Book Review, Part Deux: The Belief Instinct

More on Jesse Bering's book on the psychology of belief . "The Belief Instinct" continues harping on the issue of "theory of mind" throughout, but the points are interesting if not valid (I'm not one to judge).

Whenever I encounter a reference to the naturalness of belief, or basically any claim to the universality of some religious virtue, I want to hear about the unnatural examples.  This book delivers.
Toward the end of the particularly delightful chapter titled, "When God Throws People Off of Bridges," Bering refers to studies of autistics and aspies, and how their reactions differ from those of "normal" people. There are also studies of atheist reactions to "coincidences."  I found both of these particularly validating, as they prove my suspicion that though religious sentiment (or instinct) may be natural, it is not necessarily an accurate portrayal of or reaction to reality.

The surprising and uncomfortable result of studying atheist reaction to coincidences and unfortunate events is that we, too, want to believe in Fate or some guiding hand making things go the way they're supposed to.  He relates this to his pet theory (Theory of Mind) of course, but the very fact that atheists, myself included, feel a kneejerk reaction to these events says to me that 1) religious stories are the window dressing of human thought processes, not the other way around and 2) wishful thinking in atheists is the result of human psychology, not a suppressed belief in the supernatural.  This speaks to the "no true atheist" and "there are no atheists in foxholes" cannards.  Unlike less developed species and less-developed humans (i.e. autistics), most healthy humans not only survive by relating to the minds of other, but by hoping to find comfort and answers by reaching out to those minds.

Research has shown humans to be more susceptible to religious sentiment during trying times.  These are times when our usual social network has let us down somehow.  If you depend on your family for comfort and you get lost in a snowstorm, a fantasy creature that can hear your thoughts will make a fine substitute.  If your spouse has died, the person you would still feel an impulse to turn to is that same person whose death has distressed you.  Believing that your ancestors are watching out for that person will be a comfort both to you and to the spouse you assume will be equally as distressed.  If a tornado roars through town, everyone else feels the same way and they are dealing with their own traumatic stresses.  Enter the all-loving "Creator" (who allowed the destruction) they can gather together to pray to.

And speaking of Death... this is another feature of the Theory of Mind.  Bering cites studies showing that people have a very difficult time handling the idea that their mind will not continue after their body dies, a kind of theory of one's own mind.  He extrapolates this to the death of others, but I think that's the reverse.  We are utterly dependent on other people from our first breath to our last.  Christianity plays up the personal, but Eastern religious play to the theory of mind of others much more.  Ancestor worship and shrines to them play a role in some religions.  I think the difficulty of letting go of the individuals that have made our individual lives possible explains the belief in an afterlife much better.

Even Christians, who supposedly believe that souls go to Heaven or Hell, often want to believe their loved ones are waiting for them or watching over them.  My grandmother used to talk to my grandfather about the events of the day, even decades after his death.  I have heard people talk much more about their loved ones' afterlives than their fears or hopes for their own.  Angels take little children to God because he loves them.  (that one always makes me gag)   And then there's the Rainbow Bridge story, which has taken hold in a surprisingly short time.

I suppose these constitute what apologists like William Lane Craig call "properly basic beliefs."  He even cites the belief in the presence of other minds as a properly basic belief.  Craig tries to argue that some things are just so obvious that they can be treated as givens in philosophical debate, not debatable points themselves.  Alvin Plantinga makes this claim too (interesting video, even though he's full of crap).  Of course I find that idea that you can extrapolate from other humans existing to a supernatural god-human existing laughable, but with this Theory of Mind in mind (so to speak) it's a little easier to understand how Craig and thousands of years of religious thinkers have rationalized seriously irrational beliefs.

As an evolutionary psychologist, Bering believes this theory of mind is part of what gives humans a leg up in the survival of the species.  I can go along with that, and I appreciate the work of psychologists to study the phenomenon scientifically.

In order to appreciate the ease with which the people like Craig and Plantinga can convince people (and themselves) with such slim arguments I think we have only to look at a few logical fallacies.  The main problem with believing that belief in god is correct because it's part of human psychology (properly basic) is the fallacy called an appeal to nature or naturalistic fallacy.  The difference from the classic examples of natural = good is that it associates natural with correct, or justified.

We do unnatural things every day in modern society.  We fly in planes rather than walk barefoot to our destination.  We crap into the toilet rather than in the woods or over a hole in the ground.  We live into our eighties thanks to vaccinations, water sanitation, and antibiotics, among other things.  We wear glasses.  We eat Twinkies.  We blog on the internet.   Even the Amish will get into their horse and buggy and go into town on paved roads. 

None of us lives a truly "natural" life and we don't question it.  But yet when it comes to letting go of our cherished Sky Daddy and imagining our loved ones and ourselves truly becoming "dust into dust," then suddenly we (I mean "they") cry "properly basic" and "oh yeah? then where do you go when you die?"

Atheism is unnatural and difficult to get used to, but once you've freed yourself from the fairy tales, you find yourself wondering "Could I really have believed that?  How could I have tried so hard to believe something so false?"  This book gave me some answers to those questions.

And just as people are sometimes tempted to wizz by the side of the road or crap in the woods, we will sometimes revert to nature and wish a Sky Daddy or our grandparents were watching over us.  That's only natural.

Don't forget to check out The author's site, or read the book yourself.  I've probably garbled his message by putting in my own two cents. It's definitely a mind-changer, and I can imagine some minds being changed because I have a theory that other minds do indeed exist.

Bible verses make bad songs good... uhhh sure

"Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning" by Alan Jackson was sung on American Idol tonight. I'd never heard it before, and I'd never heard of him before, and I'm very very glad of that. What a stupid stupid song.

Stupid stupid stupid

The lyrics of the verses are tear-jerking remembrances of what "you" might have been doing (assuming you were a man) when you heard about the Twin Towers. So far so good. Everyday life grinds to a halt when something unthinkable happens. So far so good. Get out the hanky and prepare for a sappy chorus.

But wait.. what is this? The chorus is an uplifting Biblical non-sequitur. WTF?

