Hergest Ridge

Challenging Christians on their beliefs is frustrating . If you’re an ex-Christian like myself, your comments are dismissed with “You’re just angry, someone hurt you”. The alternate scenario is dismissed with “You don’t know anything about my God and faith”. Huh?

The other day I used the phrase “There are no sins. Only man-made guilt trips to keep the population under a spell.” An individual by the name of JesusLivesInAllOfUs promptly responded with “Spells are witchcraft, and witchcraft is the devil’s work. If there is a devil, there must be a god.” D’uh, how did I miss that obvious proof of God? Let me go and get my bible, and to my knees I shall fall begging for His forgiveness. Wait, who’s forgiveness? Should I get the Qur’an? Which God have we just proven to exist? This is soo confusing.

Here’s another recurring ‘Proof of God’: You can’t disprove Him! Since when does the burden of proof fall on the defending individual? You make a claim, you’re responsible for making a case for it. Never mind that most things cannot be disproved, thus by your ‘logic’ Zeus, Thor, Allah, Santa Clause, and fairies must be real.

‘But don’t we get our morals from the Bible?’
How many gays have you killed lately? Muslims? Blasphemers? Have you ever flicked a switch on a Sunday? The bible is pretty clear when it comes to these kind of issues, so why are you not following through? Because your sense of right and wrong does not come from its pages, that’s why. Where does morality come from? There are many viable theories. The bible is not one of them.

If I told you that your partner or spouse is cheating on you, you’d want proof before you do anything drastic. Why is this not the case with God? If faith is such a virtue, why not take my word about your partner’s infidelity?

Let me sum it up real quick. Democracy cannot survive religious indoctrination because it creates second class citizens. Religion is tax exempt, and it’s proceeds are increasingly used to fund political campaigns of dogmatic nature. This is why I’m speaking out against the Christian dogma above others. Christianity has long ceased to be one individual’s private opinion. This is why I refuse to be silent.

Things are very busy, but here is a quick post anyway. By quick, I mean ‘Less thought out’, not ‘Shorter’.

At last I’ve found a suitable and available domain name for the blog. It’s registered and hosted, but still very much a secret. Turns out that coming up with a name for the new blog was the easy part. Finding an available domain name to go with the blog name, that my friends was a nightmare.

Last night I went to mass, my first church attendance since becoming what Dawkins would - jokingly? - refer to as a ‘militant atheist’. The mass was in honour of those whom recently passed away at the Holy Family home. My grandmother spent her last days there, and was one of those honoured. She was religious, and would have approved; I on the other hand couldn’t help thinking that a better way to celebrate the lives of those passed away would be through the reading of eulogies by the respective family members.

I’ve finished “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. The book shook me up a bit as it plainly describes views that are globally censored, and few dare utter even among friends. This alone would not be enough to shake me up - I’m good at dismissing psychotic dogma. Factually Sam’s ideas do not fall under this category - this is what makes those ideas so difficult to swallow -, but my gut was screaming ‘psycho’. You know a book was worth reading when it puts your logic and instincts at odds! Needless to say, I’ll need some time to examine and reflect on the thoughts brought forward by Mr. Harris. Here, I feel obliged to add that assuming the book accurately represents our world issues, I strongly disagree with many of the solutions alluded to by the author.

Since this is to be a short entry, I’ll pause my written thoughts here and leave you with the words of Richard Dawkins. May they spark your mind with reasonable thought.

‘Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. “All is changed, changed utterly.”‘

Believers in the God myth conclude that anyone who’s tried to find God and hasn’t failed because he or she didn’t try honest enough, hard enough, or long enough. I for one wasted thousands of hours in my life searching for God. Most of the journey put more distance between myself and ‘Him’, although there was a point where I thought I just needed to try harder, and did so. There are millions of people in the world that have embarked on the same journey and reached the same conclusion as I have.

Let’s look at the issue from a rational perspective. If an experiment is conducted by millions of individuals, and the results are all over the map, we can safely assume that our original hypothesis is flawed. In this case, the God Hypothesis is proven as flawed since some find God, and others do not. Due to the lack of controls in the experiment this would not be considered a scientific trial, but the case for God defeats itself either way: if to find Him we need a controlled environment over which we have practically zero control, God is not accessible to everyone despite the claim that we simply need ask him to step into our life for it to happen.

To give a superstitious example of how religion functions: A man walks under a ladder, proceeds to cross the street, and is hit by a bus. To someone believing that walking under a ladder is bad luck, the cause of the painful end result is clear. The man was killed because he walked under the ladder! On the other hand, a rational mind will look at the event and conclude that the accident likely happened because the man did not look both ways before stepping out onto the street.

In similar fashion, religious individuals apply their superstitious beliefs to reality, all while dismissing the many other possible causes for their experiences. You’ve joined a church and your life turned for the better? Being part of any close knit community can do that. You asked God for strength and received it? Millions of people find strength within themselves, without belief in God - that is where your strength came from. Have you led a troubled life until you asked God to come into it? You’ve found a way to clean up and attributed the end result to God. You believe that God was your saviour because every believer told you that He would help you, and now through your own false association you are perpetuating the myth.

