all, all by his or her self.

All Jesus actually did was to provide an excuse for the addict to decide for themselves that it was time to clean up their act. Jesus at best is a placebo and at worst, Jesus acts as a replacement addiction. Christian simply trade one addiction for another.

Yesterday, I blogged about how the Catholic Religion is nearing the tipping point that might send it into the pit of dead religions. Well, after tweeting the link to the blog, some Christian sent me a link to his page where he talked about how in Britain, Muslims don’t have to wear a motorcycle helmet and no one objects to Muslim women wearing their head scarves at work yet one airline apparently prohibits the wearing of crucifixes.

Let’s analyze this a little bit. First, while I think he makes a valid point about the motorcycle helmets, I don’t typically think of Muslims rolling in on Harleys. It is a bit weak. As far as no one objecting to the head scarf, that has to do with people’s attitudes and belief in tolerance. Interestingly enough, there is currently a case in which a woman was fired from her job for wearing her head scarf in America. The issue was to do with work place dress codes. This ought to apply to crucifixes too as it appears it does with that one airline in Britain. It isn’t about religion at all.

This Christian then complained about how Christians can’t run adoption agencies on “Christian principles” because they want to discriminate against gays. Cry me a river. Oh know the western nations are actually treating Christians equally instead of giving their ridiculous cult special exemptions from the law; except of course the whole exemption from taxes, the free advertising on currency, in our national motto, in our pledge, and from just about every politician in the nation. And that is just the beginning of Christian woes in western nations, lol.

What a bunch of whinny bitches, no wonder Christians are always so nostalgic for the past when they could discriminate, torture, and burn people to death just for a hint that such people might not agree on the official Church doctrine. Ah yes, George Carlin put it best when he said, “Do you believe in God?” “No.” Boom! Dead. “Do you believe in God?” “Yes…” “Do you believe in my God?” “No.” Boom! Dead. “My god has a bigger dick than your god!” What he should have added was, “Do you believe in my God?” “Yes.” “Do you believe in my God in my way?” “No.” Boom! Dead.

The problem isn’t just the sex scandals; they have been going on for decades. The Church is facing other challenges that the former Pope recognized, but that the current Pope does not. Modernity is a bitch and she is slapping the shit out of the Catholic Church.

Don’t get me wrong, the last Pope thought that homosexuality is a sin, that condom use is mass murder, and all the other absurdities. The difference is that this Pope is actually saying this stuff out loud in a very vocal fashion. In America, the Catholic Church now has a fundamentalist wing most represented by Bill Donahue’s Catholic League and now Michael Voris’ Real Catholic TV. The Catholic Church has clowns running around as their spokespeople and a nut as their ringleader.

The Catholic Church has been around for almost two-thousand years, so I don’t expect it to come to and end overnight. But if they continue on their current course, they may reach the tipping point and start going down hill very quickly. With that in mind, I think it is important to keep the pressure on them and to continue to expose the dangers of even moderate association with the Church.

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I think that it is really interesting that Christians have gotten so bat-shit crazy that it is actually hard to tell the Christian satire from the real thing. How do you lampoon a religion which pretty much lampoons themselves? I am not sure how one can do religious satire anymore with out someone thinking that they might be serious.

I wonder how over the top a satirist has to go for people to say, “Oh, that is obviously satire.” What if a “Christian” advocated a dictatorship? Would that be so over the top that it just couldn’t be a real Christian? Surely something that ridiculous must be a satire, right? Wrong, my favorite Christian Michael Voris had just such a video. It seems that his video got a lot of negative reactions from people so he took it down. But not to worry, once someone says something that crazy in front of a camera, there is no way to erase it. For the record, I actually did see the original on his channel a few days ago and Voris actually commented on the video in another of his daily self-lampoons.

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Last week, thanks to the all powerful Twitter, I stumbled upon a Christian evangelical apologist I had never heard before on YouTube. I watched a few of his videos and I have to say that this guy is great. In fact, he is my new favorite Christian.

What I like about this guy is that he is completely ridiculous. When I first watched one of his videos, I actually wasn’t sure he was for real. Part of me actually thought his video was satire, but as it turns out he is completely serious.

I also love how in some cases, he actually argues against other Christians and in so doing, makes my points for me. The thing is that he is too wrapped up in his own bullshit to realize that the arguments he makes against the other Christians apply just as well to his own brand of Christianity.

So without further ad due I give you Michael Voris of Catholic TV:

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Here is a great example. Over the weekend, I wrote an Examiner article about a candidate for US Congress who is openly atheist. While I certainly got a fair amount of people who are encouraged by this and who have decided to donate a few dollars to his campaign, I got far more responses from people telling me how this guy can’t win because atheists can’t win in politics.

Now maybe these nay sayers are just trying to come up with an excuse for not donating to his campaign, but there really shouldn’t need one. No one is guilt tripping them into donating to his campaign (but it would be helpful if they did). The best thing about the internet is it is anonymous. So how the fuck would I know if some other atheist in Nebraska didn’t donate to some politician in Virginia? No one is watching how much money to put into a collection plate if anything at all. I think it is helpful to donate to an atheist politician who values reason and has a progressive agenda. But that is just me.

What isn’t helpful is this bullshit that the guy can’t win because he is an open atheist. It is that type of negative attitude which helps to keep atheists from actually running for office and prevents other people from taking us seriously. We have an up hill battle for acceptance as it is and there are always going to be negativity from religious people about everything we do. We really don’t need Debbie Downers from our own camp.

With that being said, constructive analysis is always welcome and encouraged on any endeavor, but the defeatism is just unproductive. What would these nay sayers have us do, give up and let the Religious Right demonize us unchallenged? Should we just let the Religious Right continue to force their ridiculous superstitions on us and not attempt to fight back or stand up for ourselves?

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First, I would like to give credit where credit is due. Kuhner actually did have a paragraph in which he came close to articulating Christopher Hitchens’ actual position on a subject. While in the last blog article, I pointed out that Kuhner claimed Hitchens only hates the Catholic Church because of their alleged anti-communistic position, but in the previous paragraph of his article, Kuhner went on to give some of the real reasons Hitchens has such a dislike of the Catholic Church. Is Jeff’s memory so short that he couldn’t remember what he had written just one paragraph earlier? Here is what Kuhner has to say:

“The one institution Mr. Hitchens despises above all, however, is the Catholic Church. In his view, it is a primitive, medieval institution founded upon lies, anti-Semitism and sexual oppression – the means by which a clerical theocracy controls human beings by dictating their sexual behavior. He has smeared – without any concrete evidence – Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict not only for purportedly coddling pedophile priests, but for encouraging mass “child rape” and “child slavery.” Moreover, he stresses that the church is directly responsible for the deaths of millions of AIDS victims because of its stance on contraception – despite the fact that, if followed, the church’s teachings make the sexual transmission of the disease impossible.”

For the record, the Catholic Church is a primitive, medieval institution. It certainly wasn’t created yesterday. Also, since the Church has yet to prove the existence of their deity and has arguably built a business and an empire around lies, this claim seems to also be true. Does anyone remember indulgences? That was the practice in which the Catholic Church told people that they would go to Heaven if they paid the Church enough money. I have to think that the Church officials at the time knew this was not true. I can’t believe they could have honestly been that delusional. But I guess when dealing with the deeply religious anything is possible.

The claim that the Church was at one time and perhaps still is to some extent anti-Semitic is obviously true. This isn’t to say that all Catholics are anti-Semitic, but it is to say that at certain points during the Church’s history the leadership was certainly anti-Semitic. Hitler was a Roman Catholic and the Church leadership at the time did give some support to his efforts. With that said, there were of course brave clergy who did the right thing during that difficult time and hid Jews just as there are brave clergy today who do what they can to protect the victims of clerical rape. But the leadership of the Catholic Church is not so brave.

As a point of fact, there is evidence to support the claim that John Paul II knew that child rape was going on and gave the current Pope the job of dealing with it. There is also stronger evidence that Pope Benedict before becoming Pope was chiefly responsible for moving priests around the world to evade being caught. This is of course the current scandal which has gotten a lot of press all over the world.

As far as the AIDS epidemic on the African continent goes, the Pope’s view of contraception and the Catholic Church’s propagation of the idea that it is better to die from AIDS than to use condoms and live costs millions of lives a year. That is a stone cold fact.

But Kuhner also mentioned that Hitchens believes that, “clerical theocracy controls human beings by dictating their sexual behavior.” This is where I will post another brief paragraph of this article:

“Mr. Hitchens also champions anti-Catholic bigotry because the church opposes the left’s radical sexual agenda. Mr. Hitchens is a virulent supporter of abortion, homosexuality and even – I am not making this up – masturbation.”

That’s right folks; Jeffrey Kuhner is not making this up. Christopher Hitchens actually supports masturbation. Holy fucking shit. After centuries of Catholic lies to school aged children about masturbation causing hairy palms, boldness, and eternal torture in Hell, here comes crazy old Hitchens telling people the truth that masturbation is completely harmless.

As much as I find it interesting that Kuhner considers a woman’s right to an abortion and homosexuality to be a “radical sexual agenda,” the fact that he considers masturbation to be even more radical is fascinating. Yeah, we have all heard the Church’s position on abortion and homosexuality before and yeah, we have even heard the Church’s opposition to masturbation before. That isn’t anything new. But few Catholic apologists actually focus on masturbation these days. To my knowledge, no one except Kuhner considers it even more radically deviant than abortion and homosexuality. That’s kind of new to me.

If that is really Jeffrey Kuhner’s priority then there is no wonder he is so sexually frustrated. He probably has a huge hard on for Hitchens but is afraid to masturbate to him. It does seem like all these wacky Christians who are anti-gay turn out to be gay, so I wonder if Kuhner will get caught literally with his pants down any time soon.

As for me, I plan on printing out Mr. Kuhner’s article and masturbating all over it just so God will send me to Hell for it. How awesome would it be if when I got to Hell, Satan asked me why I was there and I told him that I “spilled the seed” on Jeffrey Kuhner’s crappy article. Of course there is no Satan and no Hell, so maybe I’ll just settle for going to a Catholic confessional and relating my “crime” to some sexually frustrated priest. But if he asks me to go into the back room, I am so out of there.

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“Because of Mr. Hitchens’ support for the war on terror, many conservatives have falsely embraced him as a fellow traveler.”

Really Jeff, do you not know the history behind the phrase “Fellow Traveler?” This was a phrase used largely during the McCarthy Era to describe Communist supporters. So in one simple line of this article Kuhner equates conservatives with Communists. The irony is that almost half of Kuhner’s article deals with trying to label Hitchens as a Communist.

“That Mr. Hitchens remains a militant atheist should come as no surprise. He is an unadulterated Bolshevik.”

This is the text book definition of the ad hominem fallacy. Before we get into the nearly half of the article which attempts to label Hitchens as the before mentioned, “unadulterated Bolshevik,” it really needs to be pointed out that one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Labeling Hitchens as a Communist does nothing to discredit his arguments addressing religion nor does it support any arguments in favor of religion. It is simply a red herring.

As mentioned before, Kuhner took almost half of his article to attacking Hitchens’ alleged political leanings. He went on at some length to point out that Hitchens opposed the Vietnam conflict and many of Reagan’s foreign policy decisions. This he considers supportive of Communism. The interesting reality is that most Americans were opposed to the Vietnam conflict and many Americans considered the particular foreign policy decisions of Ronald Reagan that Kuhner points out to be poor and even illegal. While Kuhner has every right to try to defend the invasion of Grenada and arming the Contras, calling those who disagree with him on these issues Communists is silly.

I don’t think one can put simple labels on Hitchens’ political philosophies throughout the years. While he certainly supported certain aspects of socialism it is ridiculous to insinuate that he supported the systematic murders of tens of millions carried out by Stalin. Despite the lengthy attempt to link Hitchens to the worst crimes of Communism, Kuhner really doesn’t go into any real depth in the nuances of Hitchens’ positions. Kuhner’s argument amounts to, “Hitchens thought Lenin was a great leader, therefore Hitchens is an evil Communist who supported everything Lenin and anything other Communists did.” One can admire someone’s leadership ability and even some aspects of their philosophy without having to support everything they do.

