Yup

Believers need to grapple with this

Why I am no longer a Christian.

Here's a good quote, from a guy named Nathan:

Even if we take the premise that atheism is religion, if you're going to call atheism a cult then you must logically, implicitly admit that all religion consists of cults. But then the starting premise ultimately leads to the realm of nihilism, a self-detonating position.

Religion is about the bigoted, prejudicial thinking that dismisses the lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary in favor of a given position.

Atheism is accepting the lack of evidence and considering evidence to the contrary. You couldn't get more opposite than that.

It's in response to this video by Richard Dawkins:



Another commenter brings up Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." You can find that on line here.

George H. Smith doesn't get quoted enough on the web

So, to rectify that, here are a couple paragraphs from the end (pp. 322-323 of the soft-cover, 1989) of Atheism: The Case Against God, which I'm pretty sure is the best book on the subject:

To be moral, according to Jesus, man must shackle his reason. He must force himself to believe that which he cannot understand. He must suppress, in the name of morality, any doubts that surface in his mind. he must regard as a mark of excellence an unwillingness to subject religious beliefs to critical examination. Less criticism leads to more faith - and faith, Jesus declares, is the hall mark of virtue. Indeed, "unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18.3). Children, after all, will believe almost anything.

The psychological impact of this doctrine is devastating. To divorce morality from truth is to turn man's reason against himself. Reason, as the faculty by with man comprehends reality and exercises control over his environment, is the basic requirement of self-esteem. To the extent tat a man believes that his mind is a potential enemy, that it may lead to the "evils" of question-asking and criticism, he will feel the need for intellectual passivity--to deliberately sabotage his mind in the name of virtue. Reason becomes a vice, something to be feared, and man finds that his worst enemy is his own capacity to think and question. One can scarcely imagine a more effective way to introduce perpetual conflict into man's consciousness and thereby produce a host of neurotic symptoms.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to shop

at the Barnes and Noble in downtown Minneapolis. Yes, I took a stroll down by the Mary Tyler Moore statue on Nicollet Mall. Yeah, it's a nice statue.

Anyway, I wasn't looking for it, but they had a display of atheist literature - I noticed a couple of Dawkin's books...Sam Harris, that sort of thing... But there was one book there that I've wanted since I first saw it in the Second Renaissance catalog back in the late '90s: George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God. [Oh, Heck! Here's the whole first chapter!]

So let's get right to the point (last four paragraphs of section VII):

Religion has had the disastrous effect of placing vitally important concepts, such as morality, happiness and love, in a supernatural realm inaccessible to man's mind and knowledge. Morality and religion have become so intertwined that many people cannot conceive of ethics divorced from god, even in principle -- which leads to the assumption that the atheist is out to destroy values.

Atheism, however, is not the destruction of morality; it is the destruction of supernatural morality. Likewise, atheism is not the destruction of happiness and love; it is the destruction of the idea that happiness and love can be achieved only in another world. Atheism brings these ideas down to earth, within the reach of man's mind. What he does with them after this point is a matter of choice. If he discards them in favor of pessimism and nihilism, the responsibility lies with him, not with atheism.

By severing any possible appeal to the supernatural -- which, in terms of human knowledge, means the unknowable -- atheism demands that issues be dealt with through reason and human understanding; they cannot be sloughed-off onto a mysterious god.

If atheism is correct, man is alone. There is no god to think for him, to watch out for him, to guarantee his happiness. These are the sole responsibility of man. If man wants knowledge, he must think for himself. If man wants success, he must work. If man wants happiness, he must strive to achieve it. Some men consider a godless world to be a terrifying prospect; others experience it as a refreshing, exhilarating challenge. How a person will react to atheism depends only on himself -- and the extent to which he is willing to assume responsibility for his own choices and actions.

But here's the real deal

See what you can say about this:

The difference that atheism makes to the world is it requires an acceptance of this world as all there is. It requires a rejection of all beliefs that if we commit moral crimes we can be forgiven by accepting a Jewish zombie on our death bed or holding a belief in a circle of endless rebirth that will give us a second chance. It requires compassion for humanity in the here and now because there is no belief in an abstract entity that will provide compassion for us. (Notice that this does not occur in the current world because the compassion of gods have been passed on to the compassion of the state, and it did not happen in past worlds because child-raising was so brutal the compassion was crushed out of the culture before anyone reached adulthood.)

But most of all, it is important because it is a rejection of belief structures that require lying to and terrifying children for the sake of abstract entities. Only with this fundamental rejection of violence against children will we have a world with peace.

Tha'ts the last comment, by Paul C., on this page.

From the same author

as the blog from which I clipped a comment in the previous post: "Ecclesiastes is by far the best book in the Bible. Of course most of the good stuff contradicts what the Bible says elsewhere."

His lists of "good stuff" are very well chosen.

Btw, this isn't on one of those lists, but if I'd noticed this verse months ago I wonder where I'd be now:

Galatians 23:13 And now as ye have been delivered by the power of God out of these bonds; yea, even out of the hands of king Noah and his people, and also from the bonds of iniquity, even so I desire that ye should stand fast in this liberty wherewith ye have been made free, and that ye trust no man to be a king over you.

Here's something interesting

In a comment on this article

Paul said...
What I find strange, is that it seems fashionable now for athiests [sic] to pronounce moral judgements on Bible events. Strange because these debates predominate in cultures which have been built on the Judeo Christian ethic in the first place. In other words, the origin of the morals used to judge the Bible came from the Bible in the first place.

As a christian - am I concerned about the 42 "children" ripped apart by bears and seemingly justified by God? Well, put it this way - as my tiny nation (NZ) rapidly departs from its biblical belief system 18 thousand tiny, defenceless children were ripped apart in their mothers' wombs last year (up from 11,000 in 1990). Which do you think I'd be more concerned about? 42 dead "children" justified by God or 18,000 justified by athiests?

You tell me - as my country rids itself of the shackles of what you think is such a barbaric book, shouldn't it become less barbaric? Believe me - all the statistics (including violence against and murder of children) are running the other way. How do you explain that? Look at countries that ban(ned) the Bible... notice an increase in justice and equity as they did? No. Actually the opposite is true. Two or three from last century come to mind.

If you gut the Bible of its major theme, yes, many incidents appear barbaric and make for great blog reading for those who don't want to digest the actual book. But doesn't any book deserve to be read in its context?

The Bible reveals a titanic struggle between good and evil for the stupendously precious souls of men and women. From the Bible's viewpoint the eternal destiny of every soul, loved by God, hangs in the balance.

The Bible contains many warnings (Matt 10:28). How loving would God be if He wrote a book which demonstrated no consequences for disobedience or wilful choice to defy Him, when such disobedience and defiance, if not turned from, would result in the eternal destruction of the soul?

Sat Nov 10, 06:10:00 AM 2007

And yet the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being could change it all with less effort that it takes me to blink.

Godless Goodness

for Good Friday:

You can celebrate Good Friday by celebrating the Good.

For those atheists who can see no way to make this particular holiday your own, perhaps you’d be willing to reconsider.

We hear about, and are exposed to, hatred of the good for being good. But what about celebration of the good for being good?

But I'd better let him explain. If that link doesn't work for you somehow, the article is called "'The Good' on Good Friday" by Jason Dixon - Apr 14, 2006.