Confessions of a Catholic Atheist

Farewell

2011-08-18T15:13:00.001-07:00

Well, it had to end some time. I'm shutting down this blog permanently. From here on, there will be no new posts on Confessions of a Catholic Atheist.

But all hope is not lost, dear readers! I've created a new blog, one that seeks to do even more than this one ever did. My new venture is public. No more pseudonyms for me. I suppose the enterprising reader could quickly connect the dots and figure things out, but I'm not really worried about that anymore.

Here, I've been Dale. This blog was my outlet when I first became an atheist. Now that I've been living the godless life for over two years, I've become much more stable and comfortable. Thus, I've little need for a direct outlet to share my feelings of isolation. I've made atheist friends. Things are better.

I invite you to read my new work on my latest blog. I've transferred over some of the less personal posts from this blog, and will soon be adding more new content on a (hopefully) regular basis. My goal? To make a name for myself out there in the blogosphere. I'll never be as big as, say, PZ or Greta, but if I can get either of them to notice me, so much the better!

Thus I bid you all a fond farewell. It's been fun, but the time has come for it to draw to a close. Thank you for being a part of this project. I hope you'll join me on my next venture. Until then, be well.

the educatheist

Oh joy, oh Rapture!

2011-05-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

It seems almost inappropriate for an (occasional) atheist blogger not to write about the recent buzz surrounding the May 21^st Rapture. After all, it’s not every day that the world is allegedly supposed to end. For must people, anyway.

As you’ve likely noticed, it’s not May 21^st anymore, and the Rapture didn’t occur. Whoops. Big mistake on the part of Harold Camping and any others who helped him in crafting his apocalyptic prediction. Not that he or most of his devoted followers see it that way, of course. The Internet is humming with pieces about Camping and the Rapture: why he was wrong, what his followers are doing now, and, most prominently, slightly tongue-in-cheek posts and article starting with some variation on “Anyone still out there?”

I won’t be doing any of that. I’ve only a small bit to say on the topic, and then I’ll disappear into the nether once again.

One of the most fascinating parts of all of this for me is the media frenzy. People predict the end of the world all the time, but rarely does the mainstream news take the story and run with it. Perhaps this is the child of 24-hour newsfeeds and a viral-hungry populace looking for the next YouTube hit. Perhaps Harold Camping has enough of a flock built up that he warrants the spotlight. Which brings me to my next point: said spotlight was busy shining on the Rapture this past weekend, instead of other issues it might be focusing on: tornadoes in the Midwest, the conflict in Libya, volcanoes in Iceland, or even the murder trial of Casey Anthony or the continuing scandal surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

These are important things. These are things that are actually happening, to actual people. It’s a bit odd, really, that an event so few people believed would occur gained so much attention for the few weeks it did. It’s yet another case of non-news becoming news (celebrity gossip as news, “person-on-the-street” opinions as news, Donald Trump, etc.), and I find the whole thing horrifyingly intriguing. Why do people care so much?

Is it because secretly some of them hope it might happen? Is it because secretly some of them believe it will, despite knowing better? Or is it just a fun story, a vulnerable target for ridicule, like a comedic fountain into which anyone can toss a quip or one-liner?

Most importantly of all, why don’t more people ask the obvious question: is there a negative aspect to all this Rapture-rousing?

I say yes. First, the obvious: dozens of people drained their savings accounts, liquidated their assets, and left their families or friends behind in preparation for the event. Their lives, while perhaps not entirely ruined, are certainly changed forever. Imagine looking back on your life and realizing you gave up everything on the word of one very old man with a radio transmitter and a knack for speechmaking. Even if these poor victims get themselves back on their feet, they’ll always look back on that event and wince. They’ll know how far they went, and how close they came to the edge.

I’m speaking of the ones who leave the flock, of course. But what of the ones who stay? That’s the second danger. The subtler one. It’s not just these believers I’m thinking of: it’s the fact that we’ve validated their belief by speaking of it as a perfectly legitimate, reasonable course of action (or at least as one that few openly condemn as foolish). By giving Harold Camping’s Rapture a place in our news, we’ve legitimized it as a real concern. We spent hours talking about it, blogging it, Facebooking it, Tweeting it, and cracking jokes at its expense.