I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith hope and love are some good things he gave us
And the greatest is love

So this song is really a celebration of religion-induced ignorance?  As long as you remember a few words from the Bible it doesn't matter if you're ignorant of foreign affairs?  And what did that have to do with September 11?

The song was premiered in November of 2001, so I guess it can be forgiven for being stupid in the heat of the mass stupidity gripping the nation at the time.  I found a lot of the "patriotism" post -9/11 really shallow and cheap and bordering on jingoism. Just wave a flag and put a pin on your collar and you're a good Amurkin. The same people who hated Washington & New York suddenly said "we" had been attacked. I was living in Texas at the time and it was sickening. This song reminds me of that, but there's something really sinister about throwing a bible verse into a song about a national tragedy without connecting the dots.

I was living in Fundyville, TX in 2001.  Until then, I got the impression that Texas was a whole 'nother country and they had no use at all for New Yorkers and anything in DC.  Then on 9/11 everyone's a New Yorker. I was devastated because I'd lived in both cities, and I was homesick for my friends.  Not to mention, I used to see the WTC from my bedroom window, so it was the first and last thing I saw every day as I opened and shut the blinds.  And I knew people who worked in the Pentagon. 

So I can definitely relate to the other parts of the song -- I remember where I was when I heard about the attacks.  But I don't get how you can say it follows from being shocked and sad that being ignorant and knowing a minimal amount of Biblical theology.

It's one thing for someone to be ignorant about foreign affairs and to have only a slim acquaintanceship with their own religion, but actually bragging about it in song is beyond me.  Bragging about it in the context of a national tragedy is downright insulting to the victims and to the rest of us who were equally touched despite not being ignorant Christian hicks.


p.s. it was a clever move on the part of the singer on American Idol, though.  Nobody's going to criticize his "song choice"

Proud to be an Atheist, by Dusty

He lives in Mississippi, and he's an "out" atheist. He lives his motto, "Be Brave, Bitches!"

An Atheist Catechism: Part One, The Questions Christians Ask

Christians who object to atheism usually demand that atheists answer the questions that they think their religion answers for them.  I imagine believers in other traditions do the same but I haven't had much experience with them.  Catholicism set the trend with the Catechism - questions and answers for young Catholics to learn. 

There are two problems with the dialogue between Christians and atheists.  The first is that Christians define the  terms and control the territory.  They have well-worn traditions behind them, but little experience asking the questions they should answer.  They only "answer" the questions they have been taught to ask.  There's also some psychological projection going on, in my opinion.  They have so little idea of how others think that they can't conceive of their preconceptions not being shared, only that the conclusions differ.  They seem very concerned about atheists' souls, as if they can conceive of not believing in a god but they can't imagine not believing in a soul.

They want us to have a list of answers that would be parallel to their Catechism (Even if they're not Catholic, they have one of sorts).  So I've decided to give them one.

I've come up with some answers to their (often stupid) questions.    Most of these are questions I've been asked, but I've also seen a lot of the same questions over and over on the interwebs. I think we've all been faced with most of these if we've been at all open about our atheism. My favorite online source for Christian stupidity is the archive of the Atheist Experience call-in cable access show.   (Check out the Atheist Experience blog too!) They get some loop-dee-loos, and they have great answers for the loonies that call in.  I bet there are plenty other zingers out there.  Feel free to add to my list in the comments section.   Part Two will be the questions I'd like to see Christians answer.

Q:  Where do you go when you die?
A:  When you're dead you cease to exist, so you don't go anywhere.

Q:  Aren't you worried that you might be wrong and you might go to hell?
A:  Everyone could be wrong, including Christians.  I don't find the Christian stories convincing, so no, I'm not worried about Hell.

Q:  How can you be moral without God?
A:  The same way that everyone else who isn't a Christian can be moral, and Christians too, for that matter.  Society dictates morals, not holy books, or else Christians would be stoning children that have been raped and giving all their money to the poor.

Q:  You're really just angry with God.
A:  You can't be angry at something you don't believe exists.  That's like being angry at the Easter Bunny.

Q:  You're really just angry at the abuses of the Church
A:  The church's behavior has sometimes been atrocious (so much for belief instilling morality) but whether the church is naughty or nice has no bearing on whether a supernatural deity actually exists.

Q:  The church has been responsible for great works of art.

A:  So has Greek mythology.  So have other religions.  So has opium.  Artists will be inspired by whatever stories they find in the culture around them.

Q:  How do you know the Bible isn't true?
A:  There's very little evidence to validate it, and what little there is merely validates a few names and places, not the presence of a supernatural deity.

Q:  Isn't it arrogant to presume you're right and all those Christians are wrong?
A:  Not any more arrogant than Christians believing they are right and all the people in the other 2/3 of the world are wrong.  And anyway, which is more arrogant?  Not believing in something unverified, or believing oneself capable of sorting out the truth from the non-truth of thousands of untestable claims?

Q:  You think you know everything, don't you?  (also: You think you have all the answers!)
A:  Atheism is defined as not believing in stories of deities.  It's not defined by what is known.  Some atheists are quite knowledgeable, which probably isn't a coincidence.  Many of us know the Bible better than Christians, and we know more about science than evolution deniers.  (Granted, that's not difficult to do)

Q:  Science can't answer everything.  What about love?
A:  Actually, neurosciences have established quite a bit of knowledge about love.  Like other emotions, love exists within the brain.

Q:  How do you explain the human need to believe in God?  God made humans different from the animals.

A:  While I agree that humans are different from other animals (humans are animals), the belie in god doesn't qualify as a sound reason for believing in the supernatural.  Evolution explains a lot of strange behaviors.  In the case of religion, there are several theories, mainly about social control and cohesion.  Check out this reading list or the books of Michael Shermer.

Q: What about the miracles of the Bible?

A: What about the miracles of all the other holy books of the world? They are myths, propaganda, lies, and even trickery. They are stories without confirming evidence.  Christians blithely dismiss the claims of other religions but are gullible regarding their own.

Q:  [insert seemingly miraculous prayer story here]  How do you explain that?

A:  Prayer has been proven not to work in medical settings, yet people continue to believe prayer can heal and protect.  Anecdotes about a person's prayers being answered are the result of the human tendency toward confirmation bias.  You will remember the "hits" and forget the "misses."  (or rationalize them away)  Not to mention, the people who were in life-threatening situations, prayed, and then died are not around to tell anyone that prayer didn't work for them, which creates a sampling bias.

