Some Poignant Quotes

Just a few quotes I have come across over the years of exploring freethinking/atheism material on the web. Some of them help to wrap up effective points into small packages.

"If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
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~ Thomas Szasz

"Could a being create the fifty billion galaxies, each with two hundred billion stars, then rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?
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~ Ron Patterson

"I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.
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~ Adolf Hitler (just to debunk the myth of Hitler being an atheist)

"To use the term blind faith, is to use an adjective needlessly.
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~ Julian Ruck

"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."

~ Jack Gurney – “The Ruling Class”

“...if the definition of God is unfalsifiable, the question of the existence of God is meaningless.”
~ freethoughtpedia.com

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."


~ Gene Roddenberry

Atheists: brave agnostics

There is not a big difference between an atheist and an agnostic. They both don’t know whether or not a god exists. The difference is that atheists aren’t afraid to just lump god in with all the other stuff that we don’t have evidence for. There is no evidence against fairies or leprechauns, and no one knows that they don’t exist. But you don’t believe in fairies, they aren’t real. If someone were to ask you if fairies were real, you would say “no” with a good bit of certainty. This is because in our day-to-day lives, we don’t think in terms of absolute knowledge, but rather practical knowledge. There is no evidence for fairies, so we don’t believe. It would be pointless to spend the rest of our lives debating in our heads whether or not they exist. An atheist treats God the same way. No atheist knows there is no god (even Richard Dawkins admits this), but can still say with certainty that one doesn’t exist based on a lack of evidence. So come on agnostics, make the switch! Treat god like everything else.

Similar to fairies, leprechauns, the Lochness monster, and Bigfoot, God to me seems to be a human construct. Who wrote the Bible? Humans, of course. Whether or not God guided the hands of those humans is something that Christians cannot demonstrate, so why believe it?

Being agnostic is good in that you recognize the state of your knowledge about god. You don’t know, and may never know. There’s no proof either way. These are true statements. However, they are also true for other issues such as mythological creatures. So in reality, an agnostic doesn’t believe, and is simply admitting the fragility of their knowledge. However, we shouldn’t hold God on such a pedestal. Your knowledge is fragile in every area, and you can’t be agnostic about everything. What you believe and don’t believe is all about evidence.

- Evan

The Appeal to Ignorance: religion's secret weapon

Ever since humanity’s beginnings, religion has been inserting knowledge where there previously was none. Needless to say, so far no religion has ever been correct about the workings of the universe. For thousands of years, science has advanced its understandings, theories, and methods, while religion has retreated. During the heyday of ancient Greece, no one knew what the sun actually was. This was a spiritual question back then, because not only was it a complete mystery, but the sun was the giver of all life. So the Greek religion claimed that it was Helios, the sun god, riding across the sky in his chariot. No one knew what the seasons were, so their mythology said that the goddess of summer and growth had her daughter stolen by Hades every year, causing winter, then returned to her later, reinitiating summer. Christianity is no stranger to propagating incorrect ideas that align with its theology (i.e. geocentrism, young earth, creationism), so why should we trust Christianity’s claims of today?

The only thing that Christians can do is appeal to ignorance in an attempt to increase the validity of their claims. Even a successful dismantling of evolution and the big bang would merely reduce us to a state of ignorance about life and the universe, it wouldn’t validate some other claim. Today’s religious people move from absolute ignorance to absolute knowledge by saying that because we don’t know the answer, it must be God.

The problem is that “we don’t know” should be the end of the conversation. “We don’t know” in no way justifies any claim about the subject, so it cannot justify religion. On top of this, criticisms from the religious against scientific theories more often than not reveal an ignorance of the theories, research, and methods themselves, and are not even valid criticisms. Such statements include:

• evolution cannot produce irreducible complexity

• carbon dating is a lie and shouldn’t be used to tell the age of the earth

• saying that life evolved is like saying a tornado assembled a jet in a junkyard
  

• if crocodiles and ducks are related we should see half-crocodiles, half-ducks today

Not only are these false arguments, but even if they were valid, they would say nothing about whether religious claims are true, only that our science has problems. Christians believe that if science is wrong, then their religion is right.

This also happens at the macro level in Christian theology. What is the meaning of existence? Why is this universe the way it is? It must be God. It couldn’t possibly be anything else. But why must it be God? Is there an actual reason besides “it couldn’t be anything else”? No there is not. The fact we cannot begin to answer some of these questions yet in no way validates belief in God. When it comes down to it, there is no actual positive evidence that God has done any of the things that Christian theology claims. The dependence of Christian apologetics on these so-called “god-of-the-gaps” arguments is staggering, and is one of my main reasons for not being religious.