Why are we wasting our time with this? (he asks, and his voice echoes out to the furthest reaches of lolcats and failblog). Why are we handing a microphone to some kook who twisted his own delusional brain into a pretzel in order to concoct a rationalization for an almost certainly impossible event, and then received millions from those he managed to convince of his prediction’s truth? He does not deserve the megaphone, and the fact that he got it for a time shows the common denominator of American culture: we love spectacle. We love watching people make huge commotions as they spiral deeper and deeper into complete disaster.

This Rapture business is no different. It is, in effect, the religious equivalent of Charlie Sheen. But unlike the Vatican Assassin Warlock, Harold Camping’s Rapture isn’t funny, or even particularly clever. It’s just sad. Sad that people ruined their lives over it, sad that many will continue going along with the latest prediction (October 21), and sad that we lifted that charlatan on our media shoulders for a ride around the newsroom.

God-Given Purpose

2011-04-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

“I live to serve God.”

“The Lord gives my life meaning and direction.”

“I am His hands and feet on Earth.”

“The point of life? To know, love, and serve God.”

“I can’t imagine getting up in the morning without knowing I was made for a specific purpose.”

These sentiments took me no time or research to come up with because, frankly, I’ve heard them dozens of times. I may have uttered something like them at some point during my belief. In fact, I almost certainly did. When I was younger, I used to hold a firm belief that I existed for no other purpose than to serve my fellow humans. I was a tool in the hands of my Maker. There was nothing else I wanted or, as I thought at the time, deserved to do with my life. This viewpoint lasted up until the middle of college, when I finally began to think that perhaps I was getting stepped on by a few too many of my classmates and “friends”. That, however, is a story for another time.

The above outlook on life—and the problem of God-given purpose—is the topic of today’s post. What does that mean? Why would anyone want to hold that belief, and what effects does it have on their lives and the lives of those around them? Purpose is a huge topic, so I won’t get into more than the slimmest portion of its surface, but nonetheless: let’s explore.

Everyone wants their life to have meaning. Everyone wants their life to have a purpose. Without purpose, what is the use of living? Without direction, what does one work toward? Even the most hedonistic of lifestyles conforms to this rule, for the purpose of the hedonist’s life is to experience as much pleasure as possible. This is why they exist. Asking anyone on the street what the purpose of their life is will yield responses as varied as the winds. Overall, however, one thing is for certain: religion heavily influences the sense of purpose in the lives of Christians.

So let’s think about that a little bit. For many Christians, their life has only one purpose: whatever God tells them it is. To be more cynical, their purpose is whatever they think God is telling them to do, or more often, whatever someone whom they trust tells them to do from a position of authority. This view provides two very important things: a sense of direction, and comfort. But it’s intellectually unsatisfying, in my opinion.

There’s a lot of talk among Christians about giving themselves over to God for His use. The reasoning is thus: if God made me, He must have had a reason. My job, then, is to figure out what that reason is, and fulfill the purpose I was made to fulfill. For after all, I must have a purpose, or else God wouldn’t have made me. This is the question a Christian feels compelled to ask, and it’s a (somewhat) logical extension from the basic concept of creation: A tool in your kitchen drawer may look cool, but if it has no purpose, why did you buy it? Similarly, a person may be beautiful, talented, and charismatic, but if they have no purpose, why did God make them?

To summarize and/or get myself off this wandering track: Christians find purpose and meaning in their lives by doing what they think God wants them to do. They surrender their wills to their Lord, and act as servants in His service. Look no further than scripture for evidence of this view (Matthew 20:28 “In the same way, the Son of Man did not come to be served. He came to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many people”). Christians relinquish control of their lives. They discard the mantle of autonomy and self-direction in favor of a yoke of obedience. If God wills it, so it shall be. The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. I am at your service, my King.

But as an atheist, I have to ask the big question: why would you do that?

We subject ourselves to the wills of others all the time. When a friend asks me for a favor and I comply, I’ve subjected myself to her desire over my own. My actions are for her purposes. This is not a problem, nor is it abnormal. Where I find things strange, however, is when the lens zooms out to focus on the bigger picture.

If the purpose and meaning of your entire life is granted by the whims of an invisible God, and the only real way He communicates is through feelings you get when praying and a book written thousands of years ago… aren’t you reaching a bit? Isn’t that just trying to find meaning where none exists? Moreover, doesn’t that make your life seem… less valuable? Less important? Doesn’t that diminish you as a person with thoughts, feelings, ideas, and dreams? I find it all somewhat saddening, now. What has this person given up by choosing to follow the whims of a petty, jealous tyrant God? What could he become, were he to loose himself from those reins and run free?

