Don’t confuse people for their religion

Earlier this morning I got into a small facebook argument about conservative Christians and sexuality when one of the people involved said:

“it’s important not to confuse these people with their religion.”

I can provide the full discussion for anyone who wants to make sure I’m not taking this out of context, but the way I understood what he was saying was that an individual (or group of individuals) who claim to be X should not be confused with X when they don’t actually follow X.

For example earlier this week a crazy lady tried to attack a painting saying that it was homosexual and evil for showing two women with their breasts exposed. Now this lady is crazy, there’s no doubt, but she claims her motivation is her religious views. There are plenty of conservative religious people (across all faiths, but primarily Christianity and Islam) who view the human body and any form of sexuality as evil.

When the person in the afore mentioned facebook argument said not to confuse people for their religion, he was saying that although these people claim their views on sexuality are Christian and are rooted in the bible, they’re not, and as such we should not confuse these “Christians” for being “Christians.”

But that just begs the question: What is a person’s religion if not the sum of their personal beliefs?

A group of “Christians” who would ascribe to said crazy lady’s views on the human body would undoubtedly say that they were Christians and that anyone who did not view the body as evil were not “true” Christians. The term Christian is essentially a useless term as it means whatever anyone wants it to mean. (Which royally pisses me off because any attempt at making words useless and thus making it harder to communicate concepts/ideas just reeks of 1984 style new-speak; but I digress)

If group X claims they belong to religion Y, and that their beliefs come from religion Y’s holy book, book Z, but nobody in group X has read or cares to read book Z, then isn’t their religion just whatever group X wants it to be?

Sure, their sexually oppressive version of Christianity might not be what Christianity is to you, but it is their version of Christianity and they’re going to call themselves Christians.  Are they wrong? They sure as hell think you are. Who’s right? Well nobody since it’s all “just a matter of faith and interpretation.”

In reality you can’t “confuse people for their religion;” whatever they say their religion is, that’s their religion. The 9/11 hijackers were Muslims, so too are the Muslims who say what the 9/11 hijackers did was despicable and un-Islamic. Abortion clinic bombers and the Westboro Baptist Church are Christians, so too are the liberal, gay-friendly, pro-choice Catholics. They all claim the same meaningless title to describe their radically different faiths. This in turn just inhibits our ability to discuss them and the views they have because the moment you use the term “Christian” to talk about the Westboro Baptist Church, another “Christian” with a different definition will jump up and scream that you’re generalizing and mis-representing the “true” Christians like them. (But I guess for some people muddying the water and making it harder for us to express ideas by requiring extremely specific, legalistic language is a good thing. Personally, whenever someone tries to inhibit the discussion of ideas, that’s a sign that they’re automatically wrong.)

How else are we to discuss these people if not by the meaningless title they choose to call themselves? Should we adopt an ever expanding system of Christian 1, Christian 1a, Christian 1b, etc? That would be impossible to keep track of, and yet again everyone would argue about what classification they get. Perhaps if we copied how we classified various animals by Life-Domain-Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species and created a similar system for religious belief? Maybe then we can stop confusing lions for mammals and Christians for Christians.

God’s middleman

This is a really basic concept, but it was something that I wrestled with for a while when deconverting from Christianity. The night I became an atheist I laid in bed for several hours pondering hell and eternal damnation. The thought of letting go from the ledge and dismissing the intense warnings and threats of hellfire terrified me. Two realizations comforted me and led me to take the plunge. The first was that I must be able to trust my own reasoning skills. Without them I’m not my own person. The second realization was as follows:

Everything we know about religion and gods, we are told by other people.

 

Think about it. Who told you about god(s)? Your parents? Your friends? Where did they hear about it? Their pastor/priest/rabbi/imam/shaman? Who told them? Another person. But what about the books? People did. People claiming to talk for god(s). That’s all it ever was; one person claiming to know the mind of a supreme all knowing, all powerful super being that created the entire cosmos. All the books, the art, the music, the buildings, the dogma and doctrine, all of it comes from someone who heard about god(s) from someone else, who in turn heard from another someone.

