Tag Archives: atheism

Philosophy, Reason, Religion

Answers to “10 Questions For Every Atheist”

Leave a comment

It appears that the website Today Christian has come up with a list of questions that “Atheist Cannot Truly and Honestly REALLY ANSWER!” One reason an atheist might find it hard to answer these questions is because there is not a comment section. Beyond that, these are fairly easy to answer.

1. How Did You Become an Atheist?

This has to do with two things that happened around the same time in my life. When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I became very interested in skepticism. I started to question everything I had believed before and started realizing that there was no evidence for much of what I believed (at this time I was a believer of Bigfoot, Atlantis, Aliens, etc…). At that same time I met someone, a classmate, who identified as an atheist. Until then, I actually never knew that was an option, I thought everyone in the world believed that a god(s) existed. After that, I applied my skeptical toolkit to the idea of a god and realised that it, like much of the other things I believed in, had no evidence to support it.

2. What happens when we die?

Personally, I am donating my body to science. I want my bones to be used by future anatomists to learn the wonders of the human skeleton. However, I feel this question has more philosophical connotations about an afterlife. When I was in high school, one of my friends use to always answer this question with, “Do you remember what life was like before you were born? Why do you think it will be different after you die?” I feel that is a good enough answer until one is able to provide evidence that there is an afterlife.

3. What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a HELL!

I just want to point out that by asking three questions here, our author is actually asking more than ten questions.

Well, if I go to hell, I hope I burn well.

All jokes aside, there is no reason to think that such a thing as heaven or hell exists in the first place. Beyond that, this question presupposes that the author’s version of heaven and hell are the only options to me being wrong, which is not the case. There is nothing to suggest that the Christian heaven and hell is correct. A Christian’s idea of an afterlife is just as likely to be correct as any other religion’s ideas of an afterlife. There is no reason to believe this is a dichotomy. Who knows, perhaps there is an afterlife, but it is only enjoyed by those that were truly curious enough to ask questions. The fear of hell or the reward of heaven is not a good reason to believe in something.

4. Without God, where do you get your morality from?

I get my morals from the same place the author of these questions does; Society. There is nothing to suggest that morals are anything more than our shared agreement of how we should act. The good thing about this is that our moral arc has been bending to a far more just and fair society for everyone in the past few decades. One can only hope that trend continues.

5. If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?

This question makes no sense, seeing as how the author already believes there is a god, yet rape and murder happen all the time. The question is better turned around on the author and asked, “If there is a (loving and just) god, why is there rape and murder?”

However, to answer the question, philosophically, yes. We can do whatever we want (including rape and murder). Yet, since we live in societies, and societies shape our morals and have laws, technically, we cannot do whatever we want. There are real world consequences for our actions.

Beyond that, good deeds should be their own reward. This seems to go back to question three and the authors carrot/stick beliefs about an afterlife.

6. If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning?

I make my own meaning in life. Even if there was a god(s), this would still be true.

7. Where did the universe come from?

I honestly do not know that. From my limited understanding of cosmology; the energy that makes up our universe is eternal. However, at some point in the past that energy started the universe as we know it now. The thing is, just because I do not know the answer to this question, does not mean I will pretend to have an answer. That is what theists do when they say GodDidIt to questions like this.

8. What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?

Again, without evidence, miracles are just claims. People today claim to have connections with aliens and see them all the time. There is just as much evidence (that is to say zero) to back their stories as there is for the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus or say they saw him or angels. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

9. What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris?

I actually know very little about Harris. He seems to have a weird “No True Muslim” argument. Beyond that, I am actually not familiar with his work at all.

Dawkins is a wonderful biologist and communicator of evolutionary theory. If someone asked me for one book about evolution, I would say The Blind Watchmaker. However, I have read The God Delusion and have to say I was unimpressed. I read both of those books well after I had a great understanding of evolution and was an atheist, thus he did not influence me much in either of those aspects.