I’ll try to put this succinctly, because I think I’ve drifted: Christians find purpose for their lives by letting God tell them what to do. I think that’s unfortunate. When I first became an atheist, I struggled with the idea that my life had no purpose, other than the purposes I set forth for myself. Once I accepted this truth, however, I discovered a remarkable sense of liberation. No longer was I forced to live my life for someone else’s reasons. I could do what I wanted to do, and try to arrange things in a way that made sense to me.

I was taught that “giving myself over to God” was beautiful. Now, I see it as a cop-out. Christians, you don’t need God to tell you to be good; you can just be good! You don’t need God to tell you where to go or when to go there; you can just go!

Maybe next time I’m in a snarky mood and someone tells me “I have a God-given purpose for my life”, I’ll retort with, “What, you couldn't up with something on your own?”

The Simple Life

2011-03-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

It’s been almost two years since I decided that believing in God was, like, totally for squares, daddy-o, and I wasn’t going to do it anymore. My life has changed a lot since then. One thing I can say for sure is this: I like it. I like being atheist. There are many reasons, and today I’ll briefly explore one of them: it’s simpler.

The universe is a complex place. Understanding its finer points is a task far beyond my capabilities. But that’s okay! I know that there are many wondrous things out there that I will never comprehend, and I’m not the least bit upset about it. No one is making me try to fathom how the universe came into existence, or how time can get all distorted by gravity and such, or how consciousness works. There are answers to these questions out there, and I have some idea as to what they are, but their nuances are beyond my current knowledge, and perhaps the knowledge of anyone. Nonetheless, there is a key difference between life before and after my deconversion: I don’t feel any pressure to try to figure these things out.

Life as an atheist in the big city is pretty easy. This is especially true given the fact that I live in a very liberal city—Seattle. My recent relocation to said township has caused a lot of unrest in my life, but I’m grateful for the fact that I don’t need to worry about going to church or anything like that. I work hard enough as it is during the week; I don’t need to waste even more of my free time on the weekend participating in some cult-like mumbo-jumbo. No thank you, I’ll pass on that.

Back to my point: being an atheist is just less mentally taxing than being a believer. Even as I write that I can hear the rebuttal of the theist: “Ah! So you admit that you’re just pretending God doesn’t exist so you don’t have to follow His rules! Checkmate, atheist!” Okay, okay, I’ll address you in a minute. Life is just better if you can live it without worrying about breaking some kind of obscure tenet set down by ignorant men thousands of years ago. I don’t need to wrap my head around why God would allow terrible evil, or how God doesn’t need a creator but the universe does, or why people who claim to believe in justice and goodness can perpetrate horrific crimes against others. All of that stuff is still there, but as a godless person, I can safely live my life without trying to answer those unanswerable questions.

I feel like I’ve drifted around my point here, so I’ll just end with this: I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t ask big questions or examine our lives. On the contrary, I firmly believe that we should look into our beliefs with care. What I’m getting at here is the idea that as a believer I was called upon to hold a number of contradictory and obtuse beliefs. I was never very good at compartmentalizing those things away; they always gnawed at me. As an atheist, I take time out for science and philosophy. But the time is my own. And if I’d rather just spend an evening playing video games, I don’t run any risk whatsoever of irritating a petty deity.

Argh, this post is confusing and random. Still, more posts more often! That’s my new motto!

On the subject of post frequency

2011-03-25T10:52:00.001-07:00

I recently realized that writing blog posts is a) time-consuming and b) stressful. Why is this the case? The answer is plain: it’s time-consuming because I tend to write long posts, and it’s stressful because I’m insecure about the quality/interestingness of each post I create. Naturally, I want to write things that people enjoy reading, and will pass along to their friends. There’s tremendous pressure on bloggers to be snappy, witty, and delightfully entertaining at all times. And while I’m certainly capable of creating texts of that nature, it takes a while. I simply don’t have the time to devote to creating posts like that on a regular basis, given the fact that I have a life and a job.

