Atheism

The Tight Ties of the Body, the Mind, and Nature

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Warning: This post is new age philosophical bullshit, and I am not going to apologize for that. As I’ve done before, you can read only the first two and last two paragraphs to skip my nearly interminable (and nearly nonsensical) ramblings.

One thing that was always hard for me to understand, for a long time, was the angry, often violent reaction of theistic adherents to criticism of their beliefs. Whether it is a core doctrine or a minor verse, often the backlash seems to be wildly out of proportion to the attack; as a writer on the internet, I am familiar with that backlash (oddly, “writer on the Internet” feels as though it is completely adequate to explain why I have been targeted by this backlash). I am not going to blame anyone, I just want to explain what I have learned; unfortunately in hindsight this lesson feels painfully obvious, so if it has occurred to you feel free to skip it.

We all have multiple identities (please forgive me the philosophical leanings of this post), two primary of which are our physical identity and our ideological identity. The physical identity, the identity that people around us see and understand and interact with. The ideological identity is internal, it is a concept of ourselves we have formed in our own minds that contains our thoughts, feelings, ideas, our own perception of our own identity.

For some, these two identities are separate, and I would consider it a mark of emotional maturity to understand them as such. For what seems like the majority (though the study to give concrete numbers would be impossible by definition), these identities are tangled; whether atheist or theist, to attack the ideological identity is to attack the physical identity for the reason that the idea of the world view is used by the person to form their public persona. That bears some degree of explanation or example, as even my rereading it leaves me … Confused, at best.

To speak with many theists (and my experience is mostly with Christians, as a function of where I came from and where I live), the core of their world view is contained within the answer “I am Christian.” To be fair, it does give a very broad idea of what they believe; to speak with a Christian, one can make a vast number of assumptions about their political leanings and views, their understanding of the world, their purpose… These should, however, be tempered by the understanding that there are many levels of Christian, ranging from casual to fundamentalist. When the identities overlap (parts of their physical identity corresponding in a 1:1 relationship with their ideological identity), you have a sort of entanglement that results in damage to one identity being felt by the other.

When I say “I do not believe in the Christian God,” and list my reasons, this is not only blasphemy and apostasy, this is an attack on the ideological identity of some 2.18 billion humans (as per the 2011 Pew research forum on religion and public life). For many, my words pass over them like a gentle gust of wind; it may not always be pleasant, but it does not damage them. To others, it hits them (speaking from a hormonal level) with the same force as a strong punch to the gut. How does the human fight or flight instinct react? More often, when you have been physically attacked (as far as you are concerned), your fight instinct takes over.

The boon and blight of the Internet is that it does not allow for physical altercation, so people who feel assaulted respond in kind; they attack the ideological identity of their attacker. Often, as is the case with me, my ideological identity has no ties to my personal identity; attacks by the theist on my nontheism hurt me as much as the aforementioned gentle gust of wind.

If my body is the representation of my physical identity, and the soul the representation of my ideological identity, then there is a third identity outside of both that I believe is represented by Nature herself. Whether our body and soul are directly entangled or completely separate in our mind, they affect the way we see nature; for myself, an avid seeker of science, truth, and understanding of the nature we live in, nature is a mysterious entity to which we must bend. To an anti-theist, Nature is the avatar that represents god, whether they will admit it or not–it will garner the same reactions, when attacked, as a particularly blasphemous outcry towards a staunch fundamentalist.

Conversely, from a theistic point of view (and particularly from a very fundamentalist theist), nature is a beast of burden, one whose sole purpose is to host them until they achieve their True Nature, that of the soul. To that end, since the ideological identity is formed almost purely out of religion, Nature must be bent to their ideals. To study and understand nature, especially where it conflicts with the Word of God (The Bible), is to build a Neo Tower of Babel, to challenge the ideas of God. To that end, Nature is attacked, bent and bound, to fit the nature of The Bible. It is this attack on Nature that atheists (and, more vehemently, anti-theists) find so reprehensible that they will fall back into their baser instincts and attack with all the direction and thought of a bull who has had his testicles bound by the rope of a cowboy. It is not pretty, but (admittedly) it is certainly entertaining.

I think the way to bring this dialogue to an even playing field, we must understand where our ideological and physical identities tie together and disentangle the mess. When I attempt to use evidence to chip slowly away at the more reprehensible ideals of Christianity (such as the latent homophobia), I do not intend to attack the ideological identity of 2.18 billion Christians; I intend to remove the ugly parts of the soul whose sole purpose is to harm other souls. In order to ever achieve peace, we must recognize the parts of our own identities that inflict pain on others and look (deeply and thoroughly) at them, deciding if they are truly worth fighting over.