Hitchens is in my top ten favorite persons list. Out of the Four Horsemen, I found him the most entertaining and he was probably the only one that influenced me as a young atheist, since I would watch clips of him after I became an atheist in 8th grade. I still often go back and watch clips or whole debates of Hitchens. I read God is not Great well after I was an atheist, but I think it is good and does a much better job than The God Delusion at making a case for atheism.

However, I just want to point out that I was far more influenced by skeptics and scientists on this issue, than any atheistic writers. My influences trace back far more to Randi, Shermer, Bakker, Tyson, and the Leaky clan.

10. If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?

Religion is not synonymous with belief in a god(s). Gods (and other supernatural entities) were created to answer questions to things that people did not know. Religions were a way to worship those things and try to gain their favor by doing rituals in the hopes it would please them. Religions were also part of the government and culture of most societies. That means in many cases, if you were not apart of that religion, you were kicked out of that society or killed. It is actually a fairly recent thing to separate religion from government. One can be religious and not believe in deities. One can also believe in deities and not have a religion. That is why people can say things like, “I am spiritual, but not religious” or “I am culturally Catholic/Jewish.” Beyond that, not all religions are the same, nor are the gods they worship. Thus, what was the point of this question?

Hat tip to Heina Dadabhoy for showing me these questions first.

Culture, Education, Events, History, Politics, Religion

Why Atheism Should Be Taught In Religious Studies

Leave a comment

This week we had news that secular views being left out of GSCE Religious Studies was a mistake. Of course this has got some conservative commentators backs up. Why should we teach non-religion in classes about religion? To answer that first we should ask why we are teaching children about religions in the first place. Clearly, or at least hopefully we don’t teach Religious Studies in order that children can decide which is the right one, or be told what to believe. We do it to encourage harmony and understanding. So we don’t remain ignorant and all become massive Islamophobes (although I’m not sure that is working out so well).

In light of this, it is very important to educate people about those who have no religion at all. To complete our set of understanding. No one is advocating that Religious Studies classes teach kids that God is imaginary, just that people are made aware of what atheists are all about and why. To neglect this is to leave people open to all sorts of nonsense that gets said about atheists by the religious. That atheists have no morals for example, or that atheists believe in nothing. The only way to counter such misinformation is to educate people. If Religious Studies has a purpose at all, it is to nurture understanding between faiths and beyond to the irreligious. Otherwise there is really no use in teaching it.

I also think that it should not be called Religious Studies, but rather Philosophy and Ethics or some more inclusive title. Again not to marginalize religion, but to encourage an understanding of world views that extend beyond religion and the broader context in which religions and philosophies interplay and relate to each other. Just teaching kids what each different religion believes is not truly insightful. It would serve us all well to learn about the cultural context in which these beliefs evolved. It doesn’t undermine belief in Christianity to learn about Jewish Messianism and the Roman occupation of Judea (and subsequent corruption or perceived corruption of the Jewish temple authorities), but it surely teaches us something about humanity, our history and how we cope with change. We would all do better if we were educated on all different kinds of Philosophies and their cultural and historical heritage, a vital part of that is those who have rejected religious belief in favour of a rational and empirical world view.

This is not a case of sneering liberals wanting to turn your children into God-hating communists. Its about giving the next generation the best possible understanding of what it is to be human, our struggles, and cultural heritage in the hope that it will iron out any prejudice and tribalism. Really, including atheism in Religious Studies should be the first in a step towards teaching a broader humanities subject. Not because we want to remove religion from your children’s lives, but because religion doesn’t have the monopoly on things humans believe and should therefore only comprise a part of their education on the subject.

UPDATE 04/12/2015 – It has been pointed out to me that I was perhaps unclear about my usage of the term atheism. To be clear I do refer to the wider definition that is probably better defined as Secular Humanism that simply atheism—which could apply to religions such as Buddhism. So whenever I use the term atheism in the context of it being taught as part of a Religious Studies syllabus, I mean Secular Humanist views, not just lack of belief in God.