So, the solution? Shorter posts with greater frequency. Get some meat on these bones. Get that post counter up into the triple digits (eventually). Writing posts about things that I’m pondering, considering, raging about, or otherwise interested in is a good way to get myself in the habit of writing. In time, I’ll be able to create longer, more detailed posts with greater speed and skill. I’ll practice, in other words.

I make no promises, but it’s my intention to write more often. So keep your eyes here, because if things go well, you’ll be seeing new posts soon.

Ministry Secrets

2011-02-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

When I was a retreat planner in college, I found myself very frustrated by some of the things I saw within the school's Catholic ministry. I wrote a brief but impactful essay to a friend who was out of town, and today I discovered it again. This was penned on November 9, 2007.

Seriously [friend], I wish you were here. I really miss you. Being a good little Catholic boy is really starting to get to me. I’m feeling something distinctly non-Catholic coming on, and you are one of my primary sources for such behavior. I miss having you to keep me leveled-out and prevent me from falling too far into a system of rules and doctrines that I don’t really buy into. There’s been a lot going on in my head lately. I realized that while I may be wrong in what I believe, at least I’m not a hypocrite. At least I stick by my guns! Not like some of these guys I live with… all piety and humility out in the world of the Ministry, but get them alone and things stop adding up.

Everything is such a fucking performance with the Ministry! We all pretend that we don’t have these subversive, “heretical” thoughts, and we all keep quiet about the parts of our lives that don’t line up with the Church, but I know that everyone has skeletons in their closets. I’ve seen and heard it. We whisper to each other in confidence, behind closed doors. We keep each other’s secrets. Like the talented actors we are, we put on our modest costumes and play the parts of the innocent church mice. But just as with any theater production, the clothes and costume come off backstage, after the show. It’s all smoke and mirrors with these people! We spout lies scripted by the religion we all claim to follow without exception, and everyone plays his or her part wit the benefit of years of practice. I’m sick of it. I refuse to take part in this façade. Why can’t we all just stop bullshitting and act like the people we know we truly are? You’d be so proud if you could see all the quiet rebellions I’ve incited within the Ministry. I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not. And even if I’m wrong, at least I’m REAL! At least I know where I stand! At least I can run the race and say, “This is what I really believe!”

I envision a future for this Ministry where everyone is accepted as they are. Discourse is encouraged rather than silenced. The Church, our immortal, immaculate judge and jury, has been wrong before. There is room for a difference of opinion and understanding. Despite what the clergy profess, I feel that we can go about faith in more than one way. My views are not canon, but they’re grounded in an honest attempt to live in a way that’s true to who I am. I can’t change what I am and what my feelings tell me. Does anyone else feel the same? In the shadows of the Ministry hide others like me, other who understand this concept. Will we ever see the light? Or will the light see us?

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that people who profess such patience, empathy, and faithfulness can be so intolerant. They judge with their eyes and their superegos, knowing full well that their hearts cry out at the sight of a kindred spirit. Again, the theatrics get in the way of how the actors really feel. I think there must be more people in the Ministry who feel this way than I’m aware of. But we must all keep secrets.

The Ministry—and by extension, the Church herself—exerts control through guilt and isolation. We all have our crosses to bear, yes, but at some point the crosses stop adding up. Guilt is a self-imposed behavioral control, and therein lies its brilliance. We are forced to act the way we do because to do otherwise would be to admit that we did not—and furthermore, I think, cannot—live up to the lofty ideals of the Catholic faith. Thus, we feel guilt for our inevitable failings and isolation in our suffering, because to share the alleged wrongs we’ve done would be to invite the possibility of judgment, and furthermore, would be humiliating in the face of the others who are silent about their wrongs.

We all know that we all sin, but if no one says it, then no one is sure where anyone else stands. Each of us feels the lonely burden of being the rock upon which the Church is built; for although we all know in our hearts that we are not alone in our failings, we cannot rest without the verbal validation that other Catholics can provide. This validation is stunted and discouraged as form is social control, perpetuated by the Church herself. But I have started to break free! By identifying the system, I have already begun to exert control over it and claim exemption from it. I know there are others out there who feel as I feel. All I need is the time and courage to find them.

The Antitheist

2011-01-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

Last night I engaged in a very interesting debate with my girlfriend, who for purposes of unnecessary confidentiality I’ll call Sophie. Sophie and I started off our discussion on the subject of whether or not atheists (or anyone, really) should push their views onto others. Sophie pointed out that believers oftentimes irritated me, and that I spoke very negatively of them when none were around. I had to agree with her. I told her that I was still struggling to find equilibrium between allowing others to believe whatever they want, regardless of how I feel about it, and actively trying to change their minds about beliefs they hold that I feel are mistaken.