Q:  Christianity has been around for 2,000 years.  How could it survive if it were false?

A:  The same way that Judaism can survive for 3,000 years and Hinduism can survive for 4,000 years.  It's a social system, with a lot of purposes besides telling the "truth."  Children are indoctrinated from a young age and the society is so steeped in the traditions of the religion that few people question the premises.

Q:  There are millions of Christians.  They can't all be wrong.

A:  Yes, they can.

Q:  Nothing can exist without a creator, so the fact that things exist proves there's a God.

A:  This is the "First Cause" argument.  Things come into being in nature without an intelligent being pulling the strings every day, so the premise is false.  Even if the premise were true, that would mean that there couldn't be a God because God would have to have had a creator.  And if God could exist without a creator, then so could the universe.

Q:  You can't prove that God doesn't exist.

A:  Of course you can't!  You can't prove a negative about anything.  So therefore, the burden of proof is on the theist to prove that there is a God.  What theists offer as "proof" is not very compelling:  heavily edited "holy" books, unverifiable personal experiences, and admiration for nature.  Atheists can feel confident that the odds of Christian claims being false are high enough to be virtual proof.

Q:  If you're an atheist doesn't that mean that you don't believe in anything?

A:  Not necessarily. First, do you mean "anything supernatural?"  It's possible to be an atheist and yet believe in a soul, or ESP, or some other supernatural idea.  Atheism is merely not believing in a god... any god.  Most atheists also happen to be non-believers about all claims of the superntural because those claims are as weak as religious claims, so you are partly right.  There are many natural things to believe in:  love, beauty, society, family, honesty, altruism, etc.  There's nothing supernatural about any of those.

Q:  If you don't believe in God, that means you want to be God.

A:  I don't believe in the Easter Bunny, and yet I don't want to be the Easter Bunny (at least not without collecting a fee from whoever wants me to wear a costume at the Mall).  You don't believe in Thor, and I bet you don't want to be Thor.  This is shorthand for the argument that you can't be moral without God the Big Brother eavesdropping on your thoughts and looking over your shoulder 24/7.  It's just plain false.

Q:  You just left the Church because you want to sin

A:  If I really believed in the concept of "sin" the last thing I would do is leave the Church!  Unless you're hinting that you can game the system and run around sinning until the very last moment then accept Christ as your Lord and Savior and have it all erased.  What has been considered a "sin" has changed so much over the history of the Church that almost anything a person does over the course of the day could have been considered a "sin" at some point in history by some religious group.

Q:  So then your life has no meaning

A:  Sure, it has meaning.  It has more meaning than yours, in fact, because the time I spend on Earth is all there is, so I want to make the most of it.  I value the people around me because we're all in this together.  I empathize with their suffering and I celebrate their accomplishments.  Those things have value in themselves without any kind of supernatural meaning attached to them.

Book Review: The Belief Instinct, a.k.a. The God Instinct

Jesse Bering's book on the psychology of belief was titled "The God Instinct" in the U.K. but released as "The Belief Instinct" in the U.S.  I would love to hear the story of how they decided to change the title.

This is a rare book that cites verifiable research sources and yet reads like something you could pick up at Waldenbooks.  I'll link to some of these sources in this review.

The book starts off rather tedious, but I didn't know a lot of this stuff so I stuck with it.  The main point seems to be that "Theory of Mind" (i.e., theory that others have minds) is behind the need to believe in some intelligence in the universe. 

The next section talks about the concept of having a purpose in life.   I've heard this argument many times from theists:  If you don't believe in God, then your life has no purpose.  Their purpose?  If they're glassy-eyed fundamentalists, it's to glorify god, or perhaps just worship him.  But in reality their purpose is to stay on God's good side so they won't go to Hell.  Ask a Christian sometime if they would still worship God if they knew with 100% certainty they would be going to Hell anyway.  I bet they've never considered that.   If you've never encountered such a theist, I suggest having a listen to this caller (Clifton) on the Atheist Experience.  He demonstrates both of these first two psychological needs perfectly.  Note that it doesn't matter whether any of Christianity is true, only that it supposedly gives one a purpose. Believers don't cling to their religions because they really believe in everything in the ancient texts.  They cling to them because these religions fulfill an existential need and they can't imagine going through life with that need unmet.

The chapter that particularly intrigued me is called "When God Throws People off of Bridges."  There is a remarkable history of people plunging to their deaths from bridge collapses, and preachers afterward trying to defend God's decision to dump them into the drink.

The first of these happened in Britain in 1845.  A crowd of women and children gathered to watch a stunt on the river below.  The bridge collapsed and about sixty children and as many as forty adults lost their lives.  The local reverend urged the grieving townspeople to reflect on their sins, which he blamed for the disaster.  (A local inquest blamed the design of the bridge)

Piaget's theory of the moral development of children to the rescue!  We want JUSTICE!  We want things to make sense.  We want some parental surrogate to sort out the good from the bad and mete out the punishment to those who deserve it.  This is somehow tied to a concept called "intentionality."  Things happen for a reason, and someone intended things to be that way.  When good things happen, it's because we're good people and we deserve it.  When bad things happen we must be to blame, and some supernatural entity metes out the punishment.

So... the more you suffer, the more you believe in God.  If you live in Northern Europe, you're fairly comfortable and you don't need God.  If you're unhealthy and living in poverty in Mississippi you're likely to be part of the overwhelming majority in that state that believe in God.  This whole thing also explains what I considered a surprising denouement in PBS' Nova episode "The Bible's Buried Secrets," that I reviewed here.  When the Jews were defeated and dragged off to Babylon, they became more religious.  It also explains the (false) idea that "There are no atheists in foxholes."  If you believe in your own religion because it helps you deal with existential fears, the fear of death would be the ultimate.  Psychological projection takes it into the realm of the other's mind (theory of mind again).  It's hard to imagine another mind that isn't like our own.

I'm still only halfway through the book but I thought I'd post this half-book review, seeing as I keep digressing into my own ideas anyway!