Religion, YouTube

Misunderstandings about Atheism

10 Comments

I recently saw an interview with David Mitchell. One topic discussed was his stance on religion. Here’s what he said:

1) Up until 0:30, it’s rather uninteresting: So he’s not an atheist, he’s an agnostic. I’d point out that he’s wrong, he’s an agnostic atheist, but that’s not a huge problem.

 

I’ve mentioned it a few times all over the forum, so I won’t go into it here, but “agnostic” is a qualifier about the position of God, it’s not a position in and of itself. You can be an agnostic about everything, aka. claiming that nothing is knowable, but you can’t purely be an agnostic about whether or not God exists: If your life does not include a God or gods, then you’re an atheist.

 

2) The first real problem I have is between 0:30-0:40. David says that he “wants there to be an all-powerful, benevolent God”. That’s fine, lots of atheists want that. In fact, I’ll use two definitions now:

An atheist is a person whose world view does not contain a God or gods.

An anti-theist is a person whose world view does not contain a God or gods, sees both organized religion (i.e. churches) and religion itself (i.e. the belief in a God) as something detrimental. Such a person would not like for there to be a God.

 

Christopher Hitchens famously said:

Such a person [an atheist] might very well say that he wished it were true [the existence of a god]. I know some atheists who say, ‘Well, I wish I could believe it. I just can’t. There’s not enough evidence for it’ … I say I’m an anti-theist because I think it’d be rather awful if it was true … you would never have a waking or sleeping moment where you weren’t being watched, and controlled, and supervised by some celestial entity from conception until, well, not even until your death because it’s only after death when the real fun begins, isn’t it? It’d be like living in North Korea.”

This is what I understand anti-theism to be: Absolute opposition to both organized religion and the hope of an afterlife. I’ll be absolutely clear: I agree with Christopher Hitchens that any god yet proposed* would be ghastly and I seriously hope that there is no god.

 

*That needs extra clarification as well: The gods of ancient Greece do not count as gods in this context. They are basically humans with super-powers, not gods. If they do count as gods, then I’d have no problem with them, they’re awesome.
What I do have a problem with is the bogus claim that a god can be both all-powerful and all-loving and that there can be a heaven.

3) The next problem I have is between 0:45-1:01.

David says that there are, and I have to be fair here, “some atheists” who want to tear the comfort of religion away from people. While it may be true that there are some people who want to do that, that’s not the position of the vast majority of atheists. Or anti-theists, for that matter.

Instead, most atheists I have talked with are perfectly happy to let people pray in their own homes or even in churches as long as religious stupidity (genital mutilation, fanaticism, religiously motivated killings, opposition to homosexual marriage, etc.) stays within the confines of their own homes or even churches. Another famous Christopher Hitchens quote goes as follows: “What about the most important minority in the history of the world? … We have to be insulted and outraged every day by what we see and what we read. By slaughter and murder. Slaughter and murder and barbarism and insult and superstitious nonsense.”

If religion and the insanity associated with religion wasn’t shoved down our collective throats, I think few people would have a problem with religion. As it stands however, I see it as my duty to stand up to it.

 

4) The last problem I have is between 1:25-1:35. David says (roughly) that “the idea that you take away one of the excuses, that the killing will suddenly stop happening is absurd.”

Quite right, that is an absurd proposition. That’s why I’ve never seen anyone make it. There is one argument put forward by Christopher Hitchens that there would have been peace long ago in Northern Ireland if there had been no religion, but I think that’s wrong. There certainly might have been a better chance, but I think the struggle would have been largely political instead of largely religious.

However, things like 9/11 would undoubtedly never have happened. If not for the crazy idea that you get rewarded for your death in an afterlife, nobody would have strapped a bomb to themselves and blown themselves up. It’s ridiculous.

Much of the opposition against evolution would be gone, a good deal of anti-science would simply vanish. Genital mutilation would be gone almost entirely. Abortion clinics would be largely safe. And so on and so forth. A lot would definitely change and the way David explains it is a simple misrepresentation.

