I am an atheist. And, generally, I’m easygoing. I’m calm, chill, and for those that know me personally, it would be difficult to say I’m an angry, bitter person. This fact stands in opposition to the way I come off on both Facebook and the blog here. I’ve been accused of being angry. And there’s a pretty straightforward reason for that:
I am.
I’m angry at being duped by religion, personally. I’m angry at the harm it caused me. And now, on behalf of myself, and others who have the intellectual honesty to see the detriments of religion, I fight it. I war and rail and discuss and scream against it. I have legitimate greviances against religion. There are hours and days and moments of my life I spent learning and examining the intricacies of the scripture beyond a literary understanding, or a cultural understanding, but so that I would assure my place in Heaven. There are verses memorized, which lie as dormant serpents in my mind, ready to be applied, for by (Psalm 119:11) hiding the word in your heart you may not sin against the Lord. There were friendships, lives, adventures, maturation, endeavors I will never know because of the time I wasted. Sure, there were opportunities to be gained, but many times these opportunities were stifled.
I’m angry for others that are being hurt. I’m angry that children are indoctrinated to mythology without a choice. I’m angry that people are dying because of faith healing. And that is what makes me right in my anger. I’m angry because I care about my fellow humans, not because I have no joy or passion or atheism leads to nihilism. I’m angry because I have the moral compunction to want to fight injustice when I see it perpetuated by those in power upon those without the intellectual capability or disposition to realize their indoctrination into mental slavery.
And so I am angry. And I am angry that because of my legitimate grievances with a flawed fictional system, people think I am bitter or unhappy, or that something is flawed in atheism. So what if atheists are angry? That doesn’t make it wrong. I’m sure the witches strapped to wood in New England a few centuries ago were angry, or the ones burned alive today in Africa. This makes the fact that witchcraft is fantasy and does not exist no less valid. I’m angry at religious people who distance themselves from people like the Westboro baptist Church, Harold Camping, or Anders Breivik, in a religion that values the individual revelation of the holy spirit, that has verses that can be swung any sort of way, instead of taking a step back and realizing that when you are interpreting a 2000+ year old document with contradictions and inconsistencies, merged with invisible beings and inaudible voices for your sense of truth, it presents a problem.
Greta Christina, who is coming to visit us here at USC in the spring, summarizes nicely. If you want to actually educate yourself on why atheists are rightly angry, take a look at this video. (NSFW Language)
It’s me again! You can’t get rid of me.
You have the right to be angry. Hell, when I hear about people who did nothing but pray their cancer would get better, it makes ME angry too. You have the right to believe what you want and post what you what.
But you’re not going to get anywhere with condescension.
“50 years from now, when our generation is in the history books, do you want to be on the side of bigotry, ignorance, and fundamental opposition to the progression of our society, or do you want to be a voice of reason in the cacophony of lies?”
Now, when I commented on this (in a rather nasty way), you said you’d never even mentioned religion in that quote. But come on, we all know what you were talking about, because nearly everything you post on Facebook has to do with your newfound atheism. And hey, you can post whatever you want, right? And if any of your religious friends disagree with it, well, it must be because they’re a bunch of bigoted idiots who are against progression.
Even in this latest post, you continue to make extremely bold claims: “And I am angry that because of my legitimate grievances with a flawed fictional system, people think I am bitter or unhappy, or that something is flawed in atheism.”
Yes, people tend to think you’re bitter or unhappy when you devote most of your online presence to calling people bigots, idiots, and telling them that what they believe in is in fact a fictional story. It really turns people off when you call their beliefs “mythology.”
By the way, science has PLENTY of contradictions and inconsistencies. Just look at cell phones. First they cause cancer, then they don’t, then they’re added to the list of possible carcinogens. Then some scientists argue that the studies showing cell phones don’t cause cancer were not broad enough or were funded by the cell phone companies themselves, who had a vested interest in proving that cell phones are not dangerous. Are you naive enough to think that science has not been swayed at all by money, politics and major corporations? Why do some groups say high fructose corn syrup is a key player in obesity, yet we see commercials telling us that HFCS is just like any other sugar?