Why is all this important? It really isn’t, but according to Kuhner, “Mr. Hitchens loathes Catholicism for one simple reason: It was the Church that stood as the most powerful and consistent force against the communist occupation of Eastern Europe.” And I thought Mr. Hitchens loathed the Catholic Church because large numbers of Catholic priests fucked and continue to fuck children and the Catholic Church systematically has tried to cover it up. Among other atrocities of course.

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Interestingly enough, I first heard this argument while watching Christopher Hitchen’s film “Coalition.” In the film, Hitchens and fundamentalist Christian Douglas Wilson go behind the scenes of their debate tour. Wilson introduces quite a few arguments in the film and Hitchens does not counter them in the film. This “moral norms argument” is one of the arguments Wilson makes.

This argument asserts that the western world has received our morality directly from the Christian tradition. The interesting thing about this argument is that it actually refutes the better known Christian moral grounding argument. In other words, we have two competing arguments for the origins of morality from Christians. The first is that God has divinely grounded morality in every human being’s soul and the second is this argument that Christians are responsible for the moral norms of society.

While there is some overlap within these two ideas, they do actually compete. Both of them cannot be true at the same time in the same way. Either God put morality into our “souls” or Christians created our moral norms. Yes, Christians claim to have gotten those norms from God, but that isn’t enough of an overlap to solve this contradiction.

The really interesting part is that Wilson and Kuhner are in some cases correct in this “Christian moral norms” argument. There is no doubt that at least some of America’s moral norms do come from the 2000 plus years of Christian tyranny. I will get into some of the specifics of those “moral norms” in a later article in this series.

Kuhner states in his article: “He (Hitchens) denounces the existence of God while simultaneously living off the ethical norms established by the Judeo-Christian tradition.” He claims that one example is “the sacred nature of human life,” which Kuhner claims is a “direct result of our Christian heritage.” While I am willing to admit that some of the moral norms in America do come from a Christian heritage, this isn’t it.

It seems that according to Kuhner, the only reason why Americans consider human life sacred is because the Bible says so. In other words, every tradition that was not established by the Judeo-Christian tradition must not value human life. The Jains must be stone cold killers.

I think atheist George Carlin put it best when he said that “the leading cause of death was God.” He went on to say:

“Do you know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up. Why? Because we’re alive; self interest. Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that life is sacred. You don’t see Abbott and Costello running around talking about this shit, do you? We’re not hearing a whole lot from Mussolini on the subject. What’s the latest from JFK? Not a fucking thing because Abbott and Costello, Mussolini, and JFK are fucking dead and dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life.”

Sorry Jeff, but the sacred nature of human life doesn’t come from Christianity. In fact, most of our moral norms don’t either. It seems that the only moral norms that actually do come from Christianity have to do with Christianity’s hatred of sexuality. But that is an article for later in this series.

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You can’t be a bigot against an idea. I know that people are indoctrinated into religious ideas to the point that many people seem to think that religion and race are the same, but they are not. Race is something you are born into and cannot change (Michael Jackson not withstanding). Religion is an idea which can be abandoned in light of better ideas.

In a resent article on The Daily Beast, Sam Harris wrote the following:

“It is not a form of bigotry or racism to observe that the specific tenets of the faith pose a special threat to civil society. Nor is it a sign of intolerance to notice when people are simply not being honest about what they and their co-religionists believe.”

Harris was actually talking about Islam here, but it just as easily applicable to any religion including Catholicism. Just as Islam is not a race, Catholicism is also not a race. So one cannot be racist against a religion nor can someone be bigoted toward a religion. Hitchens is very good at criticizing the Catholic belief system and he has no problem criticizing the behavior of particular members of the Catholic Church (i.e. pedophile priests, Vatican officials, and the Pope).

Criticizing an idea, belief, or belief system is not the same as hating people who hold those beliefs. In no instance that I am aware of has Christopher Hitchens stated or implied that he hates ALL Catholics. All Mr. Hitchens is guilty of is criticizing the beliefs that Catholics are supposed to hold (note that not all Catholics actually hold all those beliefs).

On the charge that Hitchens is a “Catholic Bigot,” Jeffrey T. Kuhner fails to prove his case. The idea is that the term “bigot” has a negative connotation and so Kuhner thinks that he can win points by labeling his opponent with such a term.

A good way to cement this point is to use the old Nazi analogy. It is important to note that whenever Nazis are used in an example people want to make the leap that a comparison is being made with the Nazis. This is not the case and I want that to be very clear. The Nazis are used in an example because they are universally despised (rightly so).  Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here is the analogy:

If someone were to make a statement that the Nazis did lots of immoral things, few if anyone would consider this a bigoted statement against all Nazis. Surely, one isn’t suggesting that every single Nazi was immoral. But rather that the Nazi leadership did immoral things and/or that Nazis ideology is immoral. Like Catholicism, people aren’t born Nazis. It is an ideology. So when someone like Hitchens claims that Catholicism is immoral, he is not claiming that every individual Catholic is immoral, but rather the leadership and the doctrine are immoral. That is not a form a bigotry.

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After reading the article, I thought that I would spend a week or more addressing some of Mr. Kuhner’s points because they are ridiculously weak and some of them have been used by other religionists on a somewhat regular basis.

I know it seems odd to spend this much time on one article, but I think it will be worth the journey. There are many interesting points in this article and are worth dissecting. Keep in mind that I said “interesting,” not “valid.” Sometimes the worst arguments for a position can be just as interesting as the best arguments. At nothing else, the worst arguments are at least entertaining.

I will make one note in advance that while I am planning to write at least a week’s worth of blogs on this one article, if some other breaking news story or issue of interest comes up, I might have to interrupt this series.

If you would like to read the article, here is the link. But I should warn you in advance that it is long and crappy. Part 2 of this series will be about the idea of “Catholic Bigotry” or any type of religious bigotry or that matter.

Dear Anne,
I was a big fan of your Vampire Chronicles growing up. My favorite book was Pandora. But when you had returned to Christianity I was crushed. I am glad that you left Christianity again, but I worry that the tentacles of the Christian system of belief still has such a hold on you.

Many of my atheist and humanist friends consider Christians to be stupid. They often think about the Fox News watching, fundamentalist, homophobes who blindly reiterate the talking points of their priests and popular fundamentalist apologists when they make such claims. I never really thought that Christians were stupid though. I have many Christian friends who are very intelligent and there are also many famous Christians who are obviously intelligent like Francis Collins. Of course, most atheists and humanists were also at one time Christians and yet many of these very same people are the ones calling Christians stupid.

The point I am trying to make here is that despite the fact that the Christian story has more plot holes that a Michael Bay film and is ridiculously stupid, it has created a system of belief which can bypass the intellect of moral people of all levels of intelligence.

It starts at a young age. Most people in our society are indoctrinated with religion before they are able to think clearly and independently. People learn about God before they even learn about Santa Claus. Even if some people like yourself are about to break away from this indoctrination, it is still there. It lies dormant and waits for the right moment to reassert itself. People don’t reason back into belief because the story of Christ is unreasonable. No, the belief waits until someone is in emotional turmoil. It waits for when a person’s emotions are clouding their intellectual abilities and then it reasserts itself as a callback to the time when the person was young and felt the joy and comfort of a child.

The comfort of our childhood is linked to our indoctrination in religious ideas and beliefs. So the brain is tricked into accepting these ridiculous ideas out of a craving for our youthful innocence and comfort. This is how religion gets people, Anne.

What happened in your life which brought you back to religion back in 1995? Were you in emotional turmoil or did you reason the Christian system of belief after reading the divine logic that is the Bible. Surely the vicarious redemption for wrong doing through barbaric blood sacrifice is not intellectually convincing? Such a convoluted scheme is not worthy of any all powerful deity and yet even though you have rejected Christianity, you still seem to cling to the belief that Jesus died for people’s sins.

The evil of the Christian system of belief is that it is extremely difficult to break from that belief system even when one breaks from the religion itself. While it is sometimes more comforting to believe in happy fairy tales, the reality of this world is infinitely more comforting in the long run. It is the knowledge that we are still learning and that we don’t yet have the certainty that religion claims o have. It is the knowledge of human potential and that while we were not created special by an all powerful being; we have the ability to become special through our continued education about the universe we live in.

Look at what we have learned about the universe we inhabit. We discovered these things as a species. This wasn’t divine knowledge passed to us passively. No, we figured this stuff out on our own and we are still figuring things out because we are smart and clever. We have devised a system that helps us to learn what is true and what is not. That system is the scientific method and it doesn’t rely on someone’s chaotic emotional state, but waits until someone is as clear minded and objective as one could be.

Faith and Science are in conflict Anne. Faith is belief based on things hoped for by yet not seen. It is belief with no evidence. Science and reason are based on the evidence.

We are all on a journey to find meaning in our lives and while I am happy that your journey has taken you away from Christianity, your journey has not yet come to an end. Please Anne, keep searching for meaning and keep examining your beliefs and re-examine your beliefs. Socrates once said that that un-examined life is not worth living. With that in mind, I wish you all the best on your journey.
In Reason,
-Staks Rosch

Libertarians always tell me that they want government out of people’s private lives and on the issue of gay marriage… or straight marriage for that matter, Libertarians often take the position that government should not have any involvement at all in issuing marriage licenses. This is a position I actually agree with, but recently the Pope of Libertarianism Congressman Ron Paul came out against same-gender marriage in favor of Proposition 8 which for a short time was a California constitutional ban of same-gender marriage largely funded by the Mormon Church.

I find it interesting that the guy who wears the Constitution on his sleeve seems to have not actually read it. I guess it is a lot like Christians who wear the Bible on their sleeves. I discussed this before when Paul claimed that the Constitution was “replete with references to God.”

Paul’s position is that the people voted to deny gay people the right to marriage and therefore, the State of California should have the state’s rights to deny gay people the right to marry. However, the Constitution (particularly the Bill of Rights) was designed to protect people’s rights from the government (federal and state).

The tenth amendment makes it clear that the states have the power to do whatever they want when it doesn’t conflict with the federal Constitution. It’s a sad day for Ron Paul because the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution provides equal protection under the law for all everyone.

The philosophy behind the Constitution is that we are all born free and that the job of the government is to protect person freedom as much as possible. People can’t simply vote other people’s rights away. That’s not how the Constitution works. Could you imagine if it did? Next election, we could vote away the rights of Republicans to vote.

The Lehigh Valley Humanists have asked me to speak at their October meeting. I am pretty excited about it and have a few different topics I am thinking about discussing. As the new coordinator of PhillyCoR, it seems like I should probably speak about organizing atheists and atheist groups. This type of talk would deal with the “good cop/bad cop” problem within atheism. Such a talk would also include the rise of internet atheism and the rise of atheism in America.

On the other hand, my expertise has always been in the argument front. A discussion about de-conversion might be the way to go. This discussion would feature the corruptive force of the Christian system of belief and how it preys on people at their weakest moments.

I might even do a combination of the two. It could be a two act discussion. In any case, it is pretty exciting and I am really looking forward to it. I hope to be able to do more of these types of speaking engagements in the future. Some of the discussion afterward might even help me with the book I am slowly working on writing. Let me know if you have any thoughts about what should be included in my talk.

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• Picnics of Reason (dangeroustalk.net)

The problem with coordinating atheists is that we are frequently described as herded cats. We tend to all want to do what we want and not act well as a group. Then we form groups, but those groups tend to not want to work together. So I have my work cut out for me.

While I have had quite a few leadership positions before, I have never been in a leadership position within the atheist community. Already, I have gotten reminders from people that my position is more of a coordinator than a leadership position. Still, I think bringing some leadership to the position might be helpful but the real trick is to not overstep that leadership.

The first step with any type of new position is always to gather knowledge. So that will be my first step. I will be learning about the organizations that I have not had experience with and getting to know their leaders and members. I will essentially become a member of all of these organizations.

The thing that I am most looking forward to with this new position is getting to work with Fred Edwords of UnitedCoR. If you don’t know him, you should. He has quickly become one of my heroes ever since he kicked Bill O’Reilly’s ass on his own show. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself:

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I think it is really important for people or reason to have summer picnics. It gives us a chance to hang out and talk. While some of those conversations tend to discuss religion since our unity is centered on our lack of belief, we also talk about other topics too. It is good to know that we can discuss other topics with people who value reason over faith.