I recommend it for anyone who is tired of the Science vs. Religion debate.  The scientific method plays into this because of the studies the author cites, but it's about the psychology of belief, which I think is at the root of religion.

While you wait for me to get around to the rest of the book for the second half of my review, check out The author's site

What is the Square Root of a Tomato?

Secular Bible?

http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/04/a-c-grayling-writes-a-secular-bible/

Sounds a lot like the Jefferson Bible.  

There's some good stuff in the Bible.  Lots of things worth keeping for moral instruction.  Such as:

• Be nice to the others in your community (but it's okay to kill them en masse)
• Don't kill people (unless you don't like them)
• Obey your parents (until they become inconvenient) 
• Take care of your children (except when you kill them)
• Be nice to your neighbors (except when God tells you they're all going to die in a flood or some other act of genocide -- then get out quickly and don't tell them a thing!)
• Be a good slave, especially if your form of slavery is called "marriage"

Yeah, sounds good to me!

Bertrand Russell Interview

Very cool.  I especially like his message to future generations (at the end)

Angie the Anti-Theist Reads "Purpose-Driven Life"

She reads Rick Warren so you don't have to! Way to take one for the team!

Why Atheists are Angry: Ten Things that Believers are Doing that are Ruining the World

We're not angry at God.  You can't be angry at a fairy tale.  So if you are a Christian and this is what you've been told, erase it from your brain NOW!  But we do have a few gripes. 

Believers have been working hard at ruining the world of late.  We live here too and we don't like the way Christians have been doing things.  Other religionists are often just as bad.  So if you sense anger from some of us, it's because you've been behaving badly.  If you don't want us to be angry, try not being dicks.  You can start with these ten things:

These are 10 things that piss us off:

1.  Killing people.  Jihadists, abortion doctor murderers, presidents who believe they're on a mission from God... they all suck and they're all evil, and they all believe they're going to be rewarded for the horrible things they're doing.  So right off:  STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  Sure, some atheists kill people too but not for atheism.  For other reasons (which also suck).  But you won't see atheists flying planes into buildings or shooting people at church, and you won't see groups of atheists celebrating some horrible misdeed by a fellow atheist.  We want some of you to fuck off and die, but we're not running around offing you ourselves.

2.  Trying to make everyone else believe in fairy tales.  Stop sending out missionaries.  You believe in your fairy tales because some ruler eons ago decided those were the ones to believe and your peasant ancestors had to go along with it.  You may believe in some split-off version of it but that's basically it.  Scientologists, you too, even though you have different tactics.  And Falun gung - stop xeroxing pamphlets and handing them out on the streets of DC.  Secretaries and janitors can't help your cause and making them late for their coffee break at Starbucks just ticks them off.  Muslims: get out of the prisons.  Jehovah's witnesses: get off my front porch.  Mormons: stop dressing like 1950s ice cream parlor nerds and riding around on bicycles.  Get real jobs and make a contribution to society.  Sure, the First Amendment guarantees you have the right to do this, but you can't complain that we get pissed off at it.  We have our rights, too.  If you don't stop, we'll start knocking on your doors!

3.  Semi-universalist "tolerance."  Incredibly, people who believe in a god will respect people who believe in a different god more than they'll respect someone who rejects them all.  WTF?  That makes no sense at all.   Those other people disbelieve 99% of gods, just as you do, but one they accept is one that you reject and vice versa.  You disagree with them more than you disagree with atheists!  At least we agree with you about those other peoples' gods.

4.  Creationism/Intelligent Design.  If you really believe that evolution is "just a theory" and should be ignored, then please put your money where your mouth is and stop believing in the germ theory of disease transmission.  Stop getting vaccinated, taking antibiotics, washing your hands, and drinking treated water.   Let's see how soon you change your mind about what "theory" means!

5.  Claiming the rights to "family values."  Your families are no better than anybody else's and you know it.  You get mental illnesses and addictions at the same rate.  You divorce at a higher rate.  If you're predisposed to a hot temper you believe in "spare the rod, spoil the child" and if you're a softie you don't believe in hitting your kids.  It has nothing to do with religion!   You pick and choose what "family values" are in your religion based on the ones that you happen to like.  And too often your idea of "love" includes telling your children that an invisible magic despot is reading their minds and wants to send them to hell for having the wrong thoughts.  Then you perform a ritual that symbolizes (or actually is, depending on your theology) cannibalism.  Giving them Christmas presents makes up for this abuse for awhile but wouldn't it be better if you didn't make them afraid eternal punishment before they can even tell time?

6.  Bigotry.  The KKK and other hate groups claim that God is on their side.  'nuff said.

7.  Claiming your religion is valid because of the beautiful art it inspired. Hey, everyone's religion inspired beautiful art.  That proves nothing.  Bach composed non-religious music.  Michelangelo created Hellenistic artwork.  The art of Hindus is truly gorgeous.  None of that art validates religion as a whole or any particular religion.  So stop trying to claim all the world's greatest artists as your own.  If they got paid more to create art for their religion it's because their religion was a rapacious money-grubbing greedy abusive power within that particular culture.  Artists may have claimed to be sincere about their art, but wouldn't it be foolish of them to express an iota of cynicism toward their sugar daddies?  And even if they were sincere, that doesn't mean they wouldn't have been great artists if they'd been atheists.  They would have been just as talented and taken on different subjects.

8.  Telling atheists what we believe.  We've read your books, but have you read ours?  Here's some news: we don't have a catechism.  We don't have a list of questions we have to answer to be atheists and we don't have to answer your questions, either.  If you insist on asking me where I'll go when I die then I'll have no recourse but to ask you why the Gospels trace Jesus' genealogy through Joseph when he was supposed to have been conceived by God, or why it was okay for Lot to have sex with his daughters but not okay for his wife to look over her shoulder at her former home as it burned.  Religion only answers the questions it poses, and the questions beg the answers.  Not believing in a god doesn't mean we believe in "nothing."  Not believing in the Ten Commandments doesn't mean we have no morality. 