Science is inconsistent and contradicts itself, yet you never question its validity. The Bible, however, is apparently not allowed to be inconsistent or contradictory at all. Tobacco companies used “science” to “prove” cigarettes weren’t harmful, even though they were well aware that they were and even though today the idea that cigarettes are safe is laughable. But you say the Bible cannot be accurate because undesirable parts were taken out to better conform to the Christian message. Hmm, sounds like science is guilty of the same.
I’m taking a step back, at the moment, transferring domains, and starting a new approach, that is hopefully more conversational. My deconversion had equal parts “holy crap this is insulting” and thought out reasoned answers.
As far a science, the thing about inconsistencies in science, that gives it its power, is it can admit when it’s wrong. It was wrong about cell-phones, it was wrong about the speed of light. It was wrong about the size of the earth. But it changes when evidence is presented. Darwin’s theories of evolution were accepted by scientists extremely quickly because of the massive body of evidence that proved the theory.
Religion, at least the major ones, doesn’t change. Catholicism and Mormon have acting prophets that can alter scripture, but at the end of the day, the meat of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism don’t change because their scripture doesn’t change. When facing the moral problem of slavery, religion was forced to change, kicking and screaming. When faced with the women’s rights movement, it was pulled along by the pain of many. Because the verse 2 Timothy 2:12 doesn’t change, regardless of the social momemntum behind it.
We face it today with the gay rights movement, and religion is still pulled, kicking and screaming, along the way. Science, and our morals, are guilty, but at least in the face of evidence science is willing to change its mind.
Did you check out the video on morality I posted for you?
Yes, I did watch the video. I agreed with most of it. I agree that we cannot base what we find to be moral on what is legislated or by what is the majority opinion. I also agree that as we uncover the reasoning by certain phenomena we can eradicate a faulty blame system that once blamed possessed children for famine and whatnot, and that behaviors that cause no intrinsic harm, like homosexuality, should not be ruled to be immoral.
I once had a friend who cheated on his girlfriend constantly. He justified it by saying that there was no way she’d ever find out and therefore no harm could be caused. He was free to spread his DNA to as many women as he liked, and his unsuspecting girlfriend wouldn’t know the difference. She never found out, and they’re still together. It was a well-reasoned and logical argument. It made sense. Both parties were happy: he got to fulfill his sexual desires without repercussion and she had a seemingly caring, loyal boyfriend.
I remember telling him that what he was doing was wrong. It just *was.* He asked me over and over what made it wrong, because no one was being hurt. He even said it strengthened his relationship because once his urges were taken care of he could be a better boyfriend. I argued that he could be putting her health at risk, and he assured me that he took the utmost precaution in his endeavors. Besides, his behavior could be justified by biology, because it makes sense for a man to produce as many children as possible with different women, as that would ensure varied sets of DNA. But even when looking at the situation from a logical perspective and taking into account that no one was being hurt, it was still wrong.
If I understood the video correctly, its message was that religion is not needed to live morally because anything that is moral can also be discovered by rational thinking which benefits society. In the above situation, I believe my friend acted very rationally, but he did not act morally.
You have mentioned that the Bible cannot be true because it talks about supernatural events, and those are neither verifiable or repeatable. But nothing in the past is verifiable or repeatable. I listen to a pastor who likened this prejudice against the supernatural to those who don’t believe the Holocaust existed. See, you say the supernatural is not possible because you’ve never seen it, science can’t replicate it, and as far as you know, it’s never happened. It’s kind of like someone saying they don’t believe the Holocaust happened because there’s no possible way one man convinced a nation to enslave and eventually kill six millions Jews. I’ve never seen such hatred, it hasn’t happened since then, so therefore it isn’t possible, and I don’t care what evidence you provide because I simply don’t believe it happened.
Science deals with the tangible word around us and religion deals with the supernatural, and therefore religion is not subject to science, because science can neither prove or disprove the supernatural.
You say that the inconsistencies in science give it power, but I don’t think that’s the case. Science still doesn’t know know if cell phones cause cancer or not; there is no power in that, only uncertainty and worry. You say that religion dragged its feet when it came to social progression, but science did as well. There were many scientists who tried to prove that racism was justified, like Samuel George Morton, who “proved” that blacks had smaller skulls and were less intelligent than whites.