I am going to paint a picture, because I know this rant has made next to no sense and is mostly New-Age Bullshit.

Someone whose two primary identities are separate is like a man with a rope; the rope can be changed and shifted, tied into knots and untied, used for one purpose, restored, then used for another. When someone makes a statement that directly addresses your ideological identity, you can modify the rope to fit that idea, and you will not hurt yourself in so doing. If you do not like the way it has modified your identity, you can restore the rope to however you had it before, and move on.

Someone whose identities are tangled is like a man with a rope tied around him, looped and knotted. When someone makes a statement that directly addresses the ideological identity (the rope), pulling on any one thread will cause pain in another area of the body. Like a dog that is cornered, instead of accepting help, they will lash out at anyone who comes near, afraid that the only thing they could bring is pain. If they could disentangle themselves from the rope, we could speak freely, without hurting each other. I do not want to steal the rope and bend it to my will, I just want you to understand that changing the knots in the rope is not always a bad thing, and give you the opportunity to understand the joys of Nature and science as I do, without hurting you. So let’s all get along, body and soul, to forge a better, more peaceful world. Who knows, you may even like it.

The Strange Tale of Sodom and Gomorrah

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Edit: This post got even more rambly than usual. If you want a short version of it, check out the last two paragraphs; they contain a summarized version of my points, though you will miss my stories and incomprehensible wordenings.

The reaction to my post The Personality of Gods was predictable, of course, but it takes the ability to ignore a lot of the Bible to believe that the Christian God is a loving, wise, parental figure. The idea that God was surprised when Eve and Adam (order chosen for Biblical order) ate of the fruit of knowledge of Good and Evil seems to indicate a lack of prescience, but that point has been beaten to the ground. For an even better, more comprehensive idea of how much God loves us and can totally see the future, guys, is to look at the tale of Abraham, Lot and the city of Sodom.

When God announced his plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham stood and called into question God’s judgment. As per Genesis 18, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”

Read that a few times. That is a human standing up to God, and saying “You know, maybe I’m like… Not perfect, or whatever… But killing everyone, the good and the bad, just because there are lots of bad people? That seems like… Maybe… Kinda dickish. So… What say you tone it down a notch? Maybe?”

There is an extended bartering session between God and Abraham, then. God says he will save the cities if Abraham can find fifty righteous among the population, and Abraham eventually talks him down to ten. So God says “Sure. If you can find ten righteous people, I’ll let the people of the city live.” This always made me incredibly uncomfortable, as no matter which way I read it, this did not point to an omniscient, loving God.

Let’s take a look at it, walk around it a little, think about the implications. God lets Abraham, a person He … Loves? Is that the word? Anyway, he lets Abraham look for these ten people who are righteous. If he is omniscient, he will know two things: Whether those people are there, and whether Abraham will succeed. So what does that signify?

If God knows that there ARE ten righteous amongst the population of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham just has to find them, like some high stakes game of Where’s Waldo mixed with one of the Saw movies, then you are worshiping a God who seems almost sadistic. If God knew that there weren’t ten righteous, why would he let his chosen even search? Seems like a waste of time. Not only that, but God spares Lot, his wife (sort of spares his wife, I suppose? Gives her a chance? But why give her a chance if you are going to kill her in ten minutes? Again, seems almost sadistic), and his three daughters… So that is five people right there! Of course, God kills Lot’s wife who defies him and looks back at the destruction of the city (did he not know she would?). So we are now left with four. Aaaand… Lot gets pissed off his ass and has crazy Old Testament sex with his daughters. So maybe none of them are righteous?

So why did God save Lot and (most) of his family? That part isn’t suuuper explicit, but it is generally accepted in the reading that Lot was saved because Abraham asked God to save him. So it rounds out to something like God saying “Awww, don’t be mad Abraham. Hey, what say I save your nephew? Will that make you feel better? Huh? Yeah, yeah that’ll make you feel better. I’ll kill everyone in the cities except Lot. Can’t get a better deal than that, can you? But they’d better not watch me level those cities, or I’ll still kill them. I mean, fair is fair, right?” It sounds almost petulant, seems almost like God is trying to earn Abraham’s love, rather than Abraham worshiping him.