At the Lehigh Valley Humanist picnic for example, I got into conversations about politics, science, philosophy, book publishing, and of course the future of the greater atheist movement. Unlike Church conversations, atheists tend not to agree on every issue. This makes conversations more interesting since we get into sometimes heated conversations without resorting to faith or to “that’s what I believe” type bullshit. Everyone is trying to be reasonable and to make their points while willing to change their position if the evidence is convincing enough.

Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist was originally supposed to perform at the PhillyCoR picnic a few weeks ago, but his tour had to be re-scheduled. While there was no way to make up the PhillyCoR picnic he was able to schedule the Lehigh Valley Humanist picnic instead. Unfortunately, between Rosco’s car breaking down and getting lost, he came very late to the picnic.

Finally, Sam Singleton Atheist Evangelist made it to the picnic and performed a small part of “Patriarchs and Penises.” Sam even ate a baby. It was a fun time and I think more atheist groups should have summer picnics and just casual gatherings just to hang out.

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For starters, the Court is still middle of the road at best. We have four extremely right wing Justices who will nine times out of ten support the Religious Right on any and all issues that they bring forth. It is all but certain that they will vote to overturn Proposition 8 for example. Then you have five middle of the road Justices any one of which might support the Religious Right if a seemingly strong argument can be made.

There really isn’t a strong progressive Justice to make those strong arguments that might sway the middle of the road Justices. Kagan, is known for being very vocal as is Sotomayor, but will they make strong progressive arguments? It doesn’t seem like they will.

At best the Court is still exactly where it was under Bush and at worst, the absence of Justice Stevens weakens the Jeffersonian Wall. Stevens didn’t just rule to support separation of church and state, he was a strong advocate for that position. Hopefully Kagan will be as strong of an advocate. But that is by no means certain. In the end, time will be the ultimate judge of Obama’s Supreme Court picks.

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• Elena Kagan appointed to the supreme court after US senate vote (guardian.co.uk)
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Dangerous Talk has obtained this video (from YouTube) of Religious Right’s Tamara Scott talking about how we ought to enact Biblical Law and how gay marriage costs tax payers 280 billion dollars according to the fair and balanced Family research Council:

Well, I know of something that costs tax payers a whole lot more that 280 billion dollars a year. It’s called Church Tax-Exemptions and Faith Based Initiatives. Why haven’t we pushed Proposition 666 which would tax all Churches and end federal funding for Faith Based Initiatives? Oh I know, it wouldn’t pass, right?

So what? The fact is that just pushing such a proposition would cause these groups to go on the defensive. Maybe they will think it won’t pass either and not campaign hard against it and be surprised at how many Americans are tired of Churches getting away with all this stuff.

The Mormon Church funded most of the Proposition 8 campaign, why have they not lost their tax-exempt status for political activism? The Catholic Church fucks kids; you would think that would be enough to get their tax-exempt status revoked. Some fundamentalist churched are actually praying for the death of the President and they don’t even have to pay taxes.

I want to push some propositions against these people. It’s time to go on the offensive. Contact your representatives (state and federal) and tell them it is time to fight back against the Religious Right!

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I recently joined a website called Empire Avenue. This social media outlet allows people to buy and sell stock in each other. By linking your facebook, twitter, and blog to your page, Empire Avenue is able to measure your influence on the interwebs. This makes your stock more valuable.

Empire Avenue is like a game, but it also is a networking and promotional tool. The more your stock is worth; the more people will want to see what you are up too.

The site is pretty new and already an atheist community is forming on there. But we are not alone. Christians are also on the site. In any case, I have been on this site for a few days to check it out and I really like it. So I would like to recommend that atheists join the site and join the atheist group there. We can join each other’s facebook and twitter pages and check out each other’s blogs and youtube channels. We can also make fake money and have lots of fun. My stock name on there is: STAKS – so buy my stock with your fake money when you join the site.

When Anne Rice started the series, she was an atheist and that is definitely reflected in her work. Most vampire stories before Anne Rice portrayed vampires as some sort of demonic creature which came about through some bad dealings with God or some deal with the Devil. This was not the case with Anne Rice’s vampires.

While there was certainly supernaturalism involved with the origin of vampires in the Vampire Chronicle universe, it had nothing to do with God or the Devil. It was an accident involving spirits, but with no purpose divine or demonic. In this universe, vampires don’t fear crucifixes or holy water. In fact, at one point in the books, there were some young vampire cult which claimed to be demonic and they were seen as silly and stupid. In fact, these vampires who focused on religion (even though they claimed to be Satanic) acted much like the religious fanatics of God fearing Christianity.

Now of course Anne Rice writes Jesus books. I confess that I haven’t read any of them and I stopped reading the Vampire Chronicles toward the end of the series. But I think Anne Rice has contributed a lot to the world of atheism by taking supernatural creatures like vampires (which everyone loves) and making them less religiously based. This was an important step in the vampire mythos.

Anne Rice’s books were well written and pretty well researched historically. What I mean by this is that she had a really good grasp of the history she used as a back drop for her vampire characters. In other words, Anne Rice is no dummy. She is an intellectual. This is reflected in her recent statement that Christianity is anti-science. Don’t get me wrong though, she isn’t an intellectual on the same level of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, but within the literary world, she generally values knowledge and reason.

Now the task is to get her to move further in that direction.

Anne Rice:

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

Me:

I’m an optimistic atheist and live a very happy life without the need for deities and vicarious blood sacrifices. Not all atheists are pessimistic. Just follow reason Anne. You don’t need superstitions or to believe in anything without sufficient reason (i.e. faith). The universe is a wondrous place without the magic of bronze-aged myths.

Anne Rice:

Staks, I understand. There are many optimistic atheists. I wasn’t one of them. But I brooded constantly on history and suffering. And of course when I came to Christ, I did not really know anything about Christian pessimism. And still don’t embrace it, of course. But I am sure you are right. There are many happy atheists.

I will be writing a longer and more thought provoking letter to Anne Rice shortly. Let me know what you think of this first exchange.

On just about every issue Obama has let down his progressive base and continues to try to get Republicans to like him. The thought that we will be stuck with Obama for six more years is scary, but the scarier part is that the Republicans may get Sarah Palin or some other wack-job in office because Obama has lost his base.

For the good of the country, we can’t let Obama go unchallenged in his re-election campaign. It is time for the progressives in the country to run someone against Obama during the primary. If for no other reason it could light a fire under Obama’s ass and get him to actually do stuff.

While I love Kucinch, his image has been tarnished beyond repair. Kucinich might be able to make Senator, but I don’t think he could beat Obama in a primary even with Obama’s low approval rating and he certainly wouldn’t be able to beat the Republicans in the general election. The best chance we have to beat Obama in the Primary and to win in the general election is Congressman Alan Grayson.

Grayson, is a strong progressive in a right wing congressional district. Despite the fact that every Republican talking head is gunning for him and he lives in a strong Republican district, he seems to be in little danger of losing his seat. It seems that Grayson has discovered the formula for political success… guts.

To help persuade Grayson to run in a primary against Obama, I have started a facebook group. The way these things work is that we need at least a million people to join this group so that the media takes notice. Grayson will probably only run if he sees that there are large numbers of people who want him to run. So please join this group and spread the word.

EAVB_DYSMKLFUYY

I will admit that I am not generally a fan of his blog, although I do check it out from time to time. I tend to be more of a PZ Myers fan. Still, in my book we are all on the same side and we should all do our best to help each other out.

Late last night, I found out that former Catholic, turned atheist, turned Catholic Anne Rice has once again left Christianity. I quickly wrote up an Examiner article about this. I loved most of Rice’s Vampire series and to this date still consider her vampire mythology to be the standard for all vampire stories (Twilight stacks up poorly compared to Interview).

While Rice hasn’t broken completely from the Christian mythology, she has made a giant leap in a very public way. De-conversion is a journey and rarely happens overnight. Still, Hemant Mehta was not so friendly about Rice’s announcement.

On his blog, he criticized Rice for falling into the “follower of Christ” camp. While there is a place for this criticism, I think the more important message is that Christianity is being called out for being immoral. Even many atheists who commented on Hemant’s blog think he was a little mean and off base with this one.

For me, it is a chance to say that on this issue I am friendlier than the Friendly Atheist.

The thing is that Sam Singleton Atheist Evangelist was scheduled to perform at the picnic but due to a climbing accident, his manager and wife was hospitalized a week earlier. As a result, the Sam Singleton tour had to be pushed back and a few weeks. He had contacted me about trying to put together an alternative event since he wouldn’t be able to make the picnic.

With PhillyCoR practically dead, there was no way to put together an alternative event. So I tried to put PhillyCoR back together. As a result, I am pretty much the new coordinator of PhillyCoR. It isn’t a position that I necessarily want, but it is a position that needs to be done.

I have always talked about the importance of atheist groups working together and this is a necessary consequence of that philosophy. The way I see it, we are fighting a culture war and atheist groups need to work together if we are to spread the ideas of reason, critical thinking, and science.

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According to a Christian (or any theist for that matter), God is all-powerful. He created the laws of logic (see my argument against Presupposition Theology). In fact, most Christians maintain a belief in miracles and in prayer. Both of these beliefs require God to bend and/or break the laws of physics and sometimes logic. So if God can break these laws for a miracle, why can’t he do it where it counts?

Let me give you an example. When I asked a Christian about the Problem of Evil, her answer was that God created evil/suffering/Hell so that we could choose to love him. Her argument was that without evil, people would be forced to love God and that wouldn’t really be love. It wouldn’t be a real relationship.

That type of argument might cut the mustard if God were an alien (okay, not even then), but as it is God is alleged to be all-powerful. God can redefine the laws of logic so that we could choose a relationship with him without the evil/suffering/eternal torture. God is too powerful for Christians to satisfactorily address the Problem of Evil.

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During the Bush administration the Religious Right pushed to limit Stem Cell Research. Their view on this was two fold. First, embryonic stem cell research is worse than abortion. Second, it is a slippery slop to playing God. I guess they didn’t realize that Stem Cells could also be used for breast implants. If they had, they would have had a third objection.

Basically, cosmetic surgeons can liposuction some fat out of a woman’s ass, thigh, or other body part (surprisingly not the brain) and using their own stem cells, can move that fat into the breasts. While these are adult stem cells rather than embryonic, I am sure the Religious Right will still be mental about it.

I should point out that studies have been done that show that women who get breast implants do it because they believe that guys want them to have bigger breasts. Those same studies show that guys don’t request and don’t really care if women have larger breasts. It is basically a self-image issue.

Still, there is nothing wrong with getting cosmetic implants (for women or men). If these implants are safer, then I am all for them. That being said, I don’t think women should feel the need to have them unless it is what they want.

Let me tell you another one. I won the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge last night in a poker game. The problem is that I live in Pennsylvania and have no desire to move to New York right now so I need to sell it really cheap. I’ll sell it to you for a fraction of what it’s worth. I’ll sell it to you for $5000. It is worth 5 million. This is the truth, why won’t you buy it? Oh, you want evidence? Just take my truth on faith. That is a different kind of knowledge, right?

The fact is that faith isn’t a different way of deriving truth it is just a way to claim truth. Anyone can claim truth, but being able to show truth requires evidence. Just because there is no evidence don’t mean that something isn’t true. But we can’t call it knowledge. We can only claim knowledge when we have sufficient valid evidence and can objectively show that something actually is true.

Religious people don’t believe anything on faith alone except for their particular religious claims. Isn’t that interesting? Why are religious people just as skeptical about other people’s religions and about matters involving money and the world we live in, but when it comes to their own religion, faith suddenly becomes an alternative and equally valid way of deriving truth? The real truth here is that religion is just as much of a scam as my deed to the Brooklyn Bridge.

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Yes, science is the only reliable method for understanding the world. No other method can reliably tell us about the world. The major difference however is that science can prove its claims objectively. This is why every person in the world uses science and relies on science despite any rhetoric they might implore.

God didn’t create the internet. No one has faith that when they turn on a light switch that it will go on. We don’t pray over our meals to cook them. Science is the only method which we can accurately rely on to get the job done. In short, science works. It works consistently, repeatable, and objectively.

The day religious people stop using the scientific method and all advances that science has produced is the day I will concede that science might be a religion and that science might take things on faith. When religious people can pray into existence anything even remotely as cool as the internet is the day I might be willing to accept that science isn’t the only reliable method for understanding the world.