I’m really going all over the place with this, and I apologize for that, but the point I’m trying to make is that there is so much about our existence and about this world that we can’t explain, or can’t fully explain, or even if we do have an explanation, it might not be the correct one.
So, in sum, I think your anger won’t do you a lot of good, because for every child that is “indoctrinated into mythology” there is a person, rational and educated, who welcomes science but admits that there is an element of human life that cannot be explained. The debate between an atheist and a theist always boils down to the same thing: The atheist says that everything has a scientific, reasoned and logical explanation, and the theist says, No it doesn’t.
*uncover the reasoning BEHIND certain phenomena
There are a myriad of reasons he was wrong for doing that. Psychologically, though his girlfriend never found out, there is an element of bonding that he is forgoing by engaging in infidelity. He is harming her, whether he thought he was or not. He sounds like someone who needs a swinger girlfriend to be able to be honest and truly happy. There is also always the possibility that she would find out, and from what i know about girls, they have an uncanny ability to sniff out infidelity. However, from my readings of evolutionary psychology and my knowledge of history, polygamy was routinely practice, and today’s “swinger” couples follow a similar mold. That said, his lying behind her back are moral grounds for identifying the immorality of his actions.
“It just *was*”
The bible tells us of many things that are just wrong. For example, a woman divorcing her husband for any reason is wrong. the husband can of course divorce in the case of infidelity. But in the case of abuse, rape, cheating, mental abuse, the woman has no recourse. There’s also that pesky verse that says that women should never teach, and should never speak unless spoken to. Would you really prefer the absolute system laid out in the bible, where you don’t have to, you know, think of reasons why things are wrong? Because those are really the only choices. By making decisions like ‘those laws are stupid and old,’ you are ignoring the bible and applying your own rational mind to morality, thus nullifying the need for the bible anyways. You don’t need the bible to be moral, if you’ve ever read any bible verse ever and thought that it need no longer apply. You used your own brain; no god required.
“I listen to a pastor who likened this prejudice against the supernatural to those who don’t believe the Holocaust existed.”
I’m going to be frank: that pastor is evil, and his comparison of the fiction of jesus to the holocaust, his willingness to put the horrors of 6 million of his fellow humans on the same worthless footing of that of the gospels, to even hint that it did not happen, is such a sin of humanity that it makes me feel like vomiting. Who is this man that would debauch himself to such a sleazy scare tactic, using emotional manipulation and lies to achieve his selfish ends? I would like to meet him to tell him how worthless as a human he is.
The holocaust contained no nazis flying around in the sky, rising from the dead, curing the sight of the blind. There are pictures, graves, bones, eyewitness testimonals, shoes, museums, videos, documents, abandoned buildings, and recordings, a myriad of sources, all pointing to the exact same thing happening.
The gospels are 3rd hand heresay accounts (which means someone heard it from someone who heard it from someone who made it up) written 70 and 90 years after the time they were supposedly reporting on. It would be as though I wrote (today) a report on the holocaust that said hitler was a deity and was cleansing the world of evil by killing russians, and after killing 500,000 he was thwarted by an alien vessel from another planet came in and shot laser beams to kill hitler, but then hitler rose from the dead and flew up into the sky. Then two other accounts that were based on my accounts were written 20 years latere (matthew and luke) said that it was not russians he was killing, but Scottish men who like haggis. Also that hitler was born of a virgin and was born in atlantis (keep in mind Nazareth did not exist). But the 3rd account said that there were 1,000,000 africans killed by hitler, but there was no alien ship. But hitler died of natural causes and then rose from the dead.
Even when all the evidence points that hitler was an evil man that killed 6 million jews and died when he committed suicide. Thats what the gospels teach; that there was a man who lived supernaturally, was born of a virgin (at two different points in history 10 years apart), grew up in a town that didn’t exist, interacted with up to 150,000 people at a time, healed lepers, blind men, was crucified after a trial by pointius pilate (with no record of said trial), and flew up to heaven (on 2 different days), and then his followers could suddenly speak in other languages and do the same things he did (no evidence for this either).