I hope this clears up some of the misunderstandings about what atheism is and what atheists believe. There will be, I hope, a fair amount of discussion on this issue.
Some people may disagree with the distinction of atheism and anti-theism, nor atheism and agnosticism.
Some people may disagree with the notion that a god is by definition a bad thing.
Some people may disagree that religion interferes too much.
Some people may disagree that the things I listed under 4) will go away if religion were to disappear.

Ah well…

Culture, Literature, Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Science, YouTube

Critique Of Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

15 Comments

On the Internet, I have encountered a prominent Philosopher of Religion called Alvin Plantinga who was once described by Time Magazine as a America’s leading orthodoxist Protestant Philosopher of God. He has made many anti-naturalistic arguments and theistic arguments in the past, has engaged in Public Discourse with atheists, rather like William Lane Craig. And also, William Lane Craig seems to be a fan of Plantinga’s misguided “Reformed Epistemology”. But that’s another story altogether. In our particular case, I intend to refute the various fallacious absurdities of Alvin Plantinga’s “Evolutionary Argument Against [Metaphysical] Naturalism”. Or rather more specifically, I will be critiquing all six parts together of a six-part series of lectures on YouTube. It is a talk by Plantinga entitled “An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism”. —see here. I may not be able to address every point as meticulously as I would like to, but I will give it a fair shot. Of course, it is doubtful that he has not simply ignored these criticisms if they have already been made in the past. Oh well… also, for expediency, here is an overview of Plantinga from Wikipedia. You will notice that like William Lane Craig, he is a Christian apologist, and has authored such books as God and Other Minds, and has even written a book entirely dedicated to the argument he presents in this 60 minute lecture. 🙂

Continue reading Critique Of Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism →

History, Philosophy, Politics, Reason, Religion

Pope in-fallacy

10 Comments

A recent speech by the current Pope, in Britain, where he links atheism and Nazism has caused some controversy in the blogosphere and in our own forums. The Pope spoke of “a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society’ and went on to express concerns over “aggressive forms of secularism’. This is such a common trope in debates that I wanted to take an entire blog post to explain what I see as the gaping flaw in this form of argument. What I want to discuss is the way atheism and theism should be properly related to religion and ideology and why it is incorrect to set up atheism as the counter-position to religion.

Atheism, at its most inclusive, describes anyone who has no belief in gods. From even this basic understanding, it is remarkably difficult to see how atheism could be expected to produce any action from an individual atheist. There is no causal line from the absence of a single belief to any other belief or action, be it good or bad. Even explicit atheism (the denial of gods) does not imply any further belief or action. If we say this for atheism, in order to be consistent, we must also say this for theism. Theism (the belief in gods), as a single belief, does not entail any other beliefs or actions by the individual theist. A theist may believe in the philosopher’s god, a non-interventionist god, Allah, the trinity, or a whole pantheon of pagan gods. But even these basic beliefs about the nature of gods are additional to the initial claim of theism, not derived from it. Taking the example of the Thirty Years war, the Pope would have us blame theism for the conflict. However, given both sides of the conflict were theists this conclusion makes little sense. The true dividing factor was the different religions, Catholicism and Protestantism, which each side maintained. My contention is that while atheism and theism are blameless in the great atrocities of history, ideology and religion should be held to account.

Continue reading Pope in-fallacy →

YouTube

Multiple Conversions – The quest for Sanity and Security.

17 Comments

The saga that is TheWoodsOfJordan on YouTube has come to a temporary lull with his announced conversion and temporary leave of absence from said site.

He has been a controversial character since he first came onto the YT scene.

Originally preaching a message generated by an internal Christ that was clearly representative of his internal demons he was ridiculed and loathed by many.

Recently he announced his deconversion from Christianity to Atheism. Just the other day he posted a video.

Continue reading Multiple Conversions – The quest for Sanity and Security. →

Culture, News, Philosophy, Reason, Religion

Moral Castles Made Of Sand

2 Comments

Here’s a riddle for you.*

Is it better to have flexible, socially contextual morals that may dip below what many people view as laudable behaviour as a result of free will and personal choice . . . or is it better to have a uniformly high moral standard followed, in part or even in whole, as a result of fearing the perceived consequences of not following it?