Ultimately, if it were possible to follow the chain of he said/she said’s all the way back, you would come across a single person or group who started the rumors game.

What about this person? What credibility do they have? These are very serious claims they are making. They purport to know the mind of this supernatural being. Entire societies, gender roles, ways of living, eating, procreating, and dying are structured around the claims made by individuals like these. I say that makes it extremely important to determine if they’re telling the truth. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so what is their evidence?

“Just trust me…”

Seriously, that’s it. Sometimes they’ll throw in a little incentive like “or you’ll burn in eternal hell-fire!” Sure there are stories of miracles, but these miracles are never documented outside of the story books claiming them, nor are they anything beyond what would impress the local population of that time and location. Water to wine? Multiplying fish and bread? Walking on water? (I’m using christian mythology because that’s what I’m familiar with. There are plenty of other examples from other religions) Those are miracles? Why not something like curing amputated limbs, or transporting people to Alpha Centauri, or dividing by zero? And while you’re at it, just so their can be no confusion or doubt, make sure it’s well documented by a large variety of independent sources.  Unfortunately the people who were around when these belief systems were invented didn’t ask for such evidence. They were quick to believe and slow to doubt.

One of the hardest things to wrap your mind around is how just so many people could be so wrong, and yet so sure they’re right. This was another thing I struggled with. “Look around you! Look how Christianity is everywhere! Look how many people believe! It can’t possibly be based on a lie! It’s unthinkable that it could all be wrong! Surely its ubiquity must attest to some level of truth?”

People who are surrounded by Islam think the same thing. So do the people who are surrounded by Buddhism, Toaism, Judaism, animism, voodoo, etc. The people who were surrounded by the worship of Thor felt the same way. As did those who grew up in ancient Egypt with Ra. Your location, your cultural preferences, they are not the world. For ever million believers who think like you, there are just as many equally fervent believers of another faith. They make the same justifications and rationalizations that you do, but they change the name of the god(s).

The problem is that the system reinforces it’self.  One person starts a rumor, then more people spread it, and then more until it spreads exponentially.  Eventually everybody in a location knows the rumor and it becomes common knowledge, common truth. Children are then raised in a society saturated in the rumor and it’s taken as a given, a natural existence.  The more people who believe in the rumor, the more the individual believer feels secure in their belief.

No matter how many people believe something, no matter how many books are written, buildings built, and songs sung, it all goes back to that one individual, god’s middleman.

“Just trust me…”

Passion, zeal, and my history.

I just finished watching The Baader Meinhof Complex on netfilx and found it pretty thought provoking. The movie follows “the birth of West Germany’s Red Army Faction, a radical left-wing terrorist group formed in the lat 1960’s amid a climate of revolution and a fallen generation.” The movie struck a cord with me because back in my teenage years I might have joined such a group if given the chance to time travel. Might have. Past tense.  The movie was in some way a loose exploration of those teenage fantasies.

As a teenager I never fantasized about bombing buildings or assassinating people, but rather I abstractly fantasized about fighting the man and dying for my comrades. I guess I connected with this movie in that I empathized with the characters’ zeal. I could relate with their feelings of oppression, of desperation, and their sense of the injustice in the world.

I’ve been thinking about zealotry a lot lately. I’m wondering if some people are just more inclined to zealous behavior than others. Thinking back, I was always a zealous person. I’m not sure if it was something in my nature, or the result of the time and place I grew up.

The first time I remember feeling a fanatical devotion to something(someone in this case) was when I was twelve. I was in love, or so I thought, with this beautiful girl who lived just a short ways away. We dated for three months before her mother caught us kissing and her father forced us to break up. I would leave roses on her front porch and her father would throw them away. I was determined to get her back, even though she said her father wouldn’t let her date until she was sixteen. I would count the days in my school calendar. Later, I received a tip from her friend pointing me to her live journal. There I found two entries where she detailed how much she disliked me, was never interested beyond a mere crush, and how she had found a new guy. (I printed it out at the time and I still have that worn old piece of paper in a fireproof lockbox, along with other sentimental things)