In the New Testament, we have the idea of The Rapture (while the word is never actually there, there is the idea that 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel are rescued from the end of the world). Oh hey, while researching this very topic, I read the etymology of the word Rapture. It comes from the Latin “raptura”, meaning “To seize, rape, kidnap.” That actually blew my mind a little, that the Christian population cannot wait to be seized, raped, and/or kidnapped…. BY GOD! Anyway, while the Old Testament God is usually very much on board with wholesale destruction, killing all people for the sins of some, and even explicitly sending all humans to hell for the sins of Adam and Eve, the New Testament God is willing to save 144,000 Jews! Oh, you thought He would save you, theoretical Christian? Given the stats provided in Revelations, you are probably out of luck. I am sorry to bring you this news. Where was I going with this? Oh right, God is willing to save some righteous while he burns the rest of us (the Rainbow Covenant in Genesis, at the end of the flood, said he’d never kill us all via flood ever again, so giving evil free run of the world, with burning, fire, demons, and gnashing of teeth is totally on board. But he’ll save a large group of people this time! Instead of 8, He will save 144,000, which admittedly is quite the improvement.

Now, using rough numbers, God saved 0.0000032% of the Earth’s population the first go ’round (given an estimate of 250 million people alive at the time, and having saved 8), and given the current world population of 7 billion and the number of saved at 144,000, that means he’ll be saving 0.002% this time, a thousandfold improvement! Such mercy! Such love! Such wise judgment!

I don’t know why, whether it be imagined or true, God is so willing to kill so many out of hand. He’s done it before, He promised to do it again. I do not understand why this is considered such a good thing, such a loving thing, such a wise thing. The fact that this is viewed with awe and reverence scares me, I suppose, because I think to believe in a God of Love requires being blind to so much of what is going to happen, what the Bible claims has happened.

It goes further than that; when science and modern Christians give Biblical Literalists a chance to escape, an excuse of “it was local”, or it was “Noah’s whole world,” for the flood, they stand in a position of defiance. “No, God killed everyone except 8 people! HE KILLED THEM ALLLLLLL!! AHAHAHAHAHA!” (I may have added the laughter at the end myself, but other than the laughter, that is an encapsulation of their belief, really.)

Their God of love did not feel he had to devise a targeted apocalypse; the God of Love just said “F*** ’em,” killed everyone, and started over.

And He plans to do it again.

And He loves us.

So, to summarize, I suppose; the God who can see all events of the future was surprised when Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, surprised when Adam did the same, surprised when His creation contained a bunch of jerks, surprised when Abraham tried to have the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah saved, surprised when people built the Tower of Babel (that is a story for another day, kids), and all of this surprise by the God who can see all things in the future as though they are happening before his eyes adds up to the fact that He thought it was OK to kill everyone, send them to a pit of eternal torture for the Sins of their forebears (Did you know that, according to the Bible, if a child is born out of wedlock that family line is cursed for ten generations to Hell? Deuteronomy 23:2. Seriously, if in the last three hundred years any of your family was born out of wedlock, you are going to Hell, even if you are the bestest, most worshippingest Christian history has ever recorded).

Anyway, please, tell me why you believe God is a God of Love in the comments. Please, please, please do. I do not understand, I really don’t. While you are at it, let me know why you believe He is omniscient, because he was pretty much perpetually surprised in the Old Testament, as far as I can read. That may sound sarcastic, but I really would like to have some level of respect for God, but the Bible makes it really, really difficult. =(

The Terrible Knowledge of Not Knowing

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I am pompous in the things that I know, there is no way for me to deny it. I spend a lot of time reading, learning, trying to understand the world and my place in it. Astronomy fascinates me, as it shows me that the universe is not a lonely place. Even if there is no other life, there is so much to see, to understand, to learn about… We don’t know a tenth of the physics that make our universe go. There are nebula that contain so much information, that look so beautiful, I could never be bored looking into them. I stare at the Hubble UDF–I’ve probably spent 50 hours of my life looking at that picture, just looking at it, and it is one of the only pictures I keep on the bookmarks bar of every Internet browser I use, at home or at work. Actually, without context, the UDF might just be another picture of space to you, so I implore you to read up about what you are looking at, if you clicked that picture. You can find the information here.

I am comfortable saying I know, to the extent that a human can know, a lot. I am no Ken Jennings, who has made it his profession to know things. I am no Neil DeGrasse Tyson, whose business it is to bring The Cosmos to the masses. I am just a man who tries as hard as I am able to try, to know everything I can know.

Thanks to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, though, I know that there is so much I don’t know that I can barely be said to know anything at all. I will die before we understand what makes the universe tick, I will die before we make contact with extraterrestrial life (though our current understanding of physics makes it, at the least, incredibly unlikely we ever will), I will die before we escape the prison of our own Solar System. It doesn’t matter how long I live, either; if I die tomorrow, or if I die in 70 years, the above statements will still be true.