- Evan

A Beautiful Reality

My first post on this blog spoke of religious people caring about how their beliefs make them feel, and atheists caring about whether their beliefs are true. However, it is important to ask, why not both? The original purpose of this blog is to show people that being a non-believer feels good, and I have not yet addressed that.

1) Everything is as it is.

You and I are living, breathing, thinking, loving creatures. Our purpose is not to be a servant or a worshipper. The universe is ancient, mind-boggling and strange in every aspect (but always follows consistent natural laws), and living in it is a privilege. Living things come from other living things, they are not created. Evolution allows life to become more beautiful as the aeons pass. When the wind hits your face, it has traveled thousands of miles, from across the planet. It may have even been in the lungs of a Roman soldier or a dinosaur, through the leaves of a plant in the Philippines, or struck by a meteor as it entered our atmosphere. Clouds sit on the gas our atmosphere like ice in a glass of water. We don’t see any spirit realm, no ghosts, no demons, no Heaven or Hell (phew! The idea of spending eternity anywhere is just strange). Just here and now, in this self-propelling, natural world. Now that I am full-fledged atheist (with an interest in science and how the world works), my eyes are open: the universe is so amazing, vibrant, grand, strange, and with such a greater imagination than man. I am humbled, empowered, and awestruck, all at the same time.

2) You do good for the sake of doing good.

When we see others feeling pain, we feel pain. When we see others feel happiness, we feel happiness (we are not the only creatures to do this either). I do good for the sake of doing good, I care about others, I want good things to happen to everyone. This happens not because anyone tells me to do so. It is a result of being human, and we all have these impulses. Problems that I have are my own that I should solve, and the mistakes I make are my own to ponder over. There is no one accounting for my actions but myself, and I am trying the best I can.

This method of living can be said to be more reliable than religion overall, given some facts:

• atheists consist of 0.25% of the prison population.

• more secular nations have far lower violent crime and teen pregnancy rates (ex. Japan: less than 10% are certain a god exists, has lowest crime rates and teen pregnancy rates in the world, other good examples include Norway, U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands)
  

• high levels of atheism are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low homicide rates, low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, low illiteracy rates, high levels of educational attainment, per capita income, and gender equality

• the U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the world, and has some of the highest crime rates and teen pregnancy rates

• ironically, atheists and agnostics have lower divorce rates, less abortions, and lower STD infection rates than the religious

• countries that have very low percentages of atheists in their population have either high crime rates, low quality of life, or social and political problems, such as: Somalia, Tanzania, Yemen, the Philippines, Romania, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Iran.

These facts do not prove that religion makes you immoral, only that it doesn’t strengthen society. Atheism, like religion, does not guarantee morality, but it can be said to be more reliable.

3) Reason is awesome.
Going off of evidence is so much more reliable in discerning truth than going off of faith. Not only am I much more secure in what I believe, but those beliefs are completely open to whatever the evidence says (whatever reality is), and that feels good, it feels right. I should never be attached to my beliefs, because then I may then be closed off to changing them, and the malleability of my beliefs to fit reality is essential to finding truth. I rather like this position and strategy for evaluating the world. It makes me okay with not knowing the answer to something, and helps me to recognize that my worldview is completely dependent on what I see. I feel that using reason reflects the nature of human understanding.

There has never been any good evidence for God, supernatural realms and beings, or even an immaterial plane separate from a material one. What the evidence says is what my views will mold to.

- Evan

You don't know there's not a God

This response almost always occurs after someone says there’s no evidence of God. The fact is that no one is ever called upon to prove a negative, because it’s logically impossible. That’s right, it’s impossible to prove there’s no God. But don’t get excited yet. It’s logically impossible to prove the non-existence of any number of things. Think of anything we can’t directly observe. It’s logically impossible to prove that that thing doesn’t exist. This leaves the argument “you don’t know there’s not a God” on very shaky ground, since the same statement can be made for many different things, even things that contradict one another.

Let’s examine a claim that we can neither prove nor disprove: I am an alien in human form. If I told you this, you would not actually believe it no matter how hard I insisted it was true. My word would never be enough. You would require some sort of positive evidence for such an extraordinary claim. Needless to say, you wouldn’t be agnostic about it. You wouldn’t say “I neither believe nor disbelieve that you are an alien from another planet.” You would simply dismiss my claim as unverifiable, thinking I was pulling your leg, unless I came forth with very strong evidence (like building a homemade death ray).