If you’re willing to not believe the story about hitler being zapped by aliens, why are you willing to believe something that has less credibility? at least we know hitler existed. Plus i’m sure your pastor didn’t mention that Hitler was a Christian and felt he was doing God’s Will, carrying out what the voice in his head told him to do.
Yes there are things we can’t explain, but saying “God Dunnit” is tantamount to saying “I love being ignorant and not figuring things out!” Just because we don’t know something doesn’t mean we automatically fill god in with the blank. God doesn’t cause ligning, hail, there wasn’t a worldwide flood, the universe wasn’t formed in 7 days, Israel was never a great nation, solomon didn’t have 700 wives and concubines.
“Science deals with the tangible word around us and religion deals with the supernatural, and therefore religion is not subject to science, because science can neither prove or disprove the supernatural.”
When religion makes a testable claim, it deals with science. “Jesus rose from the dead” is a scientific claim, and if it can’t be verified scientifically, there’s no reason to believe it happened. Furthermore there’s no reason to believe it happened because we have such shoddy accounts of it happening. There’s just as much reason to believe that as to believe that mohammad was visited by an angel, that L. Ron Hubbard received revelation about the Thetans, that Achilles was dipped in the river styx and cannot be harmed, or that saint nicholas flies around on a sleigh pulled by magical reindeer. After all, these are supernatural claims that have textual sources. They must be true! science cannot answer these claims because they deal with supernatural.
Look. It’s like me saying that Elvis is still alive. That’s a claim about reality, but if i’m pressed and start saying its a supernatural claim, and science and history have no bearing on it, it becomes absurd. Can you prove elvis isn’t alive? YES. We can go to his grave, look at pictures, etc.. But there’s no reason to believe it’s true, besides wishful thinking and wanting it to be true.
Same with Achilles, Santa, Thetans, and Jesus. There’s no good reason to believe it’s true. No amount of textual validation will make it true, and looking at the number of stories about santa, there’s more proof for him than for Jesus, and no amount of yelling ‘its supernatural!’ will make the fact that the mythological jesus didn’t exist any more true.
I see what you’re saying. I really, really do. In fact, I can’t even come up with a valid explanation as to why I believe in God and not Santa, when by my own reasoning it can be said that the latter exists.
So I’ve got to draw the line here, as much as I love arguing and as much as I wholeheartedly disagree with you. Because I cannot seem to substantiate my claims as well as you can, and because my father had a great saying :”It’s better to be thought a fool than to speak and be proven one.”
I respect you a lot, because you seem to know every Bible story, every philosopher, every book ever authored on atheism. Your reasoning can run circles around my faith. Even though I still stand behind everything I’ve said on here, I can’t continue to rationally argue for something that is not always rational. So I must accept the fact that you’re an atheist, I am not, and neither one of us will probably ever see eye to eye. I must accept that if I’m to continue to be a Christian, there will always be people who think my beliefs are downright moronic. There will always be people who think I’m unintelligent and unwilling to face the truth which surrounds me. When people ask me for proof I’m not going to be able to provide a study or research or duplicate what I know to be true in my heart in a lab. I just need to be ok with that. It’s not easy, because I’m an argumentative person and I’m quick to anger, and often I say things in the heat of the moment that I regret later. I’ve got to accept that what I believe in is not rational. It’s not the most logical explanation, and it never will be. It will merely be something I feel inside, something I do not question because I do not doubt it. Even though it’s entirely possible that I’m completely wrong. I’m willing to take that chance because in my heart, I know, I just *know* that I am not wasting my time.
Even if all I’m doing is deluding myself, at least the delusion has been pleasant.
I’m going to stop commenting on these posts because quite honestly, it’s stressing me out, and it’s stupid to be stressed out over a blog. I’m clearly not a rational person by nature and it takes something out of me to try and formulate arguments only to have them shot down. And you know what? I don’t even have a rebuttal half the time. I can’t even argue against you, even though I know there are fundamental and dangerous flaws in your beliefs. Even though I think atheism fosters feelings of depression, loneliness, and purposelessness, I can’t prove that those things are true. So I must just take what I know and let it be good enough for me, even though it will never be good enough for everyone.