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To make matters worse, just after I published the Examiner article, I found out that the Picnic’s special guess (who I have also been promoting for months) may not be able to make it. Rosco’s wife and campaign manager Cari fell out of a 60 foot tree and is in the hospital. They were supposed to leave Montana this Tuesday for Philly to perform the Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist show at Sunday’s Picnic and two additional shows.

Cari is doing well, but is banged up pretty badly and I don’t know if she will be up for the trip. The Philly shows were going to be part of a larger tour around the nation. One really distressing part of the whole thing is that they don’t have any health insurance because Atheist comedy shows don’t make a whole lot of money.

This gets me thinking about politics. While I was one of the few people well aware that Obama was not a progressive during the campaign, even I am surprised at how much he has continued the Bush policies and has done little to nothing to fix the problems facing this nation. During his great Health Care reform speech, he said that this was the last time America would have to deal with this issue and that we were going to do it right once and for all. What a joke.

If Obama had done it right, Rosco and Cari wouldn’t be without health care. In fact, part of the current problem is that even those who do have health care are not entirely sure that our medical expenses are actually covered. As it stands now (after HealthCare reform) we still have to pay the Health Insurance companies, but they don’t have to actually perform the services for which we are paying them. There are loopholes all over the place and Health Insurance companies have tons of lawyers who are looking for as many as they can find.

Sometimes I get discouraged. During the Bush administration, people told me that they were going to move to Canada and I discouraged them. I reminded them that America was the last battlefield and if we left, the Religious Right would take control and use America’s nuclear arsenal against the rest of the world. We won the last election, but it doesn’t seem like a victory. While it is true that we would be in far worse shape if the Republicans won, I am still so discouraged and disheartened that Obama seems unwilling to do much of anything except make great speeches.

He said that he didn’t want to play the game better, but wanted to change the game. But the fact is that Obama is just playing the game. What good is fighting hard to gain a political victory if that victory is hollow and meaningless?

I must admit that over the weekend, my wife and I actually had a serious conversation about perhaps moving to Canada. This health care issue is really motivating us to consider what I once thought was unthinkable. We actually went on the internet and started researching houses and areas to get an idea of costs. We definitely can’t afford to move anytime soon, but we are thinking of taking a vacation trip to scout out the possibilities.

Sometimes I get discouraged.

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At first, a few readers informed me of the problem and I had to reinstall some of the theme components of the site and tweak the code. As it had started to happen more and more, I began checking the site every week or so. Basically, on Friday I got tired to having to do all this and figured I could just update the software and maybe stop this problem altogether.

That ended up being a much bigger problem than the original hacking problem. At one point on Friday I was actually freaking out a bit. By Saturday the site had been restored to the point that readers shouldn’t have noticed any difference in the site. But from my standpoint, I basically was locked out.

Now I have full access and most of the site is working great. I still don’t know if any of this will stop the hacking, but I am hoping.

I want to thank all my readers for your patience and for your continued support. I will be taking the rest of this week off from blogging to get the remaining 5% of the site back to where it should be and to work on other Dangerous Talk projects. Please feel free to go through the Category section and check out some of the older blog articles that you might have missed. Also, I hope you will check out my Examiner page as I will be writing a few more articles there this week.

Once again, I want to thank all the readers and supporters out there because you are all Dangerous Talker and you all mean the world to me.

-Staks

The article focuses on the “No True Scotsman” fallacy however this particular Christian decided not to address that issue at all. Instead, he focused on the part of the article where I talked about how if the Bible was a written by a perfect deity to be a perfect guide for humanity, then it fails. The fact that reasonable people can get diametrically opposed views from a holy book alleged to be written by a perfect being is logically inconsistent.

The Christian makes two interesting claims. The first is that even though the Bible is “difficult” to understand it does not invalidate the claim that it was written (or inspired by) a perfect being. Again my claim is that if it was written by a perfect being as a guide for humanity then that being would be able to communicate his message perfectly and it would be crystal clear to everyone.

To claim that the Bible is “difficult” to understand is an extreme understatement. The fact is that somewhat reasonable people can and do get diametrically opposed interpretations from this book. Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” is not nearly as “difficult” to understand. That book was written to have a message too and that message is crystal clear to any reasonable or even somewhat reasonable person. It is one thing for a book to be difficult to understand, but for a book to be open to such diametrically opposed interpretations really says something about the author. Claiming that the author is perfect at this point just seems silly.

If I were reading a guide to plumbing and I interpreted it in a diametrically opposed way as my neighbor, we would both have to acknowledge that the author didn’t convey his or her instructions clearly. But if the author was God and claimed to be perfect, then this poorly written guide would be strong evidence to the contrary.

The second point that this Christian made (ironically after he accused me of making the Red Herring fallacy among others) was that scientists disagree on interpreting data all the time. The analogy that he is trying to make here is that just because people get diametrically opposed interpretations from the Bible shouldn’t invalidate the Bible. But there is a very distinct and important difference here. The Bible is alleged to be perfect and written (or inspired) by a perfect being. Scientists may get different interpretations from the same data, but they are not perfect. That is why when this type of thing happens in science, scientists have to design new experiments and/or studies so that they can be repeatable with some degree of accuracy. If an experiment or study yielded diametrically opposed results, then the experiment or study was faulty and needs to be re-examined, fixed, and/or re-done completely.

That is the real difference between religion and science. Science tries to get it right and keeps trying while religion claims to have it right regardless of the results. This makes religion a poor guide to life. Claiming to have the answer isn’t the same as actually having the answer. Science tests its results and is not afraid to re-test them over and over again. Science encourages critics and criticism while religion just asserts their answer without regard to the evidence or the facts.

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Such a serious situation prompted me to turn to my liberal Muslim friend from the scary streets of Chicago for advice. My Muslim friend has traveled to that very same city in Pakistan and there is a branch of his liberal Muslim Mosque there that might be able to help (although I worry that they might try to convert him to liberal Islam rather than trying to help in some other way).

This got me thinking about just how important the internet is to the rise of atheism. I have never met either of these two individuals personally and yet through the internet I can communicate with both of them. My new atheist friend in Pakistan relies on the internet to keep his mind thinking and to help save his sanity from having to hide his disbelief. My Muslim friend may or may not be able to help but at least it is through the power of internet developed by science which holds the key to solving this problem.

The internet is so dangerous to the Muslim world that Pakistan is seriously considering blocking facebook and other websites which could be used to criticize and/or question their religion. I think it is really important to form a strong atheist community on the internet and for atheists around the world to help each other. Whether it is simply promoting reason and reasonable ideas or whether is it reaching out to isolated atheists in overly religious nations or states, we need to help each other.

Religions have form communities which help out their members. Many atheists miss those types of communities even though they tend to be dogmatic. Through the internet we can form a new kind of community which serves some of the same functions of local Church communities without the dogmatism. An internet community is even stronger than local communities because we are non-localized. But we should start building local communities too.

The hard part for most atheists is building and being part of a community since the only thing really binding us together is a lack of belief. However, most modern atheists have also rallied behind common principles of rationalism, humanism, science, and to a lesser extent progressivism. We can build our internet and local communities around these things.

We walked from the Sun marker to the marker of the Earth (probably about 50 to 100 feet) in the scaled down solar system (one-fifth billions of the actual size). When I walked back over to the Sun marker, I read that in this scaled model, our neighboring star Alpha Centauri would be located somewhere in Hawaii. So while our solar system is scaled down to ¾ of a mile, the next nearest star would be nearly 5000 miles away.

I can almost hear Carl Sagan’s voice informing me about the vast emptiness of space and how humbling it is, reminding us that the Universe was not created for us, but rather we are simply a part of a great big Universe so immense that our nearest neighbor would take multiple lifetimes to reach.

Religious people often talk about how God made the Universe for human beings. But a glance through a telescope shows just how ridiculous such beliefs really are. Why would a God create our closest star (aside from the Sun) so far out of our reach? What does that tell us about the vastness of the rest of the Galaxy or even the vastness of the entire Universe as we know it through science?

Even though the group that started this is advocating a form of censorship, I think it is better to avoid pretending to be like the religious people on this one. Instead, I think we should play the blasphemy card in a more humanistic way. This month, I don’t think we should hide our atheism from the world at all. We should go out of our way to wear atheism on our sleeves so to speak. When someone says “God bless you” we should not just inform them that we don’t believe in a god, but also let them know that saying such a think is rude and even blasphemous.

This month we should actually get offended by religious symbolism and we should let people know that we are offended. I am not advocating reporting the symbolism as hate like the facebook group is doing, but we should make those who plaster religious symbolism all over the place that it is offensive, rude, and inconsiderate.

Many religious people may not even realize that they are being inconsiderate. Others know it all too well and just don’t give a damn. For those people, we have to expose their hate for what it is. We should let the rest of the world see just how hateful some religious people actually are.

Here is a great video that I saw which show just what it is like to have a bit of role reversal with religious people:

I was in the religion section of a bookstore today and there was actually a book about how Jesus told the founding fathers about a secret code. This was not meant to be a fictional book either. In fact, not counting the obvious fiction of the Christian narrative there are a lot of books that have divergently ridiculous narratives.

It seems that if someone is willing to swallow the obvious fiction of the Bible, they seem to be susceptible to other wacky narratives. There are Bible codes, secret knowledge imparted to important people, space Jesus, claims of alien angels, demons, etc. The wackiness doesn’t end with God.

I bet there is some good money in books of this kind. I am almost tempted to write something wacky based on the Bible and call it non-fiction. Any ideas? The crazier the better.

I can’t really remember how old I was when my parents pushed religion on me. I know I was going to Hebrew school classes by the time I was 3 or 4. But it occurs to me that most people have religion forced on them when they are much younger. How old does a child have to be to confess his sins to a Catholic priest so that the child might avoid eternal torture in Hell? Is does God have a grace period so that if you sin before a certain age it doesn’t count?

Children and religion just sees like a bad idea. Children often believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the boogieman, etc. how hard is it really to indoctrinate them about God and Jesus? When a priest or other religious leader convinces a grown and competent adult their ridiculous story, that is one thing, but going after kids who have no bullshit immune system seems very wrong to me.

I don’t think it is necessarily child abuse on the same level as actual child abuse, but it does seem pretty close. In some ways, it is probably even more damaging to the child than a beating would be. The guilt and other psychological damage may never be healed.

Of course, this type of argument is laughable. For starters, the human eye doesn’t see very much. So little of the electromagnetic spectrum makes up visible light to humans that one really needs to ask not why God has blessed us with color, but rather why God has cursed us by practically blinding us. Of course the reality is that God didn’t bless us or curse us. The human eye wasn’t designed by an intelligent designer with a plan, but rather was designed by the process of natural selection.

Second, the Intelligent Designer fails again when we look at the internal aspects of the human eye. God really fucked it up for humans. For some reason our optic nerves block much of the light from reaching our photoreceptors. The fact is that there are animals in the world whose photoreceptors are not blocked by their optic nerves. So it certainly seems like God designed the snail’s eyes better than the eyes of humans. Maybe snails have souls and humans don’t.

The real problem is that it is too easy for some ignorant Christian to throw up some black and white photos and contrast them to color photos and claim that humans are number one without having the slightest idea of what is out there or what he or she is talking about. People like my father like looking at the “eye candy” and some people might even get suckered in with that and fall victim to the ridiculousness of the argument being quietly put forth.

The Christian cloaks his or her self in being uplifting when they are really just been ignorant and/or dishonest. In some cases, they are using people’s sense of awe and love of beauty as a way to push their product and sucker people. We can still experience the awe of color and the beauty of the world as we see it and still admit that human vision is far from number one. In fact, through the magic of science humans can now see much better than our flawed human eyes normally allow.

Microscopes and telescopes allow us to see things both big and small. Glasses and contacts correct people’s flawed vision and other scientific instruments even allow us to observe much more or the electromagnetic spectrum than our “God” given eyes possible could. Isn’t science wonderful? The collection plate in located in the side bar in the form of a contribute button. Thanks!

I admit that I was a little nervous about trying this sample because I have a low tolerance for spicy food and I refuse to buy a drink from Chick-Fil-A. I might have had to suffer for a few minutes while I found a more respectable food establishment to buy a drink from. As it turns out, I didn’t need to.