Sophie went on to say that atheism was a belief in the way the world worked, and had to be held with just as much faith as any religious conviction. I found myself unable to recall what I’d read in this article or others on the topic at the time, so I didn’t hold my own very well on that, but we did continue to go back and forth on it. We tussled round and round on the issue, trying to clarify ourselves and make our points as clear as possible. Sophie continued to make the statement that atheism was a belief, to which I repeatedly replied that it wasn’t. I used a few classic analogies: If atheism is a belief, then not playing chess is a hobby; atheism is to belief what bald is to hair color; and so on. She changed her tune a bit to point out that she wasn’t talking about all atheism, just my atheism. Now we were on a different track. She switched from the word belief—which she correctly noted is a loaded term—to paradigm, and I felt much less like we were arguing when that happened. Atheism is a paradigm, just as religious belief is. We finally narrowed things down to a set of succinct points, which I’ll attempt to illuminate below.

Sophie’s ultimate idea was that I wasn’t just passively saying that I didn’t believe in God. Atheism is a big part of my life. It’s a part of my identity. And through my actions and my writings I continuously make it clear that I very fervently believe not only that I don’t have a reason to believe in God, but that I have reasons to believe there isn’t a God. I countered back, saying that I didn’t hold any such beliefs; that as many of my beliefs about the world as reasonably can be examined had been examined, and I was living a life in which I actively strove to learn the truth about the world. But it was a losing battle, and I knew it.

Because what I realized, ultimately, was that she was right.

She drew the following brilliant analogy: I have a map in my mind. This map dictates how I look at the world, how I understand and solve problems, and how I interpret what sort of actions I should take. It’s the roadmap for my life. When I was a Catholic, I had a huge “Catholic City” on my map, and all roads connected to and wove through that locale. When I began the process of deconverting and eventually adopted the mantle of “atheist” (which, as I’ve stated before, was a label I deliberately chose for myself), I changed a few of the roads on the outskirts and swapped out a street sign here or there, but in the end all I did was remove “Catholic City” from the map and replace it with “Atheist City”. She leveled this final accusation at me: despite my claims of neutrality on the issue, I put huge amounts of energy and effort into disproving religion where I can, rather than letting it exist until it interferes with my life. I am not a passive atheist. I am an active one.

And that’s true, I realized. Where I am intellectually is not the same as where I am emotionally. On an intellectual level, I am a “weak” atheist. I do not feel that I have any good reason to believe in God or other supernatural things, so I don’t. If evidence comes to light to the contrary, then I’ll consider it openly, and change my mind if the circumstances warrant. But emotionally, I’m a “strong” atheist. I feel strongly that God does not exist, that God cannot exist. I have reasons to hold this belief, but it is a belief, and there is some amount of—dare I say it?—faith involved in taking that stance. I want to line up these two aspects of myself, but for now, I remain unable to do so. It is as she said: my map still has “Atheist City” on it, and I pursue the spread of atheism in a similar manner to the way I pursued the spread of Catholicism.

All the fervor with which I lived my Catholic life was simply transferred to my atheist life. I recall that when I first decided I was an atheist, I desperately sought out companionship and community. I talked to all of my friends about their religious beliefs. I read hundreds of pages of atheist blogs. I started my own atheist blog, to give myself a voice with which to seek out others. As a Catholic I had a very strong support network. As an atheist, I have pretty much nothing. Nothing that compares, anyway. And while part of me doesn’t mind so much—no more obligations to do things that I don’t want to do every Sunday—part of me misses that sense of belonging to a bigger group. Perhaps my urge to evangelize my atheism is derived from a desire to obtain that sense of community again.

The reasons why my mental and emotional states do not line up are not fully understood, at least by me, but I do have a thought or two. One is that I simply don't know any other way to be. Given the fact that I developed most of my coping mechanisms, mental processing techniques, and other such intellectual devices within the confines of dogma, it’s not surprising that I would struggle to find other ways to analyze problems and events. Another possibility is that I’m acting in this manner as a response to my past life as a Catholic. I was so deeply embroiled in the Catholic world… and now I’m out. I suspect the strength of my aversion and distaste for spirituality in general and Catholicism in particular is an attempt to put as much distance between my past self and my present self as possible. Much like the college-bound rebellious teen with strict parents, I want to be everything that the forces that once controlled me aren’t. I want to be the anti-Catholic. The anti-religious. The anti-believer.