We are, admittedly, making more scientific progress daily than we have in the vast majority of the last 6000 years (that number was carefully chosen, as readers of my blog may note), so perhaps I am just a pessimist. But this lends itself to two things; my complete lack of fear in death, and my terrible sadness at how much I will never know. When I die does not matter, of course, especially in the grand scheme of things; even in the history of Earth (let alone the universe), my life is so short that the planet will never know i was here, like a human aware of the presence of one particular ant. The Earth, as much as it can be said to be conscious (that is a metaphor) knows there are humans, but the details of any particular one of us are likely lost in the wash of billions of us.

I find it odd that no matter how far I cast my net, and no matter how hard I try to learn all that I can, I will always “know” less than someone who is confident in their religious beliefs. To that end, it can be said that I am jealous of people confident in their religious beliefs, despite the fact that I feel the Dunning-Kruger Effect is in FULL force on both sides. I know, through knowing as much as I can, that I know nothing. They know, through ignoring any information that would damage their religion, that they know far more than I do.

Who is right? Does it matter? Will it matter?

As I said, I am comfortable in the prospect of my own death. Mark Twain, a man whose “old man syndrome” I aspire to one live up to (the man was codgier than Scrooge, and seemed to take the happiness of others as a challenge), famously quipped “I do not fear death. I was dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

That being said, to the outside observer, it looks like I am afraid–I scramble to know, to understand. I fight to find out the answers to the questions that drive the universe, and it has to look like I am scraping frantically towards something I will never reach.

The reason I want Heaven to exist is not to see my relatives, not to live forever. To me Heaven would be, in the last seconds of my life, knowledge. It would be knowing how the universe works, it would be knowing if there is other intelligent life out there. I mean, I have faith that there is other intelligent life out there, given the vastness of the universe, and the recent explosion of understanding regarding extrasolar planets, I find it mathematically unlikely that we are all there is… But I do not know.

Heaven to me, more than any other vision of it, more than the most romantic notion of the most imaginative religious adherent, would just be knowledge.

Hell is where I am right now, a permanent state not just of not knowing, but knowing that I will never know.

That, maybe, is why death is so easy for me to contemplate. Even if I never get to go to a Heaven (and, unfortunately, I believe I won’t), death is an escape from Hell.

This post is mostly just me organizing some thoughts in my own head. I won’t lie, the previous paragraph is a clearer understanding, for me, on my thoughts of death than I have ever had before. I get to leave hell when I die.

Isn’t that nice?

Something Something Communist!

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You’ve seen this argument before, you’ve heard it, it is almost as far as being cliche, really.

“Hitler was Christian (or Catholic, your choice, really) and he killed Jews, therefore Christianity something something killing Jews is bad, m’kay?”

How about this one?

“Stalin was atheist and he killed lots of Russians, therefore atheist something something killing Russians is bad, m’kay?”

This isn’t a fair argument, for either side, but I understand where it comes from. While watching my favorite people in the whole world (Creation Today) they often speak about the “Atheist World View.” I know I’ve mentioned it before, but while watching some unrelated propaganda it occurred to me just how vehemently Christians will deny that Hitler was a Christian. It’s odd to me, because I am comfortable enough in my own belief system to be like “Yeah, Stalin was an atheist, not gonna deny it. But he was also an asshole.” (In my head, I use much stronger language to describe how despicable that man was.) In the same token, I would not find it in any way out of place if they said “Yeah, Hitler was Christian, but I don’t see why that matters. He was an evil man who was off his rocker.” (Again, language for the sake of keeping my PG-13 rating.)

It was only while thinking about the “Atheist World View” that it occurred to me why it is so important to so many people to deny that Hitler was a Christian, really. They form the foundation of their thought around the idea of Religion, and their interpretation of Religion, to the point where I am sure it actually does form the basis for every (or nearly every) decision they make. This is not to say all Christians do, but those that say “No, Hitler wasn’t Christian! HE WASN’T HE WASN’T HE WASN’T!!!!!! NYAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” Well, they probably do use religion as the baseline for all things.

But here’s the thing. Hitler did not use any mainstream interpretation of Christianity, so say it proudly, “Hitler called himself a Christian, but I think we can all agree he was batshit insane.” (Sorry about the language. I think I still qualify for PG-13).