It was around this same time that I discovered evangelical Christianity. A friend from school was a born-again Christian and he taught me how to pray/mediate. I remember going to special church classes and watching videos that detailed the evils of psychics and ouija boards. My parents, a moderate methodist and an apathetic non-practicing Jew, didn’t see much harm in it; though they were slightly annoyed when I used all my mom’s garlic powder to seal the doors and windows on Halloween in order to keep evil spirits out. The odd thing was that my new found religious faith never really transfered over to politics. I was 12-13 and too busy playing video games and sneaking onto porn sites to pay much attention to politics. I remember standing in my parent’s bedroom late at night watching the 2000 election. I was rooting for George W. Bush, though in the same manner one arbitrarily roots for a sports team in a game you don’t overly care about.

My Zealotry really took off after I met my first actual love. She was witty, intelligent, beautiful, and one of those liberals I had loosely heard about. I have a vague memory of us leaving the mall in her mom’s car at night, and us having some deep political conversation where she converted me to liberalism. According to my memory, which very well may be a complete and unconscious fabrication, she was very proud of herself for convincing me, but warned me saying something like “Careful, there is non more zealous than a convert.” That poorly lit memory has stayed with me all these years.

It was at this time that the focus of my passion was shifting from Christianity to politics. High-school opened me up to new people, new ideas, and I no longer considered myself an evangelical Christian, but some amalgamation of Christianity, Buddhism, and my own spirituality. The city I grew up in was fairly large for Virginia, about a quarter million people. Nonetheless the area I grew up in was very conservative. Throughout high-school I became increasingly politically active as I became ever more aware of just how much in the minority I was. I would print out long political messages on entire sheets of paper and tape them to the back of my car. I started volunteering my weekends at political campaigns, making phone calls, updating data bases, and going door to door. I even went to an anti-war protest with the afore mentioned beautiful girl. I was perhaps most active in yard sign wars.

During election season I would sneak out early in the morning, with my car full of yard signs, and place them at strategic locations I had scoped out the day before. I often did this while blasting Green Day on the stereo. It gave me a huge rush to do this in a very conservative area. I guess I became addicted to that rush. One time I spent over an hour placing about 100 signs early in the morning, only to discover them ALL stolen a few hours later when I drove to school. I was so furious, I couldn’t concentrate at all that day. I then started a tic-for-tat retribution campaign. I kept track of my signs, and stole one in retribution every time one of mine went missing. I even got a large poster, wrote my tic-for-tat war policy on it, placed it at a major intersection where several signs had gone missing, and signed it “The Democrat”. Later I got a phone call from a friend who had watched as someone stopped, got out of their car, and destroyed my sign before his very eyes.

That election season, I think it was 2004 and the second presidential election with Bush, was particularly bad. Not only were my signs constantly stolen, but even the signs on my car were stolen or vandalized. I was even run off the road one night because of a yard sign I had taped to the back of my car. I was shaking, even though I felt the rush. The majority of my teenage years were spent under a heavy siege mentality. This in turn just spurred on my zealotry. I felt like an animal trapped in a corner, and I was determined not to go down without a fight. Sometimes in class I would daydream of setting up a democrat paramilitary fast response team, should civil war break out. I fantasized about us roping in from helicopters or speeding to the rescue on motorcycles, protecting civilians from the conflict. I would even design the patch emblems for our uniforms in the margins of my school work.

During the election seasons I became an avid news junkie. I would turn on CNN any chance I got. Sometimes I’d even watch C-SPAN (a channel that broadcasts the live, and rather bland, proceedings within congress). There was one show on CNN in particular that really struck me: Crossfire. I was amazed at how these political pundits could cite names, dates, statistics, etc from memory. I REALLY wanted to be able to do that. At the same time I was taking Advanced Placement Government in high school and we’d often debate in class. This being the day before smart phones and instant internet access, I sat down one night and spent several hours building a “Battle Binder.” In this 1 inch D-ring binder I created sections for every major issue of the day, along with every relevant name, date, statistic, and talking points. I even included common arguments and refutations. It weighed a ton, but I carried it around with me everywhere I went. I dared other kids to debate with me. Some foolishly did, stating their view on some position, citing some anecdotal evidence about what they heard their dad say, and then I would pull out my battle binder and crush them. They couldn’t compete when I could instantly produce full color charts, timelines of legislation, relevant court cases, you name it. Eventually the other kids stopped talking to me about politics. (I still have that binder in the attic)