Of course, you might say that I’ve used Wordification to bias the issue somewhat – and because I have no higher power to feel accountable to I’m perfectly happy to lie, and say that I didn’t bias the point in the slightest.

The question, I suppose, is how worthy or altruistic can a high moral standard be truly taken to be when it’s prescribed rather than acquired? It becomes little more than Utilitarianism if your moral compass is constantly aware that behaving immorally will result in hell, or a few lost brownie-heaven points from God. You’re not acting morally, you’re just protecting your own skin – which is exactly what I would do, of course.

Continue reading Moral Castles Made Of Sand →

Philosophy, Religion

The Argument for Atheism from Christianity

23 Comments

D1. A proposition is either true or false.
D2. To hold to a proposition is to hold that the 1) proposition is true and to hold that 2) holding the proposition does not cause the truth of the proposition.
D3. When X is a proposition, the reason for proposition X is a proposition which is true and but for it, X would be false.
D4. When X is a proposition, the faith in a proposition X is to hold a proposition without reason.
D5. A Christian is one who has faith that God exists.
D6. An atheist is one that holds that one does not have reason to hold that God exists.

P1. It is the case that one holds that God exists or it is not the case that one holds that God exists.
P2. If it is the case that one holds that God exists, then it is the case that one has reason to hold that God exists or it is not the case that one has reason to hold that God exists.
P3. If it is the case that one holds that God exists and it is the case that one has reason to hold that God exists, then it is not the case that one has faith that God exists.
P4. If it is the case that one holds that God exists and it is the not the case that one has reason to hold that God exists, then it is the case that one has faith that God exists.

C1. Given D5 and P3, it is the case that a Christian holds that one does not have reason to hold that God exists.
C2. Given C1 and D6, both Christians and atheists hold that one does not have reason to hold that God exists.

Simplified Version

A Christian is one who has faith that God exists and because he has faith, he holds that one doesn’t have reasons to believe that God exists. Likewise, an atheists holds that one doesn’t have reasons to believe that God exists. It is somehow absurd, therefore, for a Christian to argue that one ought not be an atheist.

Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Science

The Qur’an . . ? Really?

9 Comments

The day I’ve had.

Cold, so very bitterly cold. Anyone who’s been any closer to outside than their own bedroom knows it’s been cold enough to freeze the smile of a Catholic priest in an orphanage. Cold enough to make people who should know better wear beanies. You get what I’m saying; coldness.

Walking down Kilburn high road (note to foreign types; Kilburn high road is a shopping street in London that contains a pub called The Cock, and this is all you need to know) I noticed a couple of trestle tables with brightly coloured pamphlets. A few people stood behind these tables, picking up a sheet from the ground. Initially I thought they’d been breakdancing, poppin’ some sweet moves in the grindstreet dustcore scene, yo.

Nope. Muslims! Continue reading The Qur’an . . ? Really? →

Culture, Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Science

If Science Is A Conspiracy, Why Does This Computer Work? And Other Stories

11 Comments

Believers.

Why can’t I just leave them alone, eh? Why can’t I keep my mouth shut?

Ok . . . because some of them think I’m going to hell, think I have no morals, and think my life is meaningless until I open my heart/wallet to Jesus/Allah. I find that fundamentally impolite. It’s hard to say who casts the first stone in these cases, but since I tend not to take issue with the fuzzy sort of believers – y’know, the nice ones who believe in love and redemption rather than bigotry and scientific wank – I only ever attack someone as a result of something they’ve said.

Then the issue was raised of “who’s to say who is right? Creationists take things on faith, atheists take things on scientific proof. Who’s right?”

It’s generally about this point that my brains start to drop out of my ears. Science is right. It has even been suggested to me that, since I haven’t analysed the data myself, scientists are feeding everyone bullshit.

Two words. Peer review.

Continue reading If Science Is A Conspiracy, Why Does This Computer Work? And Other Stories →