9.  Accusing us of being arrogant.  Okay, so many of us are smarter than you, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know bullshit when you smell it.  It's not arrogant to say "I see no evidence for religion so I don't believe in it."  It's not even arrogant to say that gods don't exist.  At least not more arrogant than saying that other peoples' gods don't exist.  In fact I think that believers are the arrogant ones.  Not only do you believe in something for which there is no validated proof, but you think that you're smart enough to have chosen the correct belief system, and the correct splinter group as well.  Okay, sure your ancestors picked it for you, soaked your culture in it, indoctrinated your parents, and they in turn perpetuated the indoctrination to the point where you have no sense of perspective whatever, but you picked the correct parents!  Well done!

10.  Going to Bob Evans after church.  I'm just waking up and I need a bottomless cup of coffee and a place to do some quiet reading.  Besides driving behemoth vehicles I can't park near, you take up all the good tables and the wait staff pay more attention to you.  Also, stop dressing up if you insist on doing this.  You make the rest of us look bad.  Sunday mornings should be mandatory casual dress day.  All my good stuff is in the laundry hamper on Sunday morning.  You don't want me stinking up your Bob Evans with my skanky weekday work clothes do you?  I'm getting paid to dress nice at work, and I sure as heck wouldn't dress nice for Bob Evans.  Their slogan is "down on the farm" get it?  Dress like a farmer!  (only cleaner).   And tell your brats to stop kicking my seat!

There are probably many many more things you do to tick us off but that's a quick list.

Note:  This post was inspired by The Human Ape at Darwin Killed God, though the anger is my own.

The Billboards are Coming! Oh Noes!!!

Coming to a big city near MEEEE!!!!! Indianapolis!!!!!

The press says they picked Indy because there are freethinkers here, but I think the truth is, Indiana is the most backward state north of the Mason-Dixon.  I don't really care why I'm just glad it's coming.  It's an in-your-face answer to all the ridiculous crap lining the highways of this backward state, including Rapture billboards.  Yes, we have rapture billboards.  I kid you not.

The message will get through despite ticking people off.  I love this message, in fact.  It's not anti-Christian, at least not as much as it could be!  And it shows lovely white people displaying family values - nuclear family, child loving and respecting his mother, doting daddy... what could be better?

I still crack up remembering the comment at work about a local atheist leader being "one of the happiest people I've met" as if it was the freakiest thing to find that atheists could be happy.  The conversation didn't get very far, though, because I said "I'm an atheist too, and I'm pretty happy."

One happy atheist =  freaky oddity.  Two happy atheists = what the fuck?  A whole community of happy atheists coming out of the closet = did my pastor lie to me?

Yes, Virginia, your pastor lied to you.  We don't go around raping, murdering, robbing, and doing drugs.  Well, not more than theists do.  Possibly less.

If you have empathy for your fellow human beings you are much much less likely to hurt them, and more likely to respect yourself.  A religion that is all about YOU and YOUR future deployment to Heaven or Hell doesn't create empathetic people.

Some of Jesus' supposed words seem to encourage empathy but plenty of other stuff in the Bible drowns that stuff out for the average believer.  Even the "missions" to "help people" are mostly about being good in Jesus' eyes, or bringing Christianity to heathens, or earning brownie points with fellow Christians.

If people are empathetic it is because it's an evolutionary advantage for the species for individuals to look out for each other.  We are the decendents of apes that helped each other out.   Not everyone needs to be a certain way for the species to carry on a beneficial gene (a fact theists just can't get sometimes), but enough of us will be empathetic for the species to survive.  It has to be nurtured but not necessarily by a church.  Loving parents are all you really need.  Loving teachers, neighbors, and extended family help a lot too.

I would even say we're the "real thing" when it comes to morality and empathy because when an atheist behaves ethically or compassionately it's other-centered and sincere.  We offer aid and comfort freely, with no strings attached.  We do it because we're happy and we want others to be happy. What better reason could there be?

Now *this* is "militant atheism"

Oh noes someone didn't want to pray!

Good for him for raising a ruckus and getting arrested! Going to court is just too damn expensive and time-consuming.  Let the fuckers know to their faces that what they're doing is unconstitutional and that not everyone in their community is a fucking Christian!

 I hope he doesn't have to pay court fees or get a felony charge.  If the meeting hadn't officially started, then what was he disrupting?  It's not against the law to disrupt prayer.  Ask Fred Phelps!

My Top Ten Grievances Against the Bible

1. Authority -- NOT -- it was compiled, copied, edited, codified and translated by men. Men with agendas. Over the hundreds of years it was put together there were perhaps hundreds of "hands" tinkering with the unalterable "holy" words.

2. Inconsistency. Two Adam & Eve stories. Two genealogies for Jesus. Discrepancies amongst the Gospels. Too many inconsistencies to mention, and anyway The Skeptics Annotated Bible did it already.

3. God's nature is fickle and inconsistent. He is forgiving or resentful depending on the situation. Sometimes he tinkers in the Affairs of Man and sometimes not. He wants you to follow his rules, but then there's the parable of the prodigal son. He made the world and all the animals, including people, and yet made all sorts of really horrible and stupid things. For instance, why do humans have "tail" bones if we don't have tails? Having broken mine I can tell you I'd rather not have it. If he wanted us to protect the useful parts of our spine in a fall, then why put nerve endings there?

4. Miracles. They have no corroboration outside of the Bible. They could have been faked or made up as propaganda or exaggerated over time. If Jesus really did walk on water, how do we know he didn't go there in advance and put a table just under the water line? How do we know there wasn't a sandbar there? And yet he couldn't make a fig tree yield fruit out of season, which would have been a more difficult feat than appearing to be walking on water. Couldn't pop the nails out of his hands and feet and jump off the cross, either.

5. Revelation. Dreams, voices, visions... they are all reminiscent of what today would be considered symptoms of psychosis. If they're psychotic symptoms now, they very likely would have been then, if they even happened. Primitive people can't be faulted for believing that dreams or migraine auras or psychotic breaks came from some supernatural entity, but we shouldn't believe them now. The opposite is possession by an evil spirit. Also mental illness that was misunderstood by bronze age superstitious people.

6. Scientific inaccuracy. God could have revealed the truth about the Sun revolving around the Earth, at the very least. All of God's words seem to be consistent with what humans would have known at the time, and not at all revelatory or helpful. Every human culture has a creation story. The Judeo-Christian-Muslim one is just one of many with no claim to accuracy in the least.