I guess that the new product people of Chick-Fil-A are so frightened of Hell, that they are afraid to make a chicken sandwich spicy hot as it might remind them of Satan. The Spicy Chicken was not spicy at all. If it was really spicy, I would probably be writing today’s blog jokingly accusing them of being in league with Satan rather then jokingly accusing them of being afraid of Satan. It just goes to show you that if you really want a spicy chicken sandwich, Church’s Chicken might be a better choice. Despite the name, they actually aren’t religious.

When I say that something has a reasonable expectation of being offensive, I am referring to something that a reasonable person could find offensive. For example, an individual may find a particular song offensive because it might remind him or her of an unpleasant experience. This is their choice but there is no reasonable expectation that such a song would be offensive. On the other hand, the Nazi swastika is a symbol which represents racial purity and a reminder of the brutal murder of over 6 million people. It is still a choice to be offended by such a symbol, but there is a reasonable expectation that most reasonable people would be offended by such a symbol.

The crucifix is a torture device. It represents cruel torture. To a Christian, it represents the cruel torture of Jesus and their belief that the torture of Jesus was a sacrifice for their immortal soul so that they will not be tortured for all eternity in Hell. This is of course the core of the Christian belief system.

It is understandable why someone who claims to be Christian will display a crucifix it is also understandable why someone who believes in racial purity would display the swastika. I am not equating the two belief systems but I am pointing out that to the represented of each system of belief these symbols are not offensive. It is to the non-represented that the symbol becomes offensive. In other words, whether a symbol has a reasonable expectation of being offensive is not up to the represented, but rather it is up to the unrepresented.

For example, the American flag is also a symbol which represents those who live in America and to most Americans it also represents liberty and justice for everyone. If one is not represented by the American flag, then they get to be the ones who decide whether or not it has a reasonable expectation of being offensive. During the Bush (Jr.) Presidency, some people in other countries were offended by the American flag and had good reason for being so. Today, fewer non-American are offended by the American flag. The reasonable expectation of offensiveness is less.

For a non-Christian, the crucifix represents a torture device. It also represents the core message of Christianity which is that all non-Christians will be tortured for all eternity by a loving deity. It is also a reminder of all the cruelty done and being done in the name of the Christian God. So while there is no reasonable expectation of offensiveness within the community of believers, Christians should realize that there is a reasonable expectation of offensiveness outside of their community.

If Christians want to be considerate to non-Christians, then they ought not to display their offensive symbol. To do other wise would be at best poor manners. It could also be interpreted as a hostile act of aggression.

I am not actually sure that either of us could prove our position, but I do think we each had some interesting arguments to draw on. His main argument was that moderates were already more reasonable people and already value reason most of the time. So it is just getting them to think reasonably about religion that is the issue. Logically, this makes perfect sense but in practice, I have to disagree.

My view is that moderates just don’t care. I think both fundamentalists and moderates use reason (although fundamentalists don’t value reason as much) so in both cases it is merely getting the Christian to apply their reasoning to religion. The thing is that fundamentalists take their religion very seriously. They are heavily invested in their particular and literal interpretation of the Bible while moderates are quick to play the “metaphor” card for every unreasonable Biblical verse that is pointed out to them.

The moderate will just brush off criticism and stick with their view that Jesus was a hippy regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Because the fundamentalist is so heavily invested, they will actually put the time and energy into trying to defend their unreasonable position. But doing so, they start the de-conversion journey of self-discovery. Their fundamental passion becomes the tool of their de-conversion… in my opinion.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t try to de-convert and educate moderates about their own religion. We should, it is just that in my view fundamentalists are easier to de-convert. This argument is actually more of an interesting academic exercise between two atheists since I really don’t think it matters whether or not I am correct or my friend is correct. What are your experiences, stories, or logical arguments on this topic?

I understand that some atheists think we can work with liberal Christians against the religious right. But when atheists go out if their way to defend Christianity and act as Christian apologists, that just seems perverse. Currently, the most famous of these atheist Christian Apologists is S.E. Cupp. Most people suspect that she is probably religious right tactic rather than someone who personally doesn’t believe in a deity. On the other hand, I have talked to a (small) number of atheists just like S.E. Cupp, but without the beauty and the book deals.

Part of this type of anti-atheist atheism comes from a resentment of Dawkins and/or a resentment of the growing atheist/humanist community. These apologists see any atheist who is critical of religion as a “Dawkins clone” and yet many of us have been critical of religion long before “The God Delusion” was published.

Christianity preaches that people ought to believe in certain facts about the world on insufficient reasoning. Faith is the virtue and (poor) reasoning is a mere justification for those who aren’t virtuous enough to believe on faith alone. It boggles my mind that any atheist would defend such a world view. What is more mind boggling is that these atheists admit that the Christian world view is wrong and yet they will defend that view rather than promoting critical thinking and a legitimate search for real testable answers to life’s questions.

This should not be confused as supporting and defending someone’s right to believe in wrong and even unreasonable positions. That is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about the ideas themselves.

It is like defending the proposition that 1 + 1 = 3 and then saying that you really know that it is 2, but that the previous proposition shouldn’t be marked wrong just because it actually is wrong.

Creationists use that label on others because they are trying to lower the science of evolution to that of religion (which they seem to realize is actually quite poor). Their claim is that evolution is a mere belief just like their mere belief in God, Jesus, etc. All beliefs are equal and therefore their belief in the literal Genesis is just as valid as the scientific view in evolution.

The thing is that all beliefs are not equal. Some beliefs have evidence and some don’t. Evolution has mountains of evidence while creationism has zero. This is where the creationist usually points out that evolution is “just a theory.” To the creationist, the terms “theory” and “belief” are interchangeable. This is why I like to creationists that I am a gravity-ist. I believe in the theory of gravity.

The thing about labels is that while one can have more than one belief, the label one uses generally represents the strongest belief and one which dominates ones life the most. So by calling someone an “evolutionist” they are making a judgment that evolution is the strongest belief that a particular person of reason has and that it is the belief which dominates our life.

As a person of reason, all scientific theories of such weight play equal dominance in my life. I hold the theory of evolution in the same level of certainty that I hold the theory of gravity. Both play equal dominance in my life although a case could be made that my “belief” in gravity actually places more dominance in my life. So if creationists are going to label be based on the scientific theories that I believe in, than it would make more sense to call me a gravity-ist than an evolutionist… although, creationists aren’t trying to disprove gravity… yet.

This answer of course doesn’t make much sense. It simply is a difference in doctrine and I am not even certain that it is an accurate difference. But it does seem odd that we can look at a map of the world, pick a country, and guess with reasonable accuracy what someone from that country’s religious beliefs are based merely on their geography. Obviously, there is a correlation between religions and geography. This is obviously because the various Gods have marked their territories, lol. Seriously, it is probably because religion is a product of culture and indoctrination. Sure there will be people who go against the culture or who are influenced by someone else’s culture, but for the most part the correlation holds.

Most religions are based around magical thinking in some way. Religious people hate when their beliefs are described as magical, but they tend to have no problem describing other religions as magical despite the similarities to their own. It is precisely because of these similarities that Christians have to find something to distinguish their beliefs from that of other beliefs.

This is why they came up with the idea that other religions seek God but in Christianity, God seeks man. This distinction is purely arbitrary. They could have just as easily said that other religions claim that God is a singular entity, but Christianity preaches God as a trinity. The point is that it really is an arbitrary doctrinal difference. They might as well be saying that other religions don’t view Jesus as God.

The fact is that any religion can find some kind of doctrinal difference to separate themselves from other religions. What gives the one doctrinal difference that Christians have carved out any more validity than the doctrinal differences that other religious people use to justify their religion?

Dear Christian,
I am an atheist because Christians have not made the case for their deity of choice. Arguments like the First Cause, the Argument by Design, etc. are poor arguments and don’t even attempt to prove your deity, just a deity. Your deity (as described in the Bible) is quite simply ridiculous to me.

For starters, that deity has evolved from the Canaanite pantheon of deities by taking successful characteristics from other deities in that region of the world. Even the Bible has changed over time to reflect the ever changing political landscape. If you don’t believe this, then tell me where in the Bible does it say that slavery is immoral. The fact is that during the civil war, the southern pro-slave Christians had the Biblical high ground and yet today every Christian insists that the Bible stands firm against slavery.

The Bible also is far from inerrant. Even some of the so called historical narratives in the Bible were in fact not historical. The Jews were never slaves in Egypt and there was never an Exodus. The Tower of Babel was never built much less destroyed. But that story does talk about how Heaven in up in the sky. Interesting, isn’t it?

The so called prophecies in the Old Testament are nothing of the sort. They are a mix of verses taken out of context with the intent to call people to immediate action. Rabbi Michael Skobac debunks these so called prophecies in a series of videos on youtube. Oh, and the Miracles? Please, Sri Sathya Sai Baba performs many of the same miracles on youtube for all to see. Besides, doesn’t the Bible also say that Satan can do miracles too?

You may have had some sort of emotional personal experience which you feel is particularly compelling, but such experiences are usually don’t prove your particular deity and tend to be vague. You probably haven’t really tried to explain your experience through natural means, but rather have probably jumped to the religious conclusion.

Ultimately, your religious beliefs will rest on faith alone. The thing about faith is that it can justify any religious belief or any belief at all. The Muslim, the Hindu, and even the Scientologist all have the same faith-based arguments. All these religions are asking people to believe on insufficient evidence some pretty extraordinary claims. Faith is really the only thing one can use to get someone to believe in the ridiculous.

Oh, and don’t you think that the God of the Bible is a pretty immoral being? He defines morality as his whim in a pretty relativistic way. If God decided that rape was now moral, I don’t think it would be the case. He is always smiting people for some pretty petty things like working on Saturdays, being gay, and eating shell fish. And Jesus goes around telling people to hate their families and to cut off their hands and pluck out their eyes or they’ll go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity. I think he just needs to get laid. What do you think?
In Reason,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist

Dear Christian,
In the beginning God did not create the universe, the Big Bang did. The evidence for this is almost as big as the universe itself. Asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what is south of the south-pole. Space and time are linked and so before space there was no time. The design you think you see in the world is actually a result of your brain looking for patterns. The only design that actually exists is that which has come from a process called natural selection. People are not perfectly designed. Our balls (which are the most vulnerable part of our body) are located outside out body in a very vulnerable location. That seems to be a very poor design. Besides, these arguments don’t even attempt to prove your god, just a god and they fail miserably at that.

I know, I know, I will be singing a different tune when I am before your God and see that he will threaten me with eternal torture for not believing in him based on no valid evidence. It is probably a good bet to just say that I believe, but Pascal’s wager really wouldn’t be able to fool your god anyway, right? Besides, can’t we make that same wager for any god? You should be a Muslim and a Buddhist too, right? I know you think you are trying to save me from this horribly unjust eternal torture. If there was a bomb in your car and I knew about it, I would do everything I could to stop you from going inside. This means that I would actually show you some evidence for the bomb. Short of that, I doubt you would believe me especially if you drove the car a 1000 miles and nothing happened and I still insisted there was a bomb inside and that it could explode any minute… no one knows the time or the day.

The fact is that we all die my Christian friend. Life isn’t Super Mario Brothers and we don’t get free lives. Do you remember what happened before you were born? I have a feeling that is exactly what it is like after you are dead. This isn’t depressing! This is pretty cool, actually. It inspires us to live full lives because we know that life is short. I still look to the future and try to make the world a better place because I have friends and family that I care about. I want to make sure that the world is a better place for them and their children and their children’s children. Besides, who really wants to live forever anyway? Eternity is a long time and you are sure to get bored after a few billion years.

Why would you believe the Bible anyway, we don’t even have the original version. Besides, it was written by people who thought that the Earth was flat and that pi was exactly three. These guys owned slaves and considered women as property and you are relying on them to give your absolute truth? The so called prophecies in the Bible are bullshit. There are no such prophecies in the Old Testament, just ask any Hebrew scholar. Most of the so called prophecies aren’t even related to a messiah.