“You don’t know there’s not a God.” This appeal to ignorance is very common, suggesting that the atheist should at least be agnostic about God. Surely if they were consistent, they would become agnostic themselves? But we don’t have to be agnostic. One of the best indicators that something isn’t there is a lack of evidence for its existence. Religion has never made any discoveries or predictions about the world, so it must have nothing to contribute as to its true nature.

- Evan

Miracles

It’s one thing to say that Jesus lived, walked the Earth, had teachings to share with people, and got crucified by the Romans. It is an entirely different thing to say that he turned water into wine, healed the blind, was born of a virgin, and was raised from the dead. Historical claims are completely different from supernatural claims.

The world we live in is all we know. When someone says that Jesus was born from an immaculate conception, all we have to do is look at all the births that have ever happened, and see what percentage of them were immaculate. It turns out that that percentage is zero. If someone claimed immaculate conception today in whatever circle, they would not be taken seriously. How could one even prove that a conception was immaculate (unless we had a microscope focused on the egg in her body and saw it spontaneously gestate without sperm)? In order to believe such a thing, you have to not require any evidence. Christians take pride in having faith, but I don’t think there’s anything good about it. Not requiring evidence for your beliefs leaves you much more open to accepting false ones. For example, if the Guiness Book of World Records accepted every claim without independently verifiable evidence, the book’s credibility would plummet, and no one would read it. The literal truth of the miracles of the Bible works in the exact same way.

Even miracles that multiple people claim to have seen are still without strong evidence. Many people have claimed to see Bigfoot, the Lochness monster, leprechauns, and other things that sensible people don’t believe in. No one takes these claims seriously because we realize that personal testimony is the lowest form of evidence. Why should the claims of the Bible receive different treatment?

- Evan

Egocentric Us: the denial of science

Because human experience is the the only thing we know, most religions often place humanity as the reason for all existence. This idea manifests itself in monotheistic theology. We are claimed to be God’s ultimate creation, and are at the focal point of the universe. If this isn’t true, then how do we explain the church’s tendency to deny scientific discoveries that take away this self-proclaimed importance? Such discoveries as heliocentrism (sun-centered instead of earth-centered solar system), elliptical planetary orbits (instead of perfect circles), sunspots on the sun (instead of a flawless, life-giving orb), the age of the universe and of the Earth, the big bang, and evolution have all been met with fierce and passionate opposition by the church and their followers. Notice that like evolution, heliocentrism at its time was thought to be an idea that made humans seem worthless. But today it is an accepted fact, one that doesn’t detract from how great humanity is. Why can’t evolution and the big bang be the same?

When looking at the universe, there is nothing that suggests that it was all made for us to live in. We are literally a speck on a speck on a speck, and there are vast forces and immense objects out there that push our world to the sideline. Even the events on our planet are enough to make the same point. The forces of nature that are out of our control (earthquakes, weather, melting polar ice) don’t care whether we live our die (unless you believe that God is the one that intentionally kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people per year with natural disasters).

The randomness of genes is another example of how the universe wasn’t made for us. Uncontrollable birth defects produce disturbingly deformed newborns (Google-image it if you dare). This is easily explained by the randomness of genetics, but very difficult to explain with a god that personally creates and shapes each living thing. Some humans are born with debilitating or painful genetic defects that make life much more difficult to bear. The idea that the people affected by these unfortunate circumstances are being taught a lesson by God is a poor excuse for the pain and suffering that they go through. What specific lesson would they be learning that someone without these horrible experiences couldn’t also learn? The randomness and naturalism of the universe is much more accommodating to what we see than a planned universe that was built for us to live in.

Today’s population believes in both heliocentrism and the worth and meaningfulness of human life. Because of the underlying theme of their theology, the church believed that heliocentrism made humanity seem worthless; they believed it kicked humans off to the side. I think the same thing is happening today with naturalism. Just like heliocentrism, naturalism doesn’t detract from the specialness of humanity and human experience, it’s just a belief that reflects reality more accurately.

- Evan

Life After Death

One thing in common with all atheists is disbelief in the supernatural. This disbelief stems from the fact that strong evidence (multiple objective observations of repeatable events) points to naturalism while weak evidence (personal testimony of a single event) points to supernatural explanations. Life after death and the existence of an immaterial soul (two similar claims) are supernatural claims that exhibit such weak evidence.

The main reason for dismissing the idea of life after death is that all the evidence about human beings points to our being biological animals rather than embodied spiritual souls. Consciousness is still somewhat of a mystery to us, but we do know that it relies on brain activity. With no brain, there is no consciousness.