So good luck. I’ll still keep reading as long as it doesn’t enrage me too much, and maybe, just maybe I won’t be able to restrain myself with the commenting, but I’m going to rise above it. There is not always pride in having the last word.
I know this is off topic but was wondering what your take on this would be…
I struggle with depression… I’m talking HUGE depression. Some days, esp in college, I couldn’t even get out of bed.
I’ve been raised Christian, but have taken the time to read people like Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens…
So it got me thinking.. Suicide is generally considered a sin in the Christian community (though I don’t doubt that some Christians could turn it into a virtuous thing). I’ve contemplated suicide regularly. Would it be ok if I became an atheist and committed suicide? Dawkins says something like “the universe doesn’t care.. [it has] pitiless indifference”.
I like some of the atheism stuff I’ve been reading (I kinda have to take the whole science thing on faith cause I barely passed chemistry in high school… it is really difficult for me) but it seems like Dawkins and others are pretty sure of what they are talking about.
So I guess what I’m saying is.. Is suicide ok in the atheist community? If I become an atheist (which I’m considering) I’m afraid I’ll just lose all hope and actually go through with it. How would atheists council me in my depression?
I’m not so much angered as I am deeply depressed. To each his own I guess. =P
Well the principle difference between a reasoned, scientific approach in contrast to the Christian approach is that there’s no sin nature that makes it your fault. Psychologically, there are a ton of factors that can weigh in to make you depressed, but no actual action made it deserved; the fact is we are still figuring out depression, how it works, why the brain acts funny sometimes.
Going to qualified counselors and psychiatrists, as well as investigating medication to treat depression are good first steps. As far as it being ‘okay,’ atheism itself has very little to say about suicide. Because you determine your own value in life, I personally hold life and especially consciousness in utmost respect. I think its wasteful to want an easy out, though a long time ago I struggled with a similar perspective.
I can only promise that community, professional help, and medication can all serve important roles and make it better, and if you ever feel like ending it, send me a private message and i will figure out a way to be there. I love my life, i love the feeling of life I get from certain activities, and through our continuing scientific examination of how the mind works, I think that life can be offered to you as well.
I know you were looking for a response from the author, but I’d just like to say that even though I don’t know you, I’m certain that your life has meaning. Regardless of whether you’re Christian, atheist, Buddhist or whatever, suicide would never be considered a good solution. You need professional help; you need help beyond what the content of this blog, or any blog, could offer. I’ve been depressed myself and it’s not something you can just snap out of.
Please don’t take your own life.
Here is the problem I’m having.
As a Christian I can off myself and go to heaven right? So there isn’t a big downside there.
With atheism it is a bit different. I appreciate you (lpmitch) telling me about the help I can get but here is what I am hung up on. Humanity has been around for a long time. I’m guessing depression has too. In an existence that requires the passage of time for just the right technology to come along to tell me why I’m depressed just so I can take the right pills, I feel like that just gets rid of the symptom. I don’t want to be fake happy or doped up (and don’t be one of those people that says you can still live a normal life… I fucking hate that) I want to be genuinely happy.
If I make up my own meaning in life, and I decide life is meaningless then that is ok right?
What is “happy?”
At the base level, happiness is dopamine flowing with specific amounts through the correct receptors in the brain. 200 Years ago, we didn’t know that, but we can be thankful for the advances in science that allow us to understand how things like our mind works.
If i had lost my legs, and wanted to walk, I would never have the ability to without some help. But if i had prosthetic legs added, i could walk. It still requires the use of my muscles, my mind, my will to walk and achieve that. Somewhat the same with the mind. From what i know, with a proper balance of medication (prosthetic legs) and couciling (similar to physical rehabilitation), by your own volition you can be happy, and learn to control your joy. There is no ‘demon’ or ‘sin’ that causes this, just a slight imbalance that is remedied by science thanks to neuroscience, psychology and research.
From the catholic perspective, suicide is an unforgivable sin; it shows contempt for your life and therefor for god for giving you that life. Also in the armenian view, if you die with unconfessed sin, you will head to not heaven. Meanwhile in the non-theistic worldview, you have this one life to live; regardless of how awful and worthless it may seem, it would be ludicrous to waste it by ending it prematurely. How many beautiful memories would you create in others? How much of this human society would you change? Perhaps you will never write the book you could have, about your experiences, or do the job you are suited for in the way that only you, your genetic composition, and your life experience has prepared you for.