As for morality, I don’t think the Bible is a very good guide for that. Plus, the god of the Bible is a relativist. If the Bible provides such rock solid moral grounding, then why is it that so many so called Christians disagree on what is is moral and what is not? Besides, I really don’t think that if God came down and said that rape was moral, that it would be so. I think morality is based on human empathy and human compassion much more than it is based on the God of your Bible. Thank goodness for that, right? I mean the God of the Bible doesn’t actually condemn rape, in fact in many stories God seems to actually support the practice. What a jerk, I don’t think I would worship such a god even if he did exist.
In Reason,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist

On the off chance that these Christians get a well informed atheist, then they demand full answers to each of these arguments and turn each one into a fight. The thing is that these arguments are usually old arguments that we have all heard a million times. They range from the First Cause Argument, to the Moral Argument, to Pascal’s Wager, etc.

Sure, I can sit with a Christian all day long knocking down each of these arguments in turn, but at the end of the line they always fall back to faith anyway. My strategy is to point them in the direction for them to find the answers to these arguments on their own using the interwebs. I don’t even have to send them to an atheist website usually. Although, I have gone through a lot of trouble of debunking most of these arguments right here on Dangerous Talk and on my Examiner page in the Atheism 101 series. So I sometimes send them there first. But if they want a non-atheist site, I just send them to good old Wikipedia.

One idea I had was to create a short list of one or two line answers and to carpet bomb these types of Christians with the answers before they even ask the questions. I haven’t tried that yet but I will probably work on that list soon. If anyone has any short and pithy answers to the standard Christian questions, let me know.

The flier is being distributed by Family Radio, a Christian ministry not affiliated with any church. I am actually pretty familiar with Family Radio. When I was in college, I used to sit in my friend Greg’s dorm room and listen to the group’s leader Harold Camping tell his followers that the End of the World is coming on September 23rd, 1994.

My friend Greg was a devout follower of Camping back then. He is still a pretty crazy Christian but at least can admit that Camping was wrong. But Camping knows how to milk a profitable enterprise when he sees one. So when the world didn’t end in 1994, he just switched the date. I don’t know how many dates he predicted the end of the world for, but his current one is May 21st 2011.

First the pamphlet assures the reader that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and that it is unchanged and that each and every word is original. This is of course not true. Even most fundamentalist Christians acknowledge that some insignificant words have changed. For the record, quite a lot of the Bible has changed, but that is beside the point. The pamphlet then goes on to state that “by careful study of the Bible we learn that in the year 4990 BC God brought a flood.” God told Noah that he would have seven days to escape the flood. Since a day to God is a thousand years to us, that means 7000 years. Then the calendar was off by a year so that means 7000 years after the flood would be 2011 AD. Camping does other bullshit calculations for the day and the month, but suffice to say that it really is fascinating bullshit.

It really does amaze me that even with Camping horrible track record that people still believe him. Camping makes millions with this stuff and has a small army of loyal believers in cities across the nation handing out these pamphlets. This shows the real power of religion and why I can say pretty definitively that all religions are false.

The mere fact that Harold Camping has been able to dupe so many people with such obvious bullshit time and time again shows just how easy it is to fool people. I bet this woman is not stupid either. She is probably a pretty smart lady. Yet she has been fooled so completely by such obvious bullshit. This is a microcosm of all religion; smart people being duped to believe some super retarded stuff.

Dear Stephen,
I understand that you are a bit of a spontaneous type of guy. You are not someone who does anything in half measure either. This is a great trait to have at times. But sometimes it isn’t such a great trait to have. Sometimes people ought to be thoughtful and look before they leap.

With this in mind, it is no surprise that you became a born-again Christian. Becoming a born-again Christian is a spontaneous conversion process. It generally happens when people are in an emotional state or when they have hit rock bottom. It rarely occurs through a long and thoughtful process. Leaving religion on the other hand does often take such a long and thoughtful process.

Stephen, I want to start you on that journey. Now I know that your gut reaction is to dismiss me right off the bat. That is perfectly natural and most atheists experienced the same gut reaction when they were religious. If you really have the one and only Truth, you should not have a problem examining that Truth in the light of reason. In fact, you should welcome sure an examination to further prove to me and more importantly to yourself that your faith is justified. So let’s begin.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible is not inerrant. As someone who grew up Jewish, I attended years of Hebrew School and learned all about how the Jews were slaves in Egypt and God helped them through the Exodus. This is often cited by many as historical and yet it never happened. The Jews were never slaves in Egypt and the Exodus never happened. If one of the “historical” and more believable stories in the Bible is a myth, it is a good bet that Genesis and some of the other less believable stories are almost certainly not true.

So let’s turn to the New Testament since after all, Paul tells us that the entirety of Christianity really does rest of the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus. Interestingly enough, there is no real evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus even existed. The Bible of course has changed over time significantly sometimes even for political reasons. For example, the parable of “he who is without sin” was added much later to the Bible. The Gabriel Scrolls also show that there was an earlier draft to the Jesus myth based around someone named Simon.

But I digress; what about God? Well, let me put it this way. If I were God, I would have written the Bible to paint me in a more friendly and favorable light. Let’s face facts. The God as described in the Bible is a real jerk. All I have to do is open up my Bible to any page and see God smiting someone for something… or at least ordering the smiting of someone for something. Jesus is even worse with his massage of eternal punishment in Hell for those who don’t believe in him. I mean what kind of loving deity gives that kind of ultimatum? The insecure and immoral kind I guess.

This brings me to the big Ten Commandments. These are God’s Commandments. The most important top ten things God does NOT want you to do. Some of them make sense (but those actually predate the Bible). Some are very tribal and dated. Needless to say, there commandments were so important that God actually physically set them in stone (although like Joseph Smith’s Golden Plates they are no where to be found). Notice what laws God didn’t think were that important. There is nothing about slavery or rape and nothing about the rights of women or treating people with dignity. But there is a law against working on Saturdays. Guess what Stephen? I am here at this Wizard World convention for pleasure but you are working on this Sabbath Day. I know you fancy yourself as Job and everything, but even Job followed the Ten Commandments. According to the Bible, I would be well within my rights to stone you to death right now.

Don’t worry, I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I’m an atheist. The way I see it, morality is a human construct and it is both relativistic and absolutist. Morality is principle based and based on human empathy and compassion. Human beings are still learning about morality. While it can sometimes be hard to figure out what is right, it is often easier to discover what is wrong and for the record, stoning people for working on the Sabbath Day is wrong. Sorry God, score one for human beings.

Sure it would be nice to have an easy list of “thou” and “thou nots” but life isn’t always easy. There are no rules set in stone for us to follow. Morality is a journey Stephen, just like life. Your journey has taken you to extreme faith and now I hope that you will start your journey to extreme reason. Faith can’t be tested or verified by definition, but reason can be. This is why both you and I use reason every day. It is time to use reason and think deeply about faith. I encourage you to search the internet and learn more. You can start on my website where I write a daily blog discussing religion, DangerousTalk.net. Search the category drop down menu for articles on various topics.

I wish you and your family well and I hope to see you in Bio-Dome 2: The Eye of Braxis soon.
In Reason,
-Staks Rosch

It really is amazingly ignorant of fundamentalist religious people to tell us through a computer that science is based on faith or that science is just another religion or that religion is better at determining truth. The fact is that ALL religious people use science EVERYDAY (even the Amish). Religion simply put is not a valid method for determining knowledge or truth. If it were, then religious people would not need to rely on science.

There are some people who claim that both science and religion focus on different types of knowledge (non-overlapping magisteria). This is their way of taking advantage of science while still believing in their ridiculous religious superstitions. This is of course bullshit. When religion makes claims about the world those claims can be tested using science. If they want to simply say “God” then they can escape the scrutiny of science, but the moment they say “God Exists” they are making a claim about the natural world and such claims can be tested through science. If any supernatural being acts or exists even in part in the natural world, then the claim is no longer non-overlapping.

For thousands of years, religion (Christianity) has done everything it could to stop people from using science because they wanted the monopoly on determining truth. This way they can make up any truth they wanted and there would be no way of testing their claims. But religion simply doesn’t have the predictive power and the ability to test and verify claims that science has. So religion realized they could not beat science. If you can’t beat them, claim that there is no conflict and continue to make stuff up.

Recently, Stephen Hawking recently stated, “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” PZ Myers added to that quote by stating, that “science works, and every charlatan in every church dreams of hitching a ride on its record.”

Religion is losing this culture war.

I am not going to defend Helen Thomas here; I leave that to the Examiner article. But I do want to talk about a few of the conversations I had on this subject with various Jews and Gentiles. It seems that whenever someone criticizes a political issue related to Israel, Jew groups are quick to yell “antisemitism.” Sometimes there actually is antisemitism and sometimes there really isn’t.

It is my view that when people misuse and overuse terms like antisemitism, bigotry, racist, and/or rape they are weakening those terms. Those terms have specific and serious meanings. There are real people out there who really out to be labeled with those terms, but we can’t simply label anyone we disagree with, with those terms.

The label of “Jewish” has two distinct meanings which are often confused. In one sense, the term refers to a religion and in another sense it refers to an ethnicity. Thousands of years ago there was an ethnic tribe of nomads called Jews. Everyone in that tribe believed in a bunch of made-up bullshit. Today, there are people who are descendant from that tribe and so they are Jewish. Someone them still believe that made-up bullshit and some of them don’t. Some people who are not descendant from that tribe believe the made-up bullshit too.

The point is that being Jewish has two distinct meanings. One is religious while the other is ethnic. I think it is perfectly fair and justified to criticize and ridicule the religious ideas of Judaism. I don’t however, think it is fair or justified to criticize or ridicule someone because of their ethnicity. We can change our ideas (whether political or religious) we can’t go back in time and change who we are descendant from. We can’t change our ethnicity.

The term “anti-Semitic” refers to ethnicity, NOT religious or political beliefs and/or opinions. Questioning whether or not Israel (as a political state) should exist is not necessarily anti-Semitic. Nor is it anti-Semitic to question whether or not God really did give a patch of worthless desert to a tribe of bronze-aged sheep herders.

I’m sorry, but religious and political Jews can’t hind behind the cloak of antisemitism to hide from criticism. There are real anti-Semitic people out there. As an ethnic Jew, I have seen it. Racism is wrong regardless of what the race is. Those who believe all Arabs are anti-Semitic are just as racist as those who believe all Jews are aliens from another planet leading the Illuminati in their evil plot to take over the world (Yes, I have met those people and they really believe that).

The argument I heard is actually from a fellow atheist (it seems creative thinking is on our side today). So I want to thank Dusty Smith from the Cult of Dusty for introducing a new argument against religion. It is what I am going to call the Socialized Religion Argument. Dusty points out that the tax-exempt status of religions in America actually amount to Socialized Religion. Many fundamentalist Christians are part of the Christian Right which has demonized socialism. So by supporting the tax-exempt status of religion, these teabaggers, libertarians, conservatives, social conservatives, and all around Republicans are supporting socialism.

Dusty also claims that the tax-exempt status of religion is a direct attack on God. If God is all powerful, then he should be able to provide enough money so that the Churches can pay taxes and still spread their message effectively. I think these are some great new arguments and pretty obvious ones at that. I really don’t know why I haven’t heard them before. Watch Dusty’s video about this subject:

What do I mean by “reasonable” and “unreasonable” in this context? I mean that if the average person were to read through the Bible, they would have good reason to support a particular interpretation. On the other hand, an unreasonable interpretation requires some form of mental gymnastics and manipulation of the text in order to reach the interpretation in question.

Let’s take Matthew 10:34 as an example: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” Frequently Christians tell me that this doesn’t actually mean that Jesus is advocating violence or hostility. They then continue to hold the position that Jesus was a “Prince of Peace.” The claim is that this is a metaphor, which it clearly is. It would be unreasonable to assume that Jesus was actually wielding a sword. But a reasonable interpretation is that the metaphor of a sword represents violence or at the very least hostility. The fact that the character of Jesus explicitly states that he is not coming to bring peace, makes the interpretation that he is the Prince of Peace an unreasonable interpretation.

You know people are making unreasonable interpretations of the Bible when there are books out there called, “What Jesus Meant.” The fact is that the Bible is a straight up book. Sure, the reader should know something about the times it was written in, the various target audiences, and the themes with each book. But there really is no need for Biblical scholars with decades of learning the mental gymnastics needed to make some bizarre interpretation. There is no need for volumes of books telling us the proper way to understand it. The Bible should be understood on its own (especially if it had a divine author).