Now we come to the “Stalin was atheist and that is why he was Communist,” or equal drivel. Look, again, we can all agree that Stalin was huge on anti-theism (certainly a word that needs its own category, outside of general atheism) and “Stalin Brand Communism: If you’ve got soup, you didn’t get it from us.”

To say “Atheist World View” to describe people who do not believe in God is, to take a page out of Hitchens, about as helpful as saying “I am an a-tennis-ist, because I don’t play tennis. And all of my decisions are guided by the fact that I don’t play tennis.”

No, I am afraid that is not how non-belief works. I am comfortable saying that some of what Stalin did was colored by his anti-theistic leanings, but non-belief does not color world views. Anti-belief, sure, whatever, you can have that one, but to take another quote, from Dawkins this time, “I am also an a-faerie-ist.” Being an a-faerie-ist has just as much sway and pull on my decisions as does my nontheism, in that it doesn’t. What colors my beliefs is empathy for others, my desire for happiness, and my desire that all people have an equal chance at happiness at some point in their lives.

So yes, Stalin was an atheist. But he was also batshit crazy (Do I get to say sh… I mean poo twice, and still get to be PG-13?). I think the fact that he was crazy had a lot more bearing on the Five Year Plan than did his atheism.

So to give a short recap, because I was rambling like a corpse come back from the dead (or was that shambling? Shit. Wait!!  Poo!!! I meant poo!!!).

Was Hitler Christian? In practice no, but given everything he wrote and said, history is very clear on the fact that Hitler himself thought he was Christian.

Does that matter? Nope. Because he was crazy, completely independent of religion.

Was Stalin atheist? Yup.

Does that matter? Nope. Because he was crazy, completely independent of atheism.

Is there a point to this article? I hope there is. I hope you realize you can be Christian, but also a bad person, just as easily as (I feel) I can be nontheist and also a good person. Two sides of the same coin, and all I ask is that we, on some level, understand each other.

Huzzah!

Another Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things

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Edit: Due to a faulty embed code, the video that was displayed when I originally posted this was incorrect. I have corrected the error.

I’ve recently come across Jaclyn Glenn, a moderately-highly popular atheist youtuber who is probably one of the most rational, level headed people in the atheist arena I have actively followed. Her primary focus is, to use my own personal definitions, nontheistic; she openly professes that she does not believe in a God (but does not believe there is no God; PARSE THAT!), though does have an anti-theistic leaning in many of her videos.

I occasionally delve into the comments, which are largely exactly what you’d expect them to be. There are Christians telling her to get saved or get killed or telling her she will burn for eternity, there are atheists telling those Christians to go perform autoerotic penetration (A kinder wording of “go f*** yourself”), or ceaseless autoerotic asphyxiation, as the case may be (that is my new euphemism for hanging oneself). This is nothing new on the internet.

But then I came across the video I have just linked, and she references some of the radical feminists that I have been reading from, and makes the absolutely spot-on observation that preaching for a reversal of the patriarchy (the matriarchy) is just changing the problem, and rather than radical feminism we should just be preaching equality. I loved the message, I loved her sarcasm and humor, and I love the idea of preaching universal equality (as she mentions, preaching universal equality is much easier than saying she is a feminist nontheist, pro-transgender, pro-gay rights, pro-red headed stepchild rights, etc,etc). Considering level headed equality is exactly what I have written about extensively in this blog, and since the reception of my posts that preach level-headedness has largely been positive, I thought “How bad could the comments be?”

This was naive of me, of course. I went into the comments and was struck dumb by the very first thread.

In the video, she makes reference to the under representation of women in politics. Regardless of the reason for it, you can’t deny that there are far fewer female government officials than there are male, and I would hardly consider the statement to be highly controversial.

It, apparently, is.

The first commenter notes that women have more voting power than men, therefore it’s women’s fault that they are under represented! My first thought was “When your choices are two male, conservative candidates, Caucasian in their 50s and 60s, you are obviously going to vote for a middle aged white male.”

Well, he attempts to refute that very thought by saying that fewer females seek careers in politics. In fact you, Jaclyn Glenn, aren’t in politics. The lack of female representation, therefore, is YOUR FAULT!

This wasn’t so bad, the writer at least had a good grasp of English, and the tone was not overly negative. I didn’t agree with it, I think that is a very negative light to look at it in, but then I went deeper. Never, ever go deeper. When you see the Balrog, turn around, friends! Turn around and run!

Two replies down, a commenter notes that “Have you ever tried to talk about politics with women?” The poster then proceeds to say that speaking with women about politics is a useless endeavor in almost all cases. My mind was boggled, as you are currently watching a video by a female political activist. I know many women very interested in politics. I didn’t want to throw around such a tired word, but I can’t see how that isn’t sexist. I just can’t find the right angle.