All the experiences, sensations, and emotions we have are dependent on the activity of certain parts of the brain, and when one of those parts is damaged, its respective aspect of experience is altered or hindered for the individual. And if you stimulate certain areas of the brain, you get an involuntary change of experience (if you stimulate the part of the brain that controls humor, everything becomes funny). In fact, damage to certain parts of the brain has been seen countless times to completely change someone’s personality forever. And when someone’s brain stops functioning altogether, they will stop giving any signs of consciousness. Consciousness is the center of our experience, and still having it after death goes against all we see.

Consider if we didn’t need a brain for consciousness. If this were true, then there’s no reason why any object couldn’t be considered conscious, and there’s no reason for us to have bodies in the first place. And as far as near-death experiences, their very name – near-death – immediately disqualifies them as evidence for life after death.

What makes us human is our capacity for conscious thought, reason, and emotion. We see that all of these are completely dependent on brain activity. Why would this dependency cease upon death? Why is it so difficult to grasp that we are mortal, biological creatures? My theory is that believers do not like the idea of dying forever. It makes them feel uncomfortable, and they shy away from the idea. Believers are more concerned with how their beliefs make them feel, and atheists are more concerned with whether or not their beliefs are true.

- Evan

Three Misconceptions

Over my many years observing the atheist vs. theist debates on the internet and on television, I have heard many statements involving misconceptions about either scientific theories or about atheists themselves.

1. “Atheists believe in nothing.”

Atheists believe in nothing supernatural, and still look at the world with a sense of wonder, still experience love and emotions, still have ethics, and still strongly believe that the universe and the life in it has value. Atheists are real people, and the phrase “atheists believe in nothing” treats them like they are inhuman scoundrels. There is a different term for believing in nothing, and it is called nihilism.

If you think that disbelief in the supernatural makes the world worthless, you are essentially saying that the world, in and of itself, is not good enough. You believe that it needs something more; you cannot be happy with it as it is. If this is what you believe, then I think you are taking it all for granted. As an inhabitant of this planet, you really have a lot to be thankful for.

2. “Atheists think that everything came from nothing.”

This statement stems from a misconception of the big bang theory. If you look at the trajectories of all the galaxies in the universe, then rewind time, everything was in the same miniscule point 14 billion years ago. No one knows what happened before that. Anything mentioned before that point is pure speculation. Also, the big bang was not an explosion of matter in an already-existing infinite space. It was an expansion of the universe (matter, space, and time), as if the entire universe were an inflating balloon.

3. “I didn’t come from a monkey!”

Evolutionary biologists agree! Humans did not descend from apes, but instead are related to them, like distant cousins. Humans and apes are modern animals, and share a common ancestor from millions of years ago, an ancestor that was neither human nor ape. This one species diverged into two separate lines, one leading to the apes of today, and one leading to humans.

- Evan

God: The Heart of the Matter

Unfortunately, I think many atheists, even prominent ones, have misconceptions about what is going on in the mind of most believers. I don’t pretend to know what is going on in peoples’ minds, but I think I have a better idea than some about what is at the core of believing in God. Such statements as: “religious people are God's slaves,” or “religion makes people take this life for granted, dismissing this world as unimportant and merely a transitional stage to the next,” while having some measure of truth, do not, in my opinion, really speak with believers. This is because the believers just don’t see it that way. In order to get people thinking, you must get on their level, and must not rely on too many statements that the religious cannot connect with.

At the root of religious belief is an inner feeling. To believers, believing in God feels special; it feels right. They cannot imagine a world without God, without that amazing feeling. It is this inner conviction that drives belief. There are many traditional arguments for the existence of God, but instead of showing why these arguments fail, we can just make the point that these arguments are not why people become religious in the first place. Religious people don’t need use arguments to justify their belief in God, they know that God exists – it is how they feel. This statement doesn’t come from me, but from many believers themselves. Viewed in this light, arguments for God are an attempt to make religion seem rational when in fact it is not.

Given that religious belief is rooted in inner conviction, my strategy is to show that inner conviction, no matter how amazing or transcendental or special it seems to you, is no way to judge whether or not a belief is true. Many people around the world use the same grounds – personal conviction – to justify completely incompatible beliefs. Anything that can be used to justify many different incompatible claims is a horrible indicator of truth.

I believe that religious people are concerned with how their beliefs make them feel, and atheists are concerned with whether or not their beliefs are true. For those of you who cannot imagine a world without a god, I think you should try harder. Imagine what it would be like to be an atheist. For as you know, atheists still have happiness and values. What would it be like if it were just us and this beautiful world?

- Evan