7. Similarity to mythologies in other Middle Eastern religions. Just a little too many similarities to dismiss. Mithras, for example.

8. Speaking of Paul, Paul's role is a little too important in early Christianity. He never met Jesus, yet he supposedly explains Christianity with authority. He has a completely different message from Jesus' supposed words. A lot of Biblical inconsistency right there. Why should anyone believe anything he said? None of it was of a nature that couldn't have come from psychosis, imagination, or calculation. If he was divinely inspired, he could have set people straight about the Sun, for instance.

9. The Book of John. Written much later than the other "gospels" and seems very biased. Coincidentally, "fundamentalist" Christians are fond of quoting John. They like his brand of Christianity so much that their whole theology would crumble if that "book" was taken out of the Bible.

10. Disturbing "morality." Over and over there are truly disgusting examples of God or his favorite people doing the most heinous things. The worst of all for me is the central tenet of Christianity: that Christ was sacrificed for the sins of mankind... all of us or some of us, depending on your denomination. This means that a "loving" God practiced scapegoating, punishing his one good child for the sinfulness of all the others. No actual sinning is required to be defined as a bad child, since sinfulness is inherited. Inheriting the "sins of the fathers" is also immoral. Other repugnant practices are portrayed without any negative judgment: war, genocide, polygamy, rape (but only of women!), and slavery to name a few. Then this "loving" God will send everyone who doesn't say they "accept" him to eternal fire and pain. What kind of "love" is that?

10a. Cannibalism. Yech! You can say it's just metaphorical and wine doesn't really turn into blood, but still, it's a repulsive practice and extremely barbaric. Early Christians already had the practice of baptism for the cleansing of sins, so they really didn't have to have eat their god in a repulsive ritual meal. That practice is also waaaay too similar to that of other religions to be taken seriously as a true historical tale.

I could probably come up with more but these are the big ones for me. Much ink has been spilt explaining the problems in the Bible. People get Ph.D.s in something aptly called "apologetics." They call the Book "god-breathed" or inspired rather than taking it as the literal gods-ear-to-man's-pen truth, because they know deep down it's really a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. To believe in this book is to believe in a God that's mercurial, vengeful, narcissistic, and possibly insane.

Or... you could believe that the Bible is just like all the other holy books of all the other religions, just a bunch of fairy tales with supernatural buddies and/or bullies as the main characters.

Some of my smaller grievances don't get much attention, but for what they're worth:

• If all of creation was 'good' then wouldn't Adam & Eve have been exiled to a pretty nice place?
• Why is it an "abomination" for men to have sex with men but not for women to have sex with women? Isn't that also homosexuality?
• Why was there no judgment against Lot's daughters after they got him drunk then got pregnant by him? His wife was turned into a pillar of salt just for looking over her shoulder at her former home. That seems a little harsh.
• If Jesus' conception was immaculate, then why does he have a genealogy traced through Joseph's side of the family?
• And the fig tree, wtf? Why doesn't Jesus regret his temper tantrum if he's such a great guy? Come to think of it, why did he smite the tree in the first place? Is this some kind of metaphor that a woman who won't have sex during her off-cycle will be smote?

BE NOISY! Because Christians are hard to get through to

ugh ugh ugh ugh:

http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/01/11/are-some-atheists-more-%E2%80%98religious%E2%80%99-than-they-realize/

So... it's not okay to criticize outspoken religionists, but it's okay to criticize outspoken atheists.

If I don't post for awhile it's because I've injured myself pounding my head on my keyboard.

jdsklfladfskjljdsklfjdfkjfdsaj

How Much does an Atheist Need to Know about Christianity?

In the United States, a.k.a. God's Country, if you're not a Christian, you best be sumthin' else or else.... They can relate to their kissing cousins in other religions, and on the whole don't really question others' "choice" of religion. But if you're an atheist, expect to be challenged.

First, there's the atheism catechism. Christians assume that all religions ask and answer the same questions, so they believe an atheist must have asked and answered them too. "Where do you go when you die?" "If there's no rules there's mayhem, so what keeps you from killing and stealing?" "So you think you're God?"

Next, there's the no true atheist fallacy. You just don't "know Christ" well enough, or in the right way, or you haven't tried enough, or you're in denial. When you're in that foxhole, atheist, you're going to beg God to forgive your sins and let you into heaven.... but you better do it fast because unlike us Catholics who clean up our sins weekly, or us Baptists who got one good scrubbing, you have a lot of truth-telling to do! When that final minute comes, you'll change your tune!

Then there's the "angry-at-God" fallacy. They get angry at God all the time. It's a constant challenge for them to handle the many many unanswered prayers and acknowledge God's seeming indifference. They pray for everyone who gets sick, and not all of them get well. WTF? Hey how come Mr. Jerkface down the street wins the lottery and my house gets struck by lightning? Why does my chain-smoking father-in-law cling to life at 90 but my 3-month-old baby gets meningitis and dies? Yep, if there were a God, there would certainly be reason to be pissed at him. Luck is a much more fickle God than even the asshole god who lets babies die (so their pastor tells them). So atheists couldn't possibly intentionally place more "faith" in luck! You'll get over your anger as soon as someone you love goes into remission or you get a promotion, they assure us.

The funniest ones are the professional theologians. I gave up dialoging with one when he switched platforms but it was fun to watch the mental gyrations it takes for someone who's actually read the bible and studied its sources to keep up a belief in it. It's rather too easy to make them angry, too. They've faced their doubts, the bible's errors, the political history of their religion, and all the philosophical conundrums their belief system creates, and they've stared them down. In a metaphysical game of chicken, they're way out ahead of the rest of us. They'll toy with us unbelievers until they get frustrated by our lack of education, then finish us off with the ad hom that we just don't know what we're talking about so we're not justified being atheists.

I always interpret this as a win on my part, of course. If I ask why Jesus has two genealogies if 1) the bible is inerrant and 2) the gospels are historical and 3) he wasn't a descendent of Joseph... apparently I'm showing my ignorance. *snicker*

Today I was talking with a co-worker about the church I went to when I was still trying to believe. The sermons were very psychologically oriented, which made it worth the trip, but I knew the whole time I went that I didn't believe most of what I was mouthing on Sunday mornings. After this discussion I remembered part deux of that experience: Bible study.