The conversation continues onward and eventually ends, as all arguments on the internet do, with both sides saying “That comment was worthless, go study.” The winner, in the eyes of each poster, is the one who says “Your comment was worthless” last, as, since no one called their comment worthless, it clearly wasn’t. There is another thread, though, that comes to the fore; pedantry.

They eventually have a war of picking only the slightest knits, saying “women and men can never be equal according to the definition because” genetics, or because they are naturally different, or because of any one of a thousand other reasons. You are, of course, technically correct while also completely missing the point. Implying it isn’t a goal worth shooting for because it is unattainable doesn’t in any way address the issues, and the core issue is NOT that men and women should be exact equals; the current world record for bench pressing is some 700 pounds. I do not believe a woman will break that record, even once genetic engineering and steroids have pushed men to bench press 800 pounds. This isn’t sexist, or at least I hope it isn’t, there is simply a limit to human endurance, and statistically that limit is different for males and females.

The point of the argument is that women, even in the United States, make 77 cents for every 100 cents men make for the same work. You are going to ignore the last part of the previous sentence if you are one of a significant portion of the population, so I will write it again; when men and women hold a position of equal rank with equal duties, in the United States (I do not have the Canadian numbers immediately handy) the female will make 77 cents for every 100 cents the male makes.

Why is that? There are, as always, hundreds of correlating factors, but a lack of gender equality and equal standards is very high up (and is a factor I would comfortably move from correlating to causal).

Let’s stop fighting over the simplest, silliest parts of an entire idea. It is like saying “I agree with 99% of what you say, but while 1% of what you say isn’t wrong, it makes me vaguely uncomfortable. Therefore, I will stand against you!” I can see where you might say that in regards to something more extreme, like “I believe in equality for all, except Jews. Gas the Jews!” But when the message is “I want equality and happiness for all!” and your first thought is “Well, I don’t know about her definition of equality, therefore I will go into the comments section and join in the other voices telling her that she is wrong!”, perhaps you need to step back and re-evaluate your priorities. If you still think your priorities are so strong, if you still feel you need to be a divisive voice even after a period of thorough introspection, perhaps a perfect Earth just isn’t for you. Perhaps the war and poverty and starvation and fear and hate are what you want! (It was subtle so I will point it out. See what I did there? I took a very slightly out of context thing you said about one simple topic, and applied it to everything about you!)

I don’t know why it is in this world, throughout all of history, that there are so many civil wars. Some are cold civil wars, wars of ideas and disagreement, but we all want the same thing in the end, I think. We really do. So why do we have to fight about it?

Humans Suck

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One of the greatest ironies in all of human history is those preaching greater tolerance while in practice are spewing some of the most vitriolic, hate-filled intolerance that you can read. Perhaps you will not see it that way, but being blind to oneself is a theme that has run throughout of all of human history.

One might think I am about to jump on the bandwagon of Christians commenting with hateful slurs on atheist and nontheist videos, telling them they should die, and saying how happy they are knowing that the atheist will BURN IN HELL for all eternity when they die… But that bandwagon is full of people. Yes that happens, and yes I believe those people need to do some deep introspection before they post another comment to YouTube.

What I am going to talk about is the opposite, and why there will never be peace on Earth even if 49% of the entire population campaign for peace, 50% don’t care, and 1% campaign for war. The reason for that is even among the people that campaign for peace, there will be those who do it in the most aggravating, horrible ways, giving the 1% who want war an avenue for attack.

I have been watching a ton of videos, as always, on the sides both of Christianity and of atheism, and the comments sections are almost perfect mirrors of each other. For every comment of “I hope atheists burn in hell,” on an atheist video, there is an equal comment of “ur an retarded christin and u shuid no ther is no god”. You know what, I want to say I am ashamed to be on the same side of the fence as people who would insult someone’s intelligence flat out like that for no good reason, but then I would be on the same side of the fence as those that profess a loving and merciful God (unless you are gay/nonbeliever/born in a different part of the world/woman/etc). What does it all round out to, then?

It all rounds out to the fact that I am pretty much ashamed to be a human. We are hateful creatures, we remember and stick to pain for much longer than happiness, and we seek our own validation too often from taking happiness away from others.

I do not want to make atheists out of Christians, and I think it is obvious I don’t want to make Christians out of atheists. Hell, if a Christian could restore my belief in God, I don’t think there is anything in the world that could make me happier, but I don’t think that is possible any more. Please, don’t let that stop you, though — perhaps it is through trying that I could believe again. I don’t know. I am not sure.