2006 was when everything shattered. It was an election year for congress, and I fought hard to get democrats elected. Bush had won a second term, the two wars were starting to drag on with no end in site, and we were starting to learn of the warrant-less wiretaps, secret detention centers, and torture. Well democrats one big that year, I was so elated. They took control of congress and I thought “Now! Now that the good guys are in charge, we can finally stop Bush! We can even impeach him for his war crimes!”

And then nothing changed. Nothing.

This was my first taste of betrayal, and boy was it a spoonful. Here I was, a zealous supporter of the party, willing to fight and die if need be, and I was betrayed by my leaders who promptly caved to every republican demand. It was like being thrown into a pool of icy cold water. I became intensely cynical and bitter. Almost five years later and I still am, though the edge has worn off.

My passion, what was left of it, needed a new seemingly hopeless cause to fight for. By now I had developed a strong love for the underdog. I believed that democrats were the underdog, and worthy of fighting for, but with them in power and ceding everything to the conservatives, that was gone. I needed a new underdog, something with deeper meaning than just political parties.

Enter atheism.

It was my freshman year of college and I was exposed to more world-views than at any other point in my life. It was also the first time I had ever heard of an atheist, or met one for that matter. In fact, I met two. One was a history professor, the other was a friend of a girl I had a crush on. Though I was a wishy-washy feel good spiritualist at the time, I took their advice and began investigating atheism on my own. One of the first people I ran into was Richard Dawkins and his book “The God Delusion”. The arguments really resonated with me and his passion spoke to something crestfallen within me. To add to that, you’d be hard pressed to find anything more underdog-ish than atheism. We’re the extreme minority, despised and distrusted by the vast majority of the world. Atheism is hopelessly outnumbered, and there is something deeply attractive in that.

So my passion was rekindled, though tempered by my experiences. While watching that film tonight, I could see a lot of my pre-2006 self in those RAF members. Naive, hopelessly idealistic, reckless, zealots. The whole time I could not help but notice the extreme contrast between how beautiful, sexual, and vibrant they were, and how violent, disgusting, and shocking their actions were. The way the film was shot, I knew we were supposed to at least partially be on their side, but I could not bring myself to support them. Through the use of violence, you watch them transform into the monsters they set out to fight. As good as it might feel to shoot back, you lose the moral high ground when you do, and that is imperative when winning a war of ideas.

My zealotry has been tempered, and that includes my teenage fantasies about fighting. This is especially true when it comes to atheism. Atheists pride themselves on not doing the dumb shit religious people do to each other. No setting off car bombs in cafes, no flying planes into buildings, no shooting doctors, no assassinations, no gang style shootouts. While I still sometimes fantasize of an Illuminati style atheist resistance, violence would be off-limits. I’d sooner shoot my own squad member then let them carry out some act of violence against our rivals. Not only would it only make them martyrs and stronger, but it would sacrifice our moral high ground.

So as a terse conclusion to this abnormally verbose post: It’s interesting for me to think back about how I was in my teenage years. Was I alone in feeling like this? Did other people go through a similar zealous phase? If you did, what made you change? Or is it ongoing? Was this passion and need for a cause some how inherent in me, or a product of the environment in which I grew up?

Is atheism a religion?

I know I’ve briefly touched on this topic before, but a friend of mine and I were discussing it, and I promised to write a detailed post giving my position. He is of the mind that atheism is a religion, I obviously disagree. Given this, I thought we’d have some fun. 🙂 I’ll write my position out, then let him present his.