I went to Bible Study because I thought that if I just understood the Bible better, I would come to believe that all that stuff was true and then I'd be a real Christian. Alas, I asked the wrong questions in Bible Study too. The one I remember best is when I defended Pontius Pilate. It went something like this: If Jesus was destined from the beginning to be sacrificed, then Pilate must have been part of the plan, so Pilate was really carrying out God's will. Besides, under the circumstances, Pilate didn't have a lot of choices.

That didn't go over too well.

So... how much do you have to know? Do you have to know more than the theologian with a Ph.D.? more than a pastor with a seminary degree? More than your Sunday School or Bible Study teacher?

Shhhhh don't tell Christians, but if you don't believe the fairy tales in the first place the more you learn the more ridiculous Christianity seems.

One of the top apologists for Christianity is, in my opinion, on the ropes. He claims that belief in God is "properly basic," which means that none of the arguments against Christianity and God mean squat if you believe what you believe. ...I think. Sadly, I've never put my head so far up my arse as to be able to type in philosobabble, so I'll let William Lane Craig mumble for himself:




Yes, he really is as stupid as he seems:

How much science does an atheist need to know?

Over and over I see people claiming that the antidote (or antipode?) to religion is science, or perhaps the scientific method. For some of the Big Questions that religion is supposed to answer, that is indeed true. It's sad that so many religionists refuse to accept evolution as the answer to how humans became what we are, but if history is any guide they'll come around. Eventually they decided that the Earth does indeed revolve around the Sun.

The problem for theists, and especially Christians, is that even if they can accept advances in the "hard" sciences and biology, they cling to theology for the other Big Questions. And here they assume that because science threw out parts of Genesis that it will eventually displace everything else the Bible provides.

I think this science issue is why there seem to be so few female athiests. My generation was discouraged from studying science. In my case it was so extreme that my mother refused to give me permission to take AP physics & calculus because "what do you need to learn that stuff for? you're just going to get married and have kids." I also remember receiving such lovely gifts for holidays and birthdays as a Ouija Board, ESP cards, and other nonsense.

When I read blogs and books written by atheists the subject of Science vs Belief comes up quite often. I think you could easily throw out all the sciences and reject belief on your own, though the scientific method and a little logic would help get you there.

For instance, there are many religions in the world. Can they all be true? If you believe they're all true, then you are polytheistic, but most people reject at least some of the other religions as untrue.

If you want to take the position that some religions are true but not others, you need a basis for judgment. From the comments I've seen from theists posting to blogs, the most popular basis is the ad populum. Religions are valid if enough people believe in them. A billion Muslims can't be wrong, can they? So you could draw the line at 1% of the population or more being "right." Christians would of course make an exception for Jews because they are kissing cousins of Christians. They could dismiss Scientologists, Satanists, and Neo-Pagans without regret or further justification this way.

But the Judeo-Christian commandment to "have no other god before me" has been interpreted as "have no other god." So here we say to the Jew, Christian, or Muslim, of all the religions in the world, only one can be right. How do you know that yours is right? If you can't tell for sure which is right, shouldn't the default position be to believe they're all equally wrong?

Reading Randal Rauser's blog I found out that when pushed into this corner the academic wing of Christianity has resorted to calling belief (in their own version of religion of course) "properly basic." This means it requires no justification, just explanation. The everyday Christian resorts to the feeling they get when they worship or think about God as their justification.

While I respect their feelings, their position basically validates all other religions as well, since the adherents of those religions also "feel the spirit." It's not a big leap from "I feel the spirit" to "I feel something which I interpret as a spirit." So unless you're going to validate all other spirits and all other religions, there needs to be some justification for why only one spiritual experience is valid.

Some adherents get around this by acknowledging that other spiritis exist, but calling them "devils" or some such scary opposite of the spirit they like. This isn't quite like acknowledging other gods, since these devils' greatest power would be to drag the soul away from the preferred spirit. But it still doesn't say why one spirit that appears to be warm and fuzzy is superior to other warm & fuzzy spirits.

Coincidentally, the religious right a.k.a. evangelicals, rebel against religious "diversity," don't like having someone with the middle name "Hussein" running the government, and don't want their kids going to public schools. When faced with other religions, and seeing that the adherents of those other religions aren't trying to kill them, they have to admit that their belief is just one of many and not all that special.

Hassidic Jews and some Muslims also put their heads in the sand. In Brooklyn there are religious schools for all three traditions. The children never meet each other except in passing, and are instructed to not to talk to outsiders.

Religion can't exist without either a strong indoctrination program or cultural hegemony. It's a product of the human imagination, and the original stories are equal in validity to fairy tales or fables.

See? No science. One can conclude that religion is based on comforting fairy tales and promoted through cultural means, and that therefore one's own religion and those of others are all false, without any scientific background.

If you do decide that you have burning questions about the nature of the universe, you can read up on the best current thinking, bearing in mind that new information does sometimes change the "facts" as you learn them. There are books and wiki articles that aren't hard to absorb. You might need a dictionary for some of it, but that's part of learning and growing. But it's not necessary for non-belief.

"I don't believe" is all that atheism says about a person. There is no catechism, no reading list, no authority figure, no pithy quotations, and no sacred text. Being a "free thinker" is challenging, but it's also liberating. You can remain ignorant of some things if you want to. Christianity has its default position of "The Lord works in mysterious ways" to respond to the Unknown. My default position is "there's probably a good scientific explanation for this, but I don't have time to figure it out." Knowing that I could figure it out if I applied myself and had the inclination is much more comforting than imagining some fickle supreme being has decided not to reveal it for his own reasons.

Can an atheist pray?

In one of my former cities I had a friend who was in A.A. He was a believer of sorts but he said "We have atheists in A.A., but they pray." At the time I was trying to be a believer, and I was praying as part of that attempt. His promise that atheists can indeed pray gave me hope that I would get something out of prayer, if not a connection with a supernatural entity. I decided that even if it was mental masturbation it was mostly harmless as long as this "God" guy wasn't answering. I think if he answered I'd have worried that my family gene for psychosis.