What I do want to do is to make people realize that everyone on both sides of this argument is a human being with hopes and dreams, with things that make them happy and things that make them sad, with emotions as rich and vibrant as your own… And what people on both sides are doing is spewing a corrosive vitriol that does not chew at the soul of the other person, but at their own soul. For every bit of joy you take from making someone else unhappy, you are sacrificing your… I wanted to write “humanity” there, but that’s not right. You are sacrificing your godliness and reason, and becoming more human, more earthly. For those who read the Christian Bible, I think you should not miss the reference to the Worldly man, here, for those who become Worldly are not of the Father. As it says in 1John chapter 2, renounce worldly things, for the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and pride are not of the Father.

For the atheists, it should be noted that by calling Christians names, and attacking their person rather than their argument, you are making yourselves look exactly like what the Christians knew you would be. You are making all nontheists look bad. You are making all atheists look bad. You are proving to Christians that without God, we are evil beings.

Elevate the conversation; Christians, love thy neighbor, atheists, prove that there is some good in humanity. I know there are good Christians and good Atheists, but the bad tend to shout so much louder. If you know someone who is spitting corrosive acid into their own better nature, talk to them about it, make them see (reason/God).

Until then, I will continue to try to renounce my humanity, but being as I am currently stuck as a human, I am having troubles with that idea.

Words are Hard

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You know what’s funny is how often people will use a word to describe themselves when almost no one can agree what that word means.

For the purposes of my own ongoing narrative, there are four words that people use, three of which no one agrees on. The first of the four, and the one that is easiest to define, is theist. A theist believes in a God or gods. A theist Christian believes in the Biblical God, for example.

Now we enter muddy waters, and what I am about to tell you is not a strong definition but my own personal use of the words. Let’s start with agnostic. This is a weird one, actually, as gnostic generally means seeker of knowledge, or just knowledge… So to be agnostic would, from an etymological reading, be a person who denies seeking knowledge. Like Astrology, however, the meaning of the word’s roots has been dropped over time, and now an agnostic is a person who does claim knowledge of theistic truths. That bears some additional definition, I fear.

It is sometimes said that a person is a “teapot agnostic”, which evokes the narrative of Bertrand Russell’s space teapot. Russell, a late nineteenth-early twentieth century atheist, once posited that there was a teapot floating around in space, and it was his right to believe in it because you could not prove that it did not exist. To prove that it did not exist would be to make a constantly evolving, exhaustive map of the entire solar system at all point simultaneously (the teapot moves, obviously). A teapot agnostic, therefore, is said to believe that the likelihood of God existing is comparable to that of the teapot; very unlikely, but possible.

Atheist, then, is a word I use to describe those that believe, actively, that there is no God. These are the people who tell religious people they are wrong, and that they should update their thought processes and stop being so… So wrong! I am not this thing, or at least, I would not describe myself this way. I certainly am not one who holds to the belief that there is no God.

Nontheist is a somewhat newer word, though I do not know the detailed etymological history of it. I know for a fact that it has been in frequent use since the 90s, and was used by Richard Dawkins in his 2002 TED talk on atheism.. But to me, it signifies something slightly different than atheist. To me, a nontheist is not someone who believes there is no God, or believes in a God, they are just someone who does not believe in a God. That… That is admittedly a very difficult statement to explain, and very difficult to understand, and it took me many years to iron down even the way I felt, let alone a word to use to describe it.

How to describe it without sounding atheist or agnostic? I don’t even truly know. I certainly do not have an active belief that there is no God. I am certainly partially agnostic, but not in the traditional “Could be or not could be,” sense. I just… Don’t believe there is a God (or, perhaps, a Personal God who cares what I think or do on a daily, moment-by-moment basis). I am sorry, even to me this is a deeply unsatisfying definition. In my head it evokes a wide-reaching set of ideas and feelings that I seem not to be able to put into words.

Anyway, words are hard. That’s really the point here.

On Inconsistent Scoring Scales

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Formal debate is not something to be watched by the masses. The problem is that, with a formal debate, the viewer is left to make their own conclusions on what they just saw, and each person will score it according to their own biases and views. This is, of course, by design — while trying to convince each other, you are also trying to convince the watchers.