Correlation does not equate causation (Latin Cum hoc ergo propter hoc - “with this, therefore because of this”). There are dozens of things I could attribute to a God, every single day. Interesting coincidences, wants fulfilled, dreams come true. If I was to act the part of a believer for just one day, I could further inspire any true believer in the power of God simply through reinterpreting the events of my day through the God lens. Through my playing with their minds, believers would add to their arsenal more anecdotes which they perpetuate to indoctrinate others.

This is how the God delusion feeds itself and survived through millennia. People that want to believe, interpreting reality in ways that support their theory instead of reflecting reality. We all do it to some degree, but theists are really masters when it comes to this kind of self deception.

There are well documented benefits that stem from faith and religion, but they fall under the placebo category and in no way prove the existence of any God. Unlike a placebo which comes without direct side effects, religion has plenty.

Imagine for a minute that there is no afterlife. How would the knowledge change your day to day behaviour if you knew that this life is all we have? Well, for one people would cease dieing in the name of God, Jesus, Allah, and any other mythical entity they happen to have faith in. Every year, millions of lives would be saved through allowing modern medicine do its job. Spread of deadly diseases would be curbed through 21st century family planning and precautionary measures. The list goes on and on.

I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t be comforted by the proposition of an eternal and blissful life. If any atheist thought it true - if only we could believe in the right God -, trust me, we’d all quit our jobs to search for the Lord. What a wonderful investment it would be!

“Are you Bob?”
“Well yes, I am.”
Judging by the confusion on Bob’s face, I wasn’t convinced that this is the guy I was set to meet.
“Are you expecting an 11:00 o’clock meeting with someone?”
“No.”

Did I mention that introductions can be tricky?

I’m a bit of a geek, and purchase electronics on regular basis. A chain of suppliers that shall remain unnamed - until later in the article - has hit my bad books over the years, but they are hard to ignore. Their stores are everywhere, and they have a lot of toys someone like me likes to play with. As such, once every couple of years I go in to see if their customer service has improved. My last attempt of this kind was a few days ago.

I was after a webcam, but couldn’t resist strolling the aisles to check out the latest goodies. It wasn’t long before I was approached by a ‘helpful sales rep’.

I’ve heard these guys talk. Most of them know shit all about the products they are selling. Sure, they come of as knowledgeable, but in the end they are just sales reps, not tech gurus. The store doesn’t hire gurus, because they are able to match customers with the products they need; The sales reps with limited knowledge push the most expensive products including the useless extended warranties.

After politely declining the assistance offered by the rep, I proceeded on my merry way straight into the face of another rep offering to help, and then another. Three reps in 10 mins.

I found what I needed without their help, and proceeded to the cash register only to find that the whole store has only two, and one of them was closed. The open one was doing a product exchange. While the reps assaulted me in the aisles, here I was stuck at the cash register waiting another five minutes for a single check out clerk to do her job.

Future Shop, get your damn act together. I’ve only been waiting for 10 years for you guys to get this customer service thing figured out. I’ll see you again in 2009, and hopefully by then you’ve finally got it right. I’m won’t hold my breath though.

Watch the Atheist Journey Part IV on YouTube Published May 8, 2007.

I’d like to begin by withdrawing my original statement in which I say that God does not exist. The fact that we cannot disprove the existence of God aside, the statement kills any potential for dialogue.

And now, I’d like to put a new statement on record. I do not know if a God exist, but am fully backed by the scientific community when I say “There is zero evidence to suggest His existence.” It is my belief that until scientific evidence to the contrary is brought forward, belief in any God is an absurd proposition.

I realise that the average Christian requires a lot of explaining on what constitutes as scientific evidence, but am limited in time, and even more so in the Christian attention span towards matters of science - a fact evident in the misguided Christian understanding of evolution.

If tomorrow we both see what can only be describe as an angel, I still won’t be a God fearing Christian. Seeing an angel would ultimately be one piece of potential evidence that angels exist, and while angels are commonly associated with God, that link is strictly mythical. By ultimately proving that angels exist, we may have a piece of evidence that God exists - if we can scientifically link the dependent association of angels with God.

Can’t wrap your head around the science? That’s okay. Let’s try a mathematical approach.

Consider Bertrand Russell’s statement that “Given the number of conflicting [religious] views on offer, every believer should expect damnation on mere probabilistic grounds.”

Hundreds of religions profess to be the truth. Most are based on ancient scripture, and all on faith. All such religions have an equal stab at validity, but only one can indeed be, for all are mutually exclusive. What are your chances of going to paradise, even if all believers of your faith are deemed worthy of salvation? Statistically, slim to none.

Religion is a bit like communism: okay in theory, and maybe even successful in very small, and select pockets walled off from the reality of the world at large. On a grand scale, religion is the root of much evil. I urge you to consider the difference between ‘it makes me feel good’ and ‘it’s good for humanity’. These two statements are a world apart, and for me they bring to mind the Prisoner’s Dilemma: two factions making the best individual choice are left with an equilibrium where both sides are worse off. Unlike the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the religious choices of those directly involved affect the whole world.

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, how ever satisfying and reassuring” (Carl Sagan). Let’s leave our egos at the door step of the 14th century. We’re as special as the koala bear, the aardvark, or the platypus, plus the self awareness. Do not seek spirituality in the myths of the past, or in the blue skies above. Seek it within you, for that is the only place it has the potential to exist in the realm of reality in our universe.