I feel semantics are at the very heart of this issue, and thus it is important to define what atheism and religion are. This sounds a lot easier than it is. I did a little research and there is a lot of really interesting disagreement as to what exactly religion is. The best definition I found was not so much a flat out definition, but a list of characteristics religions share. Some religions have more characteristics than others:

• Belief in something sacred (for example, gods or other supernatural beings).
• A distinction between sacred and profane objects.
• Ritual acts focused on sacred objects.
• A moral code believed to have a sacred or supernatural basis.
• Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of ritual.
• Prayer and other forms of communication with the supernatural.
• A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of an over-all purpose or point of the world and an indication of how the individual fits into it.
• A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the world view.
• A social group bound together by the above.

The definition of atheism is much simpler, it’s in the name a-theism, without god.

The Greek word αθεοι (atheoi), as it appears in the Epistle to the Ephesians(2:12) on the early 3rd-century Papyrus 46. It is usually translated into English as “[those who are] without God”.

My position is that while there are many characteristics that make up religion, the only characteristic that makes up atheism is the lack of belief in a god. That’s it, there is nothing else. Unlike religion, in atheism there are no universals. There is nothing that unites atheists like a universal moral code,  a universally accepted book, or a universal set of beliefs, or universal world view, or anything. When two atheists get together, the only thing they know that is universal about them is the lack of belief in supernatural powers. That’s where our associations end. Everything else is up in the air.

For example: Pretty much all adults don’t believe in Santa Claus, lets call them a-Santas. While all these adults might have a lack of belief in Santa as a commonality, you can’t predict other commonalities based off of this.  An a-Santa could be of any number of ethnicities, nationalities, political persuasions, hold any number of moral codes, etc. A-Santaism, just like atheism, is such a huge umbrella term that there will certainly be subgroups within it. These subgroups are comprised of people who have other things in common besides just the a-Santa or atheist label.

Subgroup A might have world view X, while subgroup B might have world view Y. Despite these conflicting positions and goals, they are both subgroups within the larger group, but one can’t look at either subgroup and ascribe it’s identifiers to the umbrella description. Are there groups of atheists who get together because they have similar world views, morals, and political aims? Yes, but those things care secondary to the unifying characteristic of their atheism. There are plenty of other atheists who have opposing views and do not join, but they’re still atheists.

——— My friend’s response:

My view is that a religion basically sees fault with some aspect of humanity and attempts to correct it in a way which is not based upon fact, but rather it is based on the “truth” which it’s members see. So for instance, Buddhism is a religion because it sees a problem with humanity (that of suffering) and tries to correct it in a way (adhering to the 8 fold path). In this way atheism is a religion because it finds some fault with humanity (that of believe in a god) and tries to solve that problem (by stopping said belief).

Although, it can be argued that atheism is not a religion, that it does not seek to actively try and solve the problem, activity is not a requirement. Trying to solve the problem is a requirement, every year you see more and more books, articles, and debates on atheism, it does seem, to me at least, that atheism has the aspect of religion which is required.

——————

But the idea that “belief in the supernatural” is a fault, and must be corrected is not part of what it is to be an atheist the same way believing Jesus is god’s only son is part of being christian.  While there are atheists who would hold this view, they are yet again a subgroup. There are plenty of atheists who think it’s perfectly fine for other people to believe in the supernatural; to them there is no fault that needs correcting.

“Although, it can be argued that atheism is not a religion, that it does not seek to actively try and solve the problem, activity is not a requirement. Trying to solve the problem is a requirement, every year you see more and more books, articles, and debates on atheism, it does seem, to me at least, that atheism has the aspect of religion which is required.”

This seems to be a contradiction.  “…activity is not a requirement. Trying to solve the problem is a requirement…” Trying to solve the problem is a form of actively doing something, which you say is and is not a requirement?

There is a very small group of very vocal theists who do believe that belief is a fault and needs to be corrected that also actively try to work towards that goal, but even if this active striving was not a requirement, the view that belief is a fault and needs to be changed is not implicit in what it is to be an atheist. Lastly, I think that definition of religion isn’t very useful. Any group that sees a fault in humanity and seeks to change it, actively or not. Back to my old analogy, adults may think that other adults believing in Santa Claus is wrong, and some might try and tell other adults not to believe, but does that make them a religion? Or how about something more realistic? Political parties for example! Groups of individuals who see fault with humanity (ie, everybody isn’t liberal/conservative/whatever) and some actively go about seeking to change that. (Others who believe the same thing might be apathetic and not actively try to change other people’s minds while still feeling they’re wrong.) Basically I feel that definition of religion is so watered down that it loses its meaning.