So yes, the Bible is open to some interpretation, but there are reasonable interpretations and unreasonable interpretations. Most Christians have the latter.

I am not alone in this view, author Daniel Ray even wrote a book on this very topic called, “The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture.” My argument is that the Christian belief system indoctrinates the young, preys on people’s fears and insecurities, and seeks to convert people at moments of emotional weakness. Once people have been corrupted by this system, they preach a message that ALL people are evil and need to be saved through vicarious blood redemption. If one is not a believer, they are told that they will be tortured for all eternity. This terrorism then causes the convert to push the corruption onto those he or she loves in order to “save” them for eternal torture. This spreads the corruption further.

Some people see such corruption as a good thing citing positive life changes and various good works that particular Christians do in the name of their religion. After all, the system can only be considered a system of corruption if it is bad, right? Not exactly, the system is corrupt if it causes humanity to deteriorate systematically.

Humans are defined as Rational Animal and the Christian system of belief causes rationality to deteriorate. Christianity teaches at best that faith trumps reason and in many cases that reason is worthless. But what do these terms mean? The Bible defines faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. In other words faith is wishful thinking without evidence. Reason on the other side of the spectrum is thinking based on evidence and informed judgment. The Christian belief system pushes the idea that humans are not rational animals. At best, we would be faithful animals to God, but in many cases, humans aren’t even considered animals at all. This in my view is a corruption of what it means to be human.

As for the corruption of society, that is more complicated. It is easy for me to point out the various atrocities and negative affects that Christianity as a system of belief is responsible for. I can talk about events and attitudes in the past and even talk about what is going on right now in the present with fundamentalist believers and even some mainstream attitudes and empathies, but Christians will quickly point out a few of the good things that they do in the name of their religion. They will insist that we make a Santa Claus style list to see if Christianity is naughty or nice. I welcome such a list since I think the naughty far out weighs the nice. But that isn’t really the point. Christians can do whatever they like and call that Christianity. But does the system of belief push those attitudes and activities or is it the growing secular and humanistic movement that has forced Christians to re-interpret their system of belief in order for that system to continue its corruption?

The strength of the Christian system of belief is ironically enough evolution. The system has evolved in to the roles of the good cop and the bad cop in order to continue spreading its corruptive force. It is not humans that are the corrupt evil sinners, but rather the Christian system of belief which is corrupt and evil. We must fight that system.

While I was certainly a religious believer at one point in my life, it was never a particularly dominant force in my life. Leaving religion wasn’t all that hurtful for me. My parents, family, and friends may not have congratulated me, but they certainly didn’t ostracize or disown me.

I never had a particularly religious girlfriend who cruelly left me over religion. I never lost a job over religion nor have any religious people attacked me (although I have gotten a few death threats after being vocal).

No, religion hasn’t personally hurt me in any direct way. As a thinking individual, I have studied various religions and think the narrative of most are ridiculous. I think the ideas that religion presents are often poor at best. But I would be lying if I said that my criticism of religion is isolated merely to insufficient reasoning.

The fact is that religion hurts us all. Religion hasn’t hurt me on a personal level, but on a cultural level and on a societal level religion has hurt me and everyone else. I need not even open a history book to see the destructive influences of religion. Whether it is gay rights, opposition to comprehensive sex education, opposition to stem cell research, etc. religion affects us all.

Should we bother to open up that history book, we would see that religious thinking (i.e. belief on faith alone and belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of the creator of the universe) was responsible for the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch trials, strong arguments in favor of slavery and against women’s rights, and many more atrocities. So yeah, these things hurt.

The claim that a vocal atheist must have been hurt personally is an attempt to devalue the criticism so that the criticism can be ignored. The reasoning is that the atheist’s criticism is based solely on his or her personal anger and not on any real merit. The fact is that one can be angry and have valid arguments. But in my case, it isn’t a personal issue it is an issue driven by the merit alone.

I say “Theologically speaking” because in reality it is all make believe and doesn’t make any real sense. But within the context of the narrative (i.e. The Bible) there ought to be some sense of consistency. Even though there really isn’t any internal consistency, theologians continue to fake it.

The idea is that since Jesus forgives sin (for those who believe), believers can sin but try not to because it is God’s desire that they don’t. But should they sin, they would not have to pay the penalty of being tortured for all eternity in Hell like everyone else because their sins have already been forgiven. The problem with this line of thought is that the term “sin” is being used synonymously with the term “wrongdoing” and yet the two are not the same… theologically speaking.

Sin is generally defined as something displeasing to God or some kind of spiritual separation from God. For example, God put the Ten Commandments (a list of “thou shall not” rules) in stone. These are things that displease God and so they are all sins. While some of them amount to wrongdoing, not all of them do. Thou shall not murder can rightfully be considered wrongdoing, but thou shall not have any others Gods before the Lord God is merely a sin. On the opposite side of the spectrum, rape is considered wrongdoing, but there is no place in the Bible in which it is stated that rape displeases God. So while rape is wrongdoing, it is not a sin.

The main difference is that wrongdoing is a crime against other people while sin is just something that displeases God. It can’t even be considered wrongdoing against God since you can do something displeasing to someone without doing them wrong.

Where does this leave us? Well, theologically speaking, wrongdoing is not a sin. God only seems concerned with sin and not wrongdoing. Rape is wrongdoing, but not a sin. So there should be nothing stopping Christians from going around and raping people.

Also according to the theology, Jesus didn’t abolish the old laws at all. He just came to forgive the old sins. “The Law” should still be in affect. While the law is considered God’s law (i.e. sin) it is also man’s law (i.e. wrongdoing) and so Jesus’s new covenant does nothing to abolish that part of the law.

These particular Christians often tell me how many of the apostles and early Christians were tortured for spreading the Christian belief and who in their right mind would die for a lie? Who indeed? Let’s look at this for a moment. First, aside from the Biblical account there is no evidence that any of the apostles actually did die for a lie. In fact, there is no real evidence that Jesus even existed. But that is another story for another day.

Let’s for the sake of argument grant that Jesus did exist and that the apostles actually did “die for a lie” even though there is no evidence to suggest this is actually true. Why would someone do such a thing? I can actually think of quite a few reasons and even some examples. For many people, there are some things more important than one’s own life. There are causes that we take up that we sometimes consider greater than ourselves. If one is in the military during a time of war for example, if captured by the enemy and tortured to reveal a hidden base a soldier might lie about it even sacrificing his or her own life to protect others or the cause.

A parent might lie under torture to save the life of a child or sometimes people might lie to save the life of others. In a social/political movement, people might lie under torture to protect the integrity of the movement. So if Jesus was real and was flipping over tables and telling everyone that the Hebrews had it all wrong and that no one should be following the Old Testament laws any more, this might be considered some kind of social, political, and religious movement. It would be a cause that some people might consider greater than themselves and if tortured might even die for a lie. In fact, if the charismatic leader of such a movement did die and the movement started to fall apart, it might be in the best interest of some of the new leaders to lie. They might tell their followers that the leader isn’t really dead and has in fact resurrected from the dead. They might even claim that the leader of the movement is so powerful that death itself couldn’t stop him from accomplishing the mission.

Now in the 21st Century, one might think such a lie would be laughable and certainly not believed, but the fact is that there are many current cults in the world with charismatic leaders that have their followers believe just these types of things. Back two thousand years ago before science and critical thinking really dominated society, even more people would be willing to believe in magical tales from charismatic leaders.

So even if Jesus was a real person and even if the apostles really were tortured, that still doesn’t prove that they must have told the truth while being tortured. It is extremely likely that they would have died for a lie.

Still, there is of course another possibility too. They might have actually believed the lie. They could have simply been bat-shit crazy. I know religious people are never crazy, right? Lol. I am sure it would be impossible to find any religious zealot so convinced by some obviously ridiculous story that they wouldn’t be willing to die confessing that it was true. I bet I could even find someone willing to die rather than denounce that Elvis is still alive. This would not be good evidence for Elvis’s immortality.

Whenever I get into one of these conversations, I am always reminded of my phrase that my favorite philosophy professor in grad school used to use. My professor would frequently share some of his old papers with us and before he did, he used to hedge the paper’s introduction by telling us that he wrote the paper, “in the enthusiasm of youth” and then proceeded to let us know that it, “probably wasn’t very good.” It was always of course brilliant but his modestly was genuine.

It is important to note that there is some genuine merit to my professor introduction. When we are young and enthusiastic, we tend to be less contemplative and more combative. We tend to be less open to other people’s reasoning and other people’s points of view.

I do find this with many Christians and even some of my fellow atheists. But most of the time even young atheists have put a great deal of time and contemplation into their positions. One of the main differences between theist and atheist is that people tend to be raised dogmatically with religion and/or convert to a religion suddenly. Most atheists on the other hand tend to take a journey from belief to non-belief. That journey is often long, hard, and contemplative.

Because atheists have to re-learn critical thinking skills and have usually spent a great deal of contemplative thought into why they don’t believe, the “enthusiasm of youth” doesn’t overtake them nearly as often as it does Christians. The fact is that we live in a world dominated by theism and most atheists either group up in a theistic home or in a community of theistic belief. Most atheists spent the enthusiasm of their youth as theists.

Today is Star Wars Day. On May 25th 1977, Star Wars first hit the big screen. The Star Wars Saga was created as a modern mythology. George Lucas worked with Joseph Campbell to create a new story using the mythical themes of the past. Unlike other religious believers, I am well aware that my Holy Book or in this case Holy Films are fiction. Although, I think a Christian would have a hard time proving that Darth Vader didn’t actually live a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

The fiction however tells a story which can inspire and teach us about the world around us. The Jedi are the guardians of peace and justice and we can learn a lot from how they live their lives and contrast that with how the Sith live their lives. Star Wars is a story of empires and rebellions, of love and loss, good and evil, and the rise and fall of people on a moral and personal level.

I take my Star Wars very seriously. Still, one big difference between my belief in Star Wars and the various religions in the world is that one need not believe on insufficient reasons. I can recognize that the Force is make-believe and yet still believe in the symbolism of the Force in the context of the story and how that can translate to reality.

May the Force be with you!

Last year for example, I got into a pretty lengthy religious conversation with my extremely Jewish cousin on facebook. He is closer to the orthodox side of Judaism and his main arguments in favor of his position were the First Cause Argument, the Argument by Design, The Moralistic Argument, etc. I didn’t really have to even know all that much about Orthodox Judaism to completely destroy his arguments and argue against his religious ideas.

More recently, I started to have a dialog with a few moderate Muslims. I have to confess right off the bat that I have not read the Koran and have no idea what it actually said. All I know is what I have heard from well respected atheists and I will for the sake of argument assume that they are wrong about what the Koran actually says.

According to the moderate Muslims, the Koran is all about piece and no one should ever do violence. I haven’t read the Koran so they might be right, but it does seem that a whole lot of Muslims missed that part when they advocate killing people over cartoons or any criticism of the Islamic religion. The Funny thing is that I hear Christians tell me that the Bible is all about piece too. If moderate to liberal Christians are to be believed Jesus was the first flower child and was a peace loving hippy.

Unlike the Koran, I have actually read the Bible and know full well that while there is a few passages that support the idea that Christianity is a religion of peace, most of the Bible is chocked full of hate and violence. Jesus himself states that he was not a peaceful person and his actions and attitudes confirm that.

With that in mind, I was able to tell my new Muslim friends that while I haven’t read the Koran, I strongly suspect that it is much like the Bible in that respect. I am sure there are some passages that talk about peace and love, but my guess is that most of the book is probably willed with hate and violence.

Without even reading the Koran or knowing much about Islam, I am pretty sure that I can address most of the arguments in favor of that religion and present arguments against it. The same is also true of Orthodox Judaism; because at the end of the day, all these bronze-aged religions are essentially the same. The details may change a little bit here or there, but the content of the religions are almost identical. The stories are all ridiculous and there is not one shred of evidence for any of it.

In the free market of ideas, there is little doubt that atheist and Humanist ideas are vastly superior to religious ideas. Religious people know it too and that is why it has become such a social taboo to criticize religion. This means that we can actually win this culture war if we can get our ideas out there. It is all about marketing and campaigning. That of course takes money.