The antitheist, if you will.

But what’s so wrong with that? Tolerance is still important to me. I would never want someone to think that I will not tolerate them simply because of what they believe. Yet my actions do not correspond to what I just said, at times. I occasionally make fun of or mock believers, as if I’m better than them. This is wrong, and I need to stop doing it. Those instances are few and far between; for the most part I am very courteous to believers when I talk or debate with them. I suppose in the end it comes back to the point at which the whole debate with Sophie began: I am still trying to find a balance between letting others have their beliefs and trying to dissuade them from holding what I’ve concluded are incorrect understandings of the world. I made a similar counterpoint to Sophie about politics—she’s very active politically—to the following tune: why do you try to convince the other side that they’re wrong? Shouldn’t you just let them believe what they believe? They have votes, she countered. Ah, I replied, but so do believers, and believers use their beliefs to determine how their votes will be cast. I feel that the differences between these two things are minimal; political beliefs can and often are held with as much zealotry as any religious creed.

The bottom line here (for I do so love bottom lines): I am a much more active atheist than I realized. Sophie showed me that. I’ve made atheism a part of who I am, a part of my identity, a part of how I see myself. I am Dale. I am an atheist. Where I still need to reflect and grow in understanding is in the realm of expressing that atheism to others, and what role it plays in my life. More contemplation is necessary on this. Stay tuned.

ADDENDUM: I asked my dear Sophie to read over this piece for me and give me her feedback. Despite my best efforts to recreate our argument in full, I unfortunately misrepresented what she said on a few points, and I wanted to be sure that I did not put words in her mouth. Here is what she told me, in her own words.

Quote: "Sophie went on to say that atheism was a belief in the way the world worked, and had to be held with just as much faith as any religious conviction."

That's not what I said or meant to say. I recognized a large difference in degree. Maybe I didn't communicate that thoroughly.

Quote: "I used a few classic analogies: If atheism is a belief, then not playing chess is a hobby; atheism is to belief what bald is to hair color; and so on. She changed her tune a bit to point out that she wasn’t talking about all atheism, just my atheism."

My response to this was that you weren't just not engaging in religion, you were actively engaging in anti-religion. And I wasn't talking just specifically about your atheism, but about your flavor of atheism. And I didn't change my tune. I clarified.

Skeptical Thoughts

2010-09-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

Let’s talk about skepticism. I just read a very interesting and informative blog post by the lovely Greta Christina (I assume she’s lovely; I don’t know what she looks like) on the subject, and it has inspired me to pen some thoughts of my own on the matter. Off we go!

I’m a skeptic about a lot of things. I didn’t used to be, though. I’ve always been pretty gullible (up until my last few years of college, when I finally started examining things for myself instead of buying into whatever authority told me). I’m probably still too trusting; I tend to believe anything my friends tell me without question, and it’s only after I walk away from the situation that I can do a more thorough analysis of what was said. Perhaps that’s the kicker here… I’ll come back to that. Anyway, doubting what strangers tell me or what the media touts as irrefutable truth or whathaveyou is a very important to me as an atheist. Why? Because that’s kind of the basis of everything I don’t believe.

I came to atheism because I developed a skeptical eye. For years I was a devout Catholic, taking as truth anything a priest, youth minister, or slightly more knowledgeable student told me. There wasn’t any reason to question things. But all of that changed when I started my studies in the field of philosophy. And as I began to learn more about skepticism, and the important role it plays in every area of critical thought, I found it harder and harder to ignore the growing philosophical problems with my own belief system. As Greta Christina notes, “My skepticism is what helped me see my denial in the first place.” I faced a similar revelation; learning how to think critically and privilege evidence over feeling is what ultimately allowed me to realize how deluded I was and stop believing everything people told me. Just like Neo in my (for now) favorite film The Matrix, I suddenly awoke from the simulation. I grew skeptical of not only the beliefs I’d been fed for years, but also the very fabric of reality itself. I was, for a brief time, a real-world skeptic. Is this moment, this now, really real? Is it really happening? Or are we all just hooked into machines, being tortured by Cartesian demons in Platonic caves? An unanswerable question. Regardless of the solution, it doesn’t do much for us to fixate on that conundrum; we have lives to live, and whether the world is real or not doesn’t change the fact that we experience real pleasure and real pain.