———————-

Ball back over to you 🙂

No reason to respect religion

Hold on. Before you flip out and write a million nasty comments, hear me out. This is a complicated issue so don’t just jump to conclusions.

So what do I mean by there is “no reason to respect religion”? Well, what is religion? Religion is a a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. A set of beliefs. People may hold these beliefs so strongly they would die and kill because of them, (unfortunately, some often do), but at the end of the day it is still just a belief.

So why respect a belief? Because they hold it so dearly? What if we applied this to something other than religion. Say someone had the belief that invisible mermaids held up ships to keep them from sinking. Can we disprove them? No. Do they have any evidence? No. Are there natural, alternative explanations that do not require the supernatural? Yes. Say this person believed as passionately about invisible mermaids as you might about your religion. Seriously, I know it sounds strange, but what if this person fervently, passionately, and emotionally believed in the existence of these invisible mermaids. Unshakable faith.

Would you respect their beliefs the same way you want others to respect yours? What if they attempted to pass laws that affected your daily life based off of their unshakable faith? What if they wanted to teach their beliefs in public schools that all children have to go to? What if they wanted to use your tax dollars to support their religious programs? What if they wanted to put up their religious monuments to the mermaids in public law buildings?

Would you respect their beliefs then? Would you show deference? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Now replace the mermaid analogy with your religion.

“But it’s extremely important to me and I’m offended that you don’t show respect! You’re being rude!”

Look, here is the important thing most people overlook. There is a difference between respecting a person’s unfounded beliefs, and respecting the person’s right to have them. You should respect a person for the human being they are, and respect their right to believe whatever they want, but just because they hold a belief very dearly does not mean you have to respect that belief.

Religion does not get a free pass. The ideas that comprise a religion are subject to the same scrutiny as any other idea. You have the right to hold those ideas, but you do not have the right to be free from criticism.

Keep it to yourself

Some might think that I hate religion. I don’t hate it. I think that it is silly and illogical, but I don’t hate it. What I hate with a burning passion is when people take their beliefs and then try to enforce them on those who do not have the same beliefs. I honestly think the world would be a better place if people just kept their beliefs in their hearts, homes, and houses of worship. That’s something worth fighting for.

But no, unfortunately there just seems to be a natural desire in people to control other people and enforce their beliefs on them. Take abortion for example. Just this morning I was listening to NPR and they were talking about how a group of catholic bishops were worried that healthcare reform might lead to support for abortion.

You know what bishops? If you’re not comfortable with women having complete dominion over their bodies, keep it to yourself and your flock, but don’t you dare try and enforce that on people who don’t subscribe to your views.

I feel that raising a child to believe they are a sinner and need an invisible man to save them from eternal torture is child abuse, but I don’t come into your church and tell you that, so stay out of my clinic.  You have no right to tell me how I should live, and you damned as well don’t have the right to force me to conform to your ideas.

How would you feel if you were in the minority, and a self-righteous majority were telling you that what you believe is wrong, and they not only are they morally superior, they’re going to enforce their beliefs on you! Hell! You’d probably fight tooth and nail for your freedom from their oppression.

Instead of killing each other, why don’t we keep our beliefs to ourselves? I’ll live in peace my way, and you live in peace your way. I won’t tell you how to do things, and you don’t tell me how to do things. I’ll keep my beliefs about banning Sunday school out of the government if you keep your beliefs about woman out of the government.

What would you fight for?

Lately I’ve been getting the vibe that people feel having a strongly held opinion is uncool. The idea that you feel extremely passionately about something sorta scares them and turns them off. At least, I’ve noticed this within my religions class.