A little while later I realized trying to be a believer was a hopeless task. I just couldn't accept the supernatural in any form and the religion thing was just one of many pieces of supernatural goofiness that humans had made up. But the prayer thing really did feel good and I do sometimes miss it when I have a hard decision to make. I can't for a minute think that "God" speaks to me and gives me an answer from "above" but being quiet and reflective seems to be helpful.

Part of my quest involved looking into "Eastern" religion, and I tried meditation. Curiously the effect is pretty much the same. Nobody answers but I feel more relaxed and sometimes make progress on a life issue. Have one currently, a life or death decision about my beloved diabetic dog. I have been feeling the urge to "pray" about this, and I'm embarrassed to admit it. Well, really meditation... still, it's embarrassing because I know it's 100% natural and in my head. We atheists don't talk about our mental needs. I think this is why we meet with such resistance.

My family wasn't big on prayer except when we were all together. Even at the time it felt phony and forced. Any public declarations make me snicker even now. We all knew it was really about convincing everyone else that you're a Christian, not so much about communicating with the Deity. If God can read your mind when you're coveting, He should be able to do it while you're praying. Still, it had to be done before digging into the Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey. Some branches of the family still keep up the pretense. Nothing wrong with expressing thanks, and thankfully, my family keeps it brief: God is Great, God is Good, and we thank him for this food. Amen.

Being puzzled, being grateful, being quiet... nothing wrong with any of these things. They're part of the human condition. Sometimes writing (like here) helps me sort things out. Sometimes talking it over with someone helps me come to an insight (note: in-sight not outside my head at all!) Sometimes I just need time away from my routine, such as when I'm driving.

Recently I figured out how to drop my unhelpful therapist while driving. Curiously she felt the need to tell me that she was Christian & that her whole workgroup also was. This was at my first meeting with her, and she promised she wouldn't hold my atheism against me. Of course I can't hold out for an atheist therapist in FundyTown so I didn't expect any trouble either. She turned out to be judgmental, talky, scolding, and bossy. Just a coincidence that a self-professed Christian was like that, of course. ;-) She seemed flummoxed by some of my answers to her questions. I sometimes went away wondering if we'd come to the point where she'd usually jump into religion. On her workgroup's website all of the therapist bios say they work on "spiritual issues." I snickered when I read that -- did that mean they would help people who had been abused by crazy fundies, or by crazy fundy issues? I'm not curious enough to ask, but it made me go "hmmm."

So anyway, I dropped the therapist just as I'd dropped the Sky-Daddy, but I haven't dropped self-reflection and talking to other people as means for finding "answers." I consult "facts" as well as my feelings. I won't always do the "logical" thing, and sometimes there are two competing logical choices anyway. In the end I'll consult my feelings and objective reality equally. It's probably not a girly thing to do this, but it's a girly thing to admit to it, and even be proud of it. I have made a few decisions lately that I can proudly say are both logical and emotional.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will admit to doing what "prayer" really is - looking inside my head to figure out what I want. The only difference is that I take credit for what I "hear" instead of attributing it to Sky-Daddy or his rape victim or their psychotic bastard child.

I find in the craziest of places that I"m not completely alone in being an atheist who admires the better psychological qualities of Thanksgiving and ritual in general:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/50690119-80/thanksgiving-says-holiday-god.html.csp

Unfairness on "Jeopardy"

Imagine you're a teenaged girl named "Hema Karunakaram," all-American non-white teen and possibly brought up in one of the religions popular in India or...?... and you've studied hard all your life and gotten onto Teen Jeopardy. You do well and make it to the semi-finals, competing against two anglo white boys. The game isn't going well for you but you've got some money to "bet" with... and then the Final Jeopardy category is announced: The Old Testament.

You bet all you have in the hopes it'll be something very commonly known. The question is "He was offered all the weapons of the first King of Israel but turned them down."

The answer you write: "Who is Moses?"

The answer the two white boys write: "Who is David." They come in 1st and 2nd.

http://www.jeopardy.com/minisites/teentournament-s26/videos/
http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/saline-high-school-student-hema-karunakaram-matches-wits-on-jeopardy-teen-tournament/

Should this girl have known this trivia about David? Should Jeopardy have even used this question no matter who the contestants were?

60/40 Split in "Nones" in 2008 Survey

In this study: http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf
a comprehensive study of religiosity in America has found that among people who don't profess a religion or claim atheism or agnosticism, 60% are male and 40% female, while the percentage of women in Christian denominations is higher than the percentage in the population. On page 11, the study says "These gender patterns correspond with earlier findings that show women to be more religious than men particularly in majority Christian societies."

I wonder if women are more religious in the African societies that promote female 'circumcision' or the Muslim countries that kill women who have been raped "for their honor."

Indiana, land of "In God We Trust" on license plates

I used to live in DC, and that's where I was living when I started this blog (and dropped it). Now that I live in the Texas of the Midwest, I'm encountering fundies again and they just creep me out. I was so shocked that "In God We Trust" is on half the license plates, and that it's the only free choice for tag design other than the state logo. I'll be registering my car soon, and I was dismayed to find that religious sentiments are not permitted in vanity tags. And coincidentally, there is no tag, even at a price, that says "Relax. There's no God."

Standard Tags: http://www.in.gov/bmv/2695.htm



...and in other news:

Atheists sue to stop 'In God We Trust' in Capitol visitor's center
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-07-17-atheist-capitol_N.htm

WASHINGTON — The nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday to stop the engraving of "In God We Trust" and the "one nation under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance in the new Capitol Visitor
Center.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based church-state watchdog group, claimed the engravings are unconstitutional and would exclude the 15% of
Americans who identify themselves as non-religious.

Uh... what? FFRF includes believers who don't want to mix state and church. Of course Republicans are the sponsors of the bill that supports the engraving, and Democrats don't want to offend independents, who are 85% likely to be believers.

Annie Laurie Gaylor represents FFRF in this article. All the Republicans lining up on the other side are men. Coincidence? Or is USA Today subconsciously referencing the Eve myth?