Its okay to decide your life is meaningless, but that reflects on a very simplistic, weakly-considered view. By committing suicide you will cause others harm and pain, which is plainly immoral. You are also forgoing any possibility that it will get better, which ignores the testimonies of many others who have been depressed for large periods of their time, and yet seen success. Do you attend regular psychological council, or know anyone personally who has been through what you’ve been through and is on the other side? I urge you to pursue those routes, as I am not a qualified psychologist, and can only point you towards people who would be more helpful than I am.
OH CRAP.
I promised I wasn’t going to comment on this blog anymore but I think I’ve finally gathered my thoughts into a coherent little bunch.
Ok. So you’re on this quest to figure out what the truth of the universe is, using logic, reason, and empirical evidence, which you believe to be infallible. You believe that your worldview cannot be challenged by any theists because they simply don’t have any evidence for their claims. That sounds pretty good on paper.
Until you take a look at life and human nature and realize that beliefs are never only founded on empirical evidence. Emotion is a part of the human condition and it undeniably plays a role in nearly every decision we make. Would you marry someone you didn’t truly love because she was a good cook, a good housekeeper, or she had a great job and a great income, because those things would “logically” make your marriage eaiser? NO! You would (hopefully) marry someone because you LOVED her, even though she had flaws or habits that annoyed you, because it JUST FEELS RIGHT!
So who’s to say that a gut feeling isn’t as legitimate as a scientific study? If I decide to take a job somewhere because it feels right, does that make me wrong? Intellecutally dishonest? Does it make me stupid? Even though there may be a million better-paying, higher-ranking positions out there? You are ignorant if you think our lives are strictly rational.
I’ve read a lot about the evidence you say disproves Jesus and the Bible; Jesus never rose from the dead because that’s not verifiable nor repeatable, the gospels were written way after the supposed events happened and therefore are not accurate, the Bible has inconsistencies and contradictions, on and on it goes. But Christianity is not merely the words on a page. It’s an idea that to many, *just feels right*.
Have you ever been in love? Prove it, empirically. Prove, in a lab, that love exists. Simply saying “I just know in my heart that I’m in love,” is not good enough, because that’s not RATIONAL. There’s no EVIDENCE. While scienists can study the brain and note which regions activate or which neurotransmitters are involved, we know that love goes infinitely beyond its biological definition. You must know that. You must accept that we are guided by forces which are felt and never seen.
For most Christians, there’s an element of mystery to go along with our beliefs. Yes, there are people like you who harp on how illegitimate the Bible is and how close-minded Christian churches are. But so what? It doesn’t change the way I feel. I feel God in my life. I know he’s there. Just like you could meet a woman who is attractive, smart, funny, intelligent and wealthy and not love her, even while all your friends think you’re crazy and are dying to date her, it’s the same for religion. You can present all the evidence you want, and it won’t make me any less of a believer. And it doesn’t make you any closer to the truth.
* the chemical processes that occur in the presence of ‘love’ ‘happiness’ etc are well documented.
* “it just feels right” proves absolutely nothing, other than wishful thinking. It is words on a page believed by people.
* If i feel like i can fly, and jump off a building, no amount of me believing it will make it true.
* Just because we cannot yet quantify the ‘forces’ involved in consciousness doesn’t mean there is an infinite god who sacrificed himself to himself etc etc. It means we don’t know how consciousness works.
* Heroine addicts feel good when they inject it into their system. Every religion out there makes people feel good. This proves that people are predisposed to believe, it doesn’t mean that it’s true.
* There are thousands of physiological traits beyond the paltry list of qualities you listed that go into mate selection, that we have barely scratched the surface of. Its not the same.
I don’t want you to stop being a believer. I can’t do that; only you can. I just want to provide you the tools in case you actually want to start caring about whether what you believe is any reflection on reality or not.
Until then, you’re just being intellectually dishonest.
You may be well-read in evolution, psychology and biology, but you have no idea what life is really about, and you never will.