This really irks me. There is nothing wrong with feeling strongly about something. There is something wrong with not feeling strongly about anything. I can’t stand the people who are totally apathetic, the people who don’t really care about anything and what happens. These people deserve whatever outcome they get for their apathy.

I won’t say they don’t deserve their rights, because they are human beings and those rights are inalienable, but come on. I would fight and die for my rights, would you? The thing is, I’d fight and die for other people’s rights too.

The topic of abortion came up in my religion class the other day. This is a topic I feel extremely passionate about. For me, it’s an issue of a human being’s sovereignty over their own body. I’m not a woman, but I would fight and die to make sure women retained the right to control their own bodies.

I tried not to let my anger get out too much. I didn’t want to seem insane, but the other people in the class were like “meh, whatever.” The really religious people in the class who were anti-choice talked about their beliefs and the bible, and how they felt abortion was wrong, even in all cases. I tried to point out to them that believing that was fine, but nowhere do they have the right to take those beliefs and forcefully apply it to the population at large. They didn’t seem to understand this….

The professor asked if there was any way we could make the two sides happy, to which I replied “Yes, if you’re against abortion, then don’t have one. The religious can live their lives the way they wish, and the people who don’t necessarily believe the same thing can live their lives the way they wish. No matter what, the religious do NOT have the right to forcefully rob a woman of sovereignty over her own body.”

This kind of shocked people that I was being forceful. I wanted to tell them not to fuck with me, because this was an issue that I would fight tooth and nail over. I think that would have scared them. I can respect the people who feel just as passionate as me yet with the opposite view, but I have the utmost disdain for those who just don’t care. They’re just the blind, deaf, and dumb masses floating through life going with whichever way the current pulls them. They have no principles to stand by.

Rules of the game

Apparently some people dont’ understand how reality and arguments work when it comes to debating religion, so I’ve decided to try and explain. An argument about religion has to follow the same rules that any argument has to follow. Some people blatantly try to ignore this, and it only hurts their claim.

Firstly, when you make a statement, you are making a claim. “I ate cereal for breakfast, I have $20 in my pocket, I have a diamond the size of a car in my backyard, there is a god.” Those are all claims. When you make a claim, no matter how big it is, you have the burden of proof. That means that it is reasonable for someone not to believe your claim until you prove it. We have this same idea in our legal system: Innocent until proven guilty. When someone makes the claim that you committed a crime, you are innocent (meaning the state doesn’t believe the claim) until they prove your guilt.

This applies to every claim that someone makes. Religion does NOT have special exception status!

To “prove” a claim, you need evidence. Evidence is support that backs up your claim. The more evidence the better. Again, this is valid everywhere in day to day life, and religion is not immune.

However! There are many types of evidence. There are 8 criteria to decide how good a piece of evidence is. They are:

Reliability, Expertise of the source, Bias, Consistency, Recency, Relevance, Completeness,  and Accuracy.

The more of these tests a piece of evidence fulfills, the stronger it is, and thus the more weight it carries in an argument.

Reliability: How many times has this been proven correct in the past?

Expertise: Is the source competent on the subject that it addresses?

Bias: Does the source have a stake in the claim?

Consistency: Is the evidence consistent with other data from the same source? (Internal consistency) And is it consistent with data from other sources? (External consistency)

Recency: How recent is the information? The more up-to-date the better.

Relevance: Is the evidence related to the claim? Does the data support the claim?

Completeness: Does the source provide enough information for a critical thinker to accept?

Accuracy: Are the citations complete? Are the sources of evidence fully identified?

Now remember! These tests apply to EVERYTHING we do in our day to day lives. A critical thinker is someone who uses these tests to access the validity of any and all claims. If the evidence supporting a claim is numerous and pasts these tests, the claim is most likely true. Again, we know this is true from day to day living. Religion DOES NOT get a free pass. It has to pass these tests just like everything else. Making a special exception to reason that can’t be applied to all arguments is invalid and logically dubious.

So lets apply this shall we? Christians often bring up the bible as evidence to support at a claim.  How does the bible hold up as evidence when put to the 8 tests?