Because of this you are left with a strange fallout to any debate, whether political, religious, or just about whether Goku and Vegeta could defeat every hero in the Marvel universe with only the two of them (obviously, they could). The fallout, though, is that you end up with figureheads on either side, trying to convince people who share their views that their side won. Obviously, both sides cannot “win”, there is no “win condition.” Perhaps one side persuaded more people to join their side than the other, but a score of 55-45 in something like a debate is not something that, to me, constitutes a win; maybe I don’t even want a winner, I just want more information.

I am going to choose a recently televised and WILDLY popular debate as an example; Ken Ham versus Bill Nye. Those in the Creation camp have said Ken won, those in the science camp said Nye won (statistically speaking, Ken Ham won the United States while Bill Nye won most of the world, just given various poll numbers), but I don’t know if either person really changed anyone’s mind. People already in the Creation camp were going into the debate knowing Ken would win, people who stood on the side of science had decided Bill’s victory prior to the debate, and as for Ham himself, he went in knowing Bill could not change his mind, and Bill went in knowing Ham could not change his mind. Hell, they didn’t even formally debate, now that I remember back to any of the formal debates I have taken part in (I was in Debate Club in high school), as they didn’t rebut each other almost at all. They made their own points, presented their own views (part one of a debate), and then halfheartedly spoke to the points of the other before answering audience questions. The thing even about the audience questions is that they each answered in their own way, again very seldom referencing the answer of the other.

But the interesting thing is what happens after this debate, or really any debate.

Creation Today dedicated two episodes of their show and podcast to telling everyone how much Ken Ham totally won. Reddit and 4Chan, two of the largest (but certainly not the only) bastions of progressive thought (and havens for atheists (alternate reading: echo chamber for atheists)) proclaimed that Nye won the debate so handily that it was as though Ham didn’t even show up.

I know I am not the average viewer, and the problem is that most people don’t bother to even look at the other side (the lay person certainly). The problem is not the figureheads, not at the root, the problem is a complacent population. Your average person in the Creation camp will see that everyone on his side is saying Ham won, and become even more entrenched in his belief that Creationism is truly the Truth and the word of God. Do you know what this means? This means that, just for having the debate, Bill Nye has helped bolster the Creation crowd. Conversely, the already science-based crowd will be firmer in their own beliefs. How many people changed their mind, or made their mind up as a result of that debate? I’d argue that it was a handful at best. That being said, if you are on the fence on this issue, I won’t lie; there is lots of charisma on the Creation side, and their data (at a glance) looks very convincing (though if you go and do independent research, you will find that it falls apart under close scrutiny, and that almost all of their science has been disproved (and I only say almost because we still don’t know how life started, not exactly)). If that debate found more converts for Creation than for science, a little bit of reason died in the world.

And that is why I think that one of two things should happen. Either you go Richard Dawkins’ path, and reject all debates (for what is the point if you know you are not going to change minds), or just take the argument off the table of “entertainment”, for that is what the Ham/Nye debate really added up to.

That isn’t to say stop fighting, it is just to say that we should stop fighting, but we need to make it not a spectacle of charisma but a war of reason, of minds, and of data. Data can lead to differing conclusions, but data itself cannot be falsified. Whether you say that the sediment layers in the grand canyon are evidence of a global flood or of a river eroding the valley over millions of years, you still have the undeniable FACT that there are layers of sediment there. And you know what? I am happy to let true geologists publish papers explaining how they got there; I am not qualified to say *how it happened*, but I am qualified to say that an OVERWHELMING majority of geologists agree on how it happened, and I am happy to listen to the near consensus.

You can side with 3% of scientists who disagree with the other 97%, that is a freedom you are certainly afforded… But if you are siding with that same 3% because Ken Ham (whose highest level of scientific literacy is that of a school teacher, which he will happily tell you) told you to, I believe you have erred in exercising your brain’s astounding capacity for discovery. You are not discovering anything, you are just doing as a parrot does, and echoing information told to you by someone who is incapable of forming an academic opinion on the subject. I will, of course, freely admit that I, too, am acting the parrot, but I am parroting those with incredible depth of knowledge in that specific subject.

The above is a deep reason why I believe that the battle between science and religion should not be a spectacle of entertainment, it should be a battle of the greatest minds, a chess match behind closed doors, and I believe that once the match is won (as I believe in some arenas it has been), the winner can be simply and easily declared by viewing not the match itself, but the chess board after game; seeing the player who has the other in checkmate. There is no argument, no speculation, no 3rd move guessing as to who will win in the end, just an outcome.

The loser will admit loss, the winner will declare victory, and it won’t be a spectacle any more.

But maybe I just want a perfect world, and maybe I am asking too much.

I am sorry.