Atheist Nexus is the largest atheist social networking site with over 16 thousand members and for the last few months they have been trying to raise $5000 for site upgrades. If it were Christian Nexus they would have that in an hour. It isn’t the fact that there are simply more Christians either. Christians would donate to Christian sites and projects because they believe that money helps God (as if a God needed money). The point is that atheists have a cause worth fighting for too. We are fighting for reason. If we can’t spread reason and present our criticisms of religion to the public, the consequences are felt not in some afterlife, but in this one, here and now.

There are lots of atheist organizations, blogs (like this one), radio shows, youtube channels, etc. that are struggling for funds needed to get the message of reason out there. There are atheist authors (aside from the big four) struggling to get their books read or even on bookshelves. We have to support each other.

I am calling for all people of reason to set aside at least 5% and hopefully 10% of our incomes to help fund atheist projects, websites, organizations, etc. Normal organization dues don’t count. If we all start funding each other, we will see a rise is visibility of positive atheism and a rise in atheists. But money talks and right now we are being outspent about a billion to one. Please help to spread this message.

Before I get too far into this review, I have something that needs to be disclosed. The writer and director of this film, Kristian Fraga is an old childhood friend of mine. I’ve known him from kindergarten through high school. He has always wanted to be a directed (although I would have thought he would have made a sci-fi film rather than a war film).

Severe Clear is a real life look at the beginnings of the Iraq War (which is still going on) from a Marine who was there at the beginning and on the front line. First Lieutenant Michael Scotti, while deployed in Iraq, took his video camera with him into battle and into the long hot days of sitting around.

His story is real and the images on the screen are real. The dead bodies don’t walk off the set when the camera is turned off. “They say in war bad things happen, ain’t that the mother fucking truth!”

Fraga does a great job in not going into the politics of this war, but the war is what it is and so even trying not to get political, the politics is there nonetheless. It is interesting to see First Lieutenant Scotti’s honest motivation in regard to the war. It was also interesting to see his excitement at finding what he thought were the weapons of mass destruction and his disappointment later when he revealed that they weren’t that massive after all.

The day to day struggles of soldiers is something we don’t see in other war movies. Scotti talks about the boredom, the bacteria, the smells, the difficulty in just going to the bathroom, and most troubling of all the time to think. Add those to the lack of body armor, ineffective tarps, defective equipment, and the lack of ability to understand the natives and we get a glimpse of the troubles of war. The good guys don’t always hit their targets and the bad guys can be almost anyone.

There were some key moments of particular interest to me. The first was when a higher ranking officer informed his men that they would be anointed with oil as some sort of religious warrior custom. It did not seem voluntary and it did seem highly unconstitutional. Another example of the military pushing religion.

There was an incident in which a little girl was killed and that seemed very genuine and really brought home the reality of war; namely the obvious that in war people die. This also was brought to the forefront when during a firefight, a Marine died. There was no time to grieve of the field of battle and all that could be said was that his brains were poring out. When I saw that scene, I thought of that man’s family and friends and how his death was treated so trivially, not because the soldiers were being disrespectful, but because there was no time and they were in shock.

Severe Clear is real war. It is raw and in your face. It is not for the queasy. If you want to know what war is like without actually being in one, too bad that ain’t going to happen. But this movie is the closest thing you’re going to get.

Go to severeclearthemovie.com for cities & showtimes and for more information about the DVD

Because I won the election for minority election inspector by one vote, I have to sit at the polling station from 6am to 9pm tomorrow. So there will be no daily blog tomorrow.

This year is a big primary year for me in my area of the nation. The biggest race going on is between recent Democrat Arlen Specter and my current congressman Joe Sestak. When I went to DC to lobby against the Broadcast Decency Bill a number of years ago, I got to meet with Specter’s legislative aids and talk to his staff. I really like Specter (even when he was Republican) and I really think he should be rewarded for switching sides to send a message to other Republicans who might be thinking the same thing. On the other hand, I have met Sestak a few times now and while I think he is a little bit of a dick in person, I think he will play less politics and vote for the progressive values that I support more genuinely and without having his arm twisted to do it. So I am supporting Sestak in that race, but if my horse loses, it isn’t a big deal.

There is also a much contested Governor primary going on. I think there are at least four Democratic candidates running. There is the guy with the money, the guy that everyone likes personally, the Al Sharpton candidate, and the strong progressive. As it turns out, the strong progressive candidate is actually someone I am friendly with and who was a guest on my radio show back in the day. He is also the candidate who probably has the least chance of winning tomorrow. Still, I strongly support Joe Hoeffel and if any of you are in Pennsylvania, you should vote for him too. My prediction is that money will win the day and Dan Onorato will be the candidate.

Since congressman Sestak is running for Senate, his congressional seat is up for grabs. There are I think three Democrats running for that spot, but two of them have no chance at all. Bryan Lentz pretty much has the lock in that primary race. I met Bryan a while back and he seems like a good guy. The real question is; can he win in the general election.

I think these primary races are important to the whole nation. The Senate race is of course important because it is he Senate. The Governor primary race is important because it tells us how politics works. Does money really trump everything? We’ll find out.

When people are convinced that they are inherently evil sinners, it makes it easier to do things they know are morally wrong. We are all sinner after all, so what is one more sin? The thief believes everyone steals. Also, if we see other people as evil sinners right from the start, then we act distrustful of others. This makes people paranoid and fearful and prevents people from giving others the benefit of the doubt. This line of thinking often causes Christians to assume the worst in others rather than try to understand where others are coming from.

By contrast, when we view people as evolving and progressing, we are working toward being better people and so we treat others as working toward that goal as well. We also are inspired to be the best we can be because we are working toward that progress. We treat other people as people of value right from the start.

Christians often try to flip this around by claiming that they view human beings as specially created by God and that atheists believe that we are just animals. But the problem is that Humanists don’t think animals are absent of value. This again shows the pessimistic side of Christianity.

Humans are animals, but we are rational animals and because we have the ability to reason, we can reason that we have value. Our value comes from our ability to reason, because we are living beings, and because we are the ones doing the valuing.

The “we were created special” argument is hollow since the Christian believe claims that human beings fucked it all up. The blame is on us and as a result of our infraction, everyone is considered to be evil sinners intrinsically. So really the Christian argument is that we “were” created special, but now we are all just evil sinners and it is all our fault. Again the glass is half empty and Christianity presents a pessimistic view of humanity as a whole and people individually while Humanism presents the view that we are all learning, evolving, and progressing.

The thing is that this bumper sticker brings up a few issues. First, I thought fundamentalist Christians hate homosexuality and yet here this guy goes telling everyone about his gay relationship with Jesus. Seriously though, I think it is an arrogant way of devaluing other people and so I was surprised when I saw the same bumper sticker among others on a progressive’s car later that same day.

As a biological fact, whether one loves Jesus, doesn’t love Jesus, or doesn’t even accept the existence of Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with one’s gender. For the record, neither does loving people of the same gender or of the opposite gender. A more accurate bumper sticker should read, “Real Men Have XY Chromosomes.”

Also, I want to mention that outstanding PR campaign that Jesus has. The reason why both the right wing and the lift wing Christians sport this bumper sticker is because they all think of Jesus as a model of morality. But any full read of the New Testament shows that Jesus is far from that model.

There is no doubt that there are some positive things that the character of Jesus as portrayed in the Bible has said, but most Christians are not aware of or quickly dismiss all the really horrible things that Jesus said. I blogged about this before so I won’t repeat it in this blog entry.

The point is that if the claim of the bumper sticker is taken figuratively to mean that loving Jesus is macho (in a good way), I think it goes in the wrong direction. The positive macho trait of being a protector and a gentleman clearly supports taking issue with many of the claims, opinions, and attitudes of the character of Jesus as he is portrayed in the Bible.

For example, a Christian told me the other day that I should believe in God because if I a wrong, I will be tortured for all eternity in Hell, but if he is wrong nothing will happen. Perhaps this Christian didn’t realize that Pascal made the same observation and a quick Google search or a little critical thinking skill would show just how retarded an argument that was.

Other examples include the First Cause Argument, The Argument by Design, and others. What is wrong with these Christians that they think they have this new insight that no one has ever thought of before. Maybe they do have some new insight, but these old arguments aren’t that insight. Before one can think of new arguments, it helps to know the old arguments.

Then there are the Christians who do know the old arguments and try to dress them up as something new. “Maybe if we throw in some scientific terms we can slip the old First Cause argument through.” This is a popular strategy for some of the more academic minded Christians. Throwing in terms like “quantum physics” doesn’t magically make the First Cause argument valid again and asking about who designed the laws of physics doesn’t reinvent the Argument by Design.

So before a Christian can even entertain the possibility that God might not be true, he or she has to think of God as something separate from Truth. They have to realize that God is simply a proposition like any other claim.

Then, the Christian has to make a choice; are they more committed to the truth or to their God? It doesn’t even matter if to the Christian this is just a hypothetical question, as long as they can understand that it is a valid question and that God is not a synonym for Truth. It is only then that a Christian can even consider the possibility that God might be false.

Once they choose their loyalty, then the real fun can begin. Most Christians will go with Truth. Then they will tell you that while they value truth above God, God is true so they got it covered. This is where an atheist can bring up Anselm’s definition of God (that which nothing greater could be conceived). The Christian has put Truth above God and so God is no longer God. Also, now that the Christian acknowledges that Truth is more important than God, the atheist can start showing the flaws in the God of the Bible and in the evidence against the Bible.

If the Christian claims that their loyalty is to God above the Truth, then they have a whole new set of problems. Such a claim shows insecurity on the part of the Christian. It shows that they Christian doesn’t really care if God is true or not and therefore implies that they don’t really believe God is true or at the very least are just not secure in that view. This view implies that as long as God is useful, it doesn’t matter if he is true or not.

This view also opens up the door to make any claim and call it true because truth doesn’t really matter. All that really matters to the Christian in this case is the dogmatic belief in their God whether it is true or not. In other words, the Christian has admitted to being in a cult.

Earlier today I wrote an article of the Examiner page talking about Elena Kagan’s record on church/state issues. It is mixed and she has a reputation of being a moderate. It is still too early to tell whether or not we as a community ought to support her. Many atheists will not support her simply because of politics. Believe it or not there are actually right wing Republican atheists who will not support any nominee Obama puts forward.

But for the more liberal minded atheists (which is most of us), I still a not convinced she is the right choice. It seems that Obama just wants the Republicans to vote for his pick so he can pat himself on the back for being bi-partisan.

As I wrote in the Examiner article, I fear she would reverse Judge Crabb’s position on the National Day of Prayer and rule against us on other issues of separation of church and state.

Please weigh in and let’s have the discussion.

In Plato’s dialog Euthyphro, Socrates has a conversation with a young lawyer named Euthyphro who is about to prosecute his own father. Socrates decides that he would like to learn more about morality, so he asks the young Euthyphro about the topic. The dialog is summed up by a simple question that Socrates asks Euthyphro. “Is something pious (or good) because the Gods say so or do the Gods say so because it is pious (or good)?”

The significance of this question is whether or not God is the creator of morality or merely an arbiter of morality. If God is the creator of morality, then if God were to change his mind, morality would change with his opinion. This would basically mean that morality is relative to God’s whim merely. So the reason why murder is morally wrong has nothing to do with creating a safe and functional society, not harming other people, or any other rational justification. The only reason why murder would be morally wrong would be because God says so. This also means that anything that God decides is immoral would be so. Morality becomes completely arbitrary. God could decide that the color red was immoral and it would be the case.

If God simply knows what is moral better than we do and so he tells us what is good because of his superior knowledge, then it could be argued that we don’t really need God. We can figure out what is moral without God’s guidance. Plus, Christians don’t like the idea that God must then be subject to the laws of morality just like we are.

So where does hat leave us? For atheists this isn’t a problem at all. God neither creates nor interprets morality. Morality is a human construct to insure individual freedom, happiness, and security. We have empathy which allows us to put ourselves in the place of others. This translates to compassion and kindness. It is this combination of social and biological conditions which give rise to morality.

For the Christian, Euthyphro remains unanswered. Either morality has no rhyme or reason, relativistic to God’s whims, subjective to his will purely, and is completely arbitrary or God is relegated to the status of a middleman and even God’s actions can be judged by the same moral standards as our own in which case, God (as described in the Bible) has a lot to answer for.