Reliability? There are numerous times the bible has said things that were incorrect. List of scientifically unsound claims

Expertise of the source? The people who wrote the bible lived between 400 BCE and 600 CE. They had no knowledge of germs, evolution, chemistry, biology, physics, etc…so no, they’re not competent about the things they make claims about (namely existence)

Bias? Yes, the people who wrote the bible had a personal stake in it. They were writing a book that would become their religion. They wanted to put themselves in the most favorable light. Hence why god is so similar to an angry, jealous, misogynistic desert dweller.

Consistency? World renowned biblical scholar Dr. Bart Ehram points out that there are more inconsistencies in the manuscripts making up the new testament than there are words in the new testament. For a small list of 408 of them, go here.

Recency? Again, the bible was written between 400 BCE and 600 CE, it’s not recent at all, and the scientific and moral contradictions reflect that.

Relevance? Depends on how the bible is being applied to an argument

Completeness? So far it has failed all the tests up to this point. There is almost no evidence around today to support the biblical claims.

Accuracy? While we might know some of the authors of the bible, we don’t know the countless number or scribes that hand copied their words and changed things. Again, you must see “Misquoting Jesus”

After applying these critical thinking tests to the bible, it shows itself to be weak evidence, yet christians keep holding it up as proof.  It is important to remember that these are the rules we use everyday to evaluate all types of claims, be they advertising claims, your spouse’s claims, or a minister’s claims about god. Religion is not exempt from the tests of logic.

Defeating religion and arrogance

I was skimming some forums today about religion, and one user made the comment that “atheism is arrogant to suggest that it can prove that god does not exist…” This is a funny little twist of thinking. Atheism (and science) can’t prove that god does not exist. They can no more prove that god does not exist than they can prove that fairies, trolls, goblins, and unicorns do not exist. No, saying that you don’t believe in someone’s faith is not arrogant; claiming that you are god’s chosen people, and that you alone hold the keys to morality and immortality IS arrogant.

Another guy pointed out that nobody likes you when you insult their beliefs, and that you get more flies with honey. True, but what is an anti-religionist to do? For many people, merely questioning them on their beliefs is insulting, let alone calling them out on bullshit like 3k year old dinosaur bones on a 6k year old earth, or Noah’s ark, or all of us descending from 2 nudists in a garden with a talking snake, etc… Hell, for some the mere existence of an “atheist” or “anti-religionist” is insulting.  The problem is that we are fighting dogma, not ideas. Ideas are open to question, debate, they can change and evolve. For dogma, this is unthinkable. If dogma can change, then it reveals that those who made it don’t hold the keys to unalterable truth.

Another problem is that the faithful, since there are more of them in society, have written the rules of etiquette to prohibit the questioning of their beliefs. It is a major no no to tell someone that their faith is wrong. We are instructed not to question religion. But why? We can question a person’s politics, beliefs on the economy, and choice of favorite sports teams, but not religion? Given it’s bloody and horrendous track record, why does it get a free pass? The only thing we can do is call them on their bullshit. There is a favorite quote among atheists pertaining to just that:

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.” –Thomas Jefferson

The fact is, religion can’t hold up to science. Sorry. Religion said the earth was flat, that gods made thunder and sent rain, that it was their judgment that made people sick. Science came along and proved that the earth was a sphere, that thunder and rain were natural,explainable, and even predictable phenomenon, and that germs, not god, made people sick. Religion was born to explain the unexplainable. So was science. The difference is that religion is fixed in it’s answers, whereas science always tests and provides evidence that can then be replicated for consistency. The two cannot co-exist.

Yet this gives me hope. As an atheist, it is easy to despair when you see just how religious the world is. (Especially in America…) Sometimes it feels like the fight to ride the planet of the virus is hopeless. But take comfort in this, we’re winning…. How so you ask? Just look around you. Yes, there are still a lot of religious people, but every day science continues its triumphant march, closing the gaps in which god can hide. Every time science can explain something new, there is one less hole for god to hide in. Science has slowly been proving religion wrong ever since its inception. I think there is a reason why the future in so many sci-fi shows is an enlightened atheist future, free of superstition.