Apologies, I seem to have digressed.

Skepticism is important because it’s healthy, mentally. Delusion isn’t good for our minds. It’s like junk food. Skeptical, critical thought is to the brain what a regimen of healthy, natural foods is to the body, in my opinion. Remaining skeptical about the claims of others allows us to constantly utilize that all-important function of our minds, the function that differentiates us from the other creatures of this world: advanced rational thought.

But it isn’t always easy. Emotion can play a big role in the proceedings. Remember earlier, when I mentioned believing what my friends tell me without hesitation? I think this important enough to warrant deeper examination. There are two reasons why we believe things without evidence: because it’s easy, or because we want to. Oftentimes these reasons overlap. I think that when a friend or trusted individual approaches us with an idea, we’re far more likely to believe it without question because we already hold one piece of evidence in favor of the proposition: the person’s credibility. And we count that as something that supports whatever they said, no matter what the idea was. Perhaps this is the essence of the matter… see, that would explain why people follow authority figures at all!

Let me try to put this succinctly: if I trust someone, and that person tells me something, I tend to believe the person because I count the person’s credibility as evidence in favor of whatever proposition they’ve laid out. But that’s faulty logic! The proposition should be held up on its own evidence, not on circumstantial evidence. For after all, if that same friend went to stranger and gave the same proposition, what evidence would the stranger have for believing it? None. And what counts as evidence for one person should count as evidence for everyone.

This is getting confusing. I don’t really know where I’m headed with all of this; I suppose I’ve just been rambling, and I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. I hope my musings haven’t been too uninteresting. I’ll leave you with this final rebuttal to my above point: skepticism is important, but overusing it can lead to trouble. During my (very) brief stint as a real-world skeptic, I suddenly found that things that normally brought me enjoyment no longer did so. It was difficult and uncomfortable. Ultimately I found that it wasn’t worth worrying about, and that I should move on to more immediate concerns. Similarly, being skeptical of everything anyone tells us, be they friend or foe, is no way to live life. It’s tantamount to being completely suspicious of everyone’s motives. And while reason is an important tool in our mental toolbox, so too is trust. Sometimes we have to make certain logical allowances in order to live happy, productive lives. I don’t see trusting friends and family is a particularly dangerous game… but a little skepticism once in a while doesn’t hurt either.

Mission 2010

2010-08-15T15:28:00.000-07:00

I’m back. I survived. And I did a bit of writing while I was gone, although I wasn’t nearly as productive this year as I was last year. I think this is largely due to how novel atheism was for me a year ago. Now it’s pretty much business as usual; I’m not constantly thinking and wondering about it. I’ve decided to just put all my entries here in one place for your reading pleasure. No sense stretching this out into a bunch of tiny posts, right? Enjoy.

Sunday

I rode up here with the trip’s only other male chaperone. We talked about ourselves, our lives, that sort of thing. He really opened up to me; halfway through the trip he was telling me about a “problem” he was having with his daughter (also attending the trip). Apparently, she’d made friends with some non-denominational Evangelicals in her grade, and they were giving her anti-Catholic arguments and ideas. I advised him on how I’d proceed, telling him to give her the answers to her questions, but not to force her choice. It was really a deep conversation. I guess I’m easy to talk to, just as people often tell me. But I wonder… would he change his opinion of me if he knew I was an atheist?

I wrote a bit in my journal about today. I’ll write more here.

Can I do this? Three members of my family are here with me: my mom, my bro, and my youngest sis. They all know I’m an atheist. Does anyone else? I just wonder sometimes how people would react if they knew. Would they shun me? Stop trusting my opinions? Argue? I don’t know and I don’t care to find out.

I’m excited to see where this week takes me. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.

Monday

It’s funny how easy it is for me to pass as Catholic. I guess that comes from all those years of real Catholicism I went through. I can talk theology and prayer with the best of them. It’s almost amusing.

I'm in such a different place now. Last year I was confused about everything. I was trying to understand how I could even exist in a world without God. Now I've done just that for over a year (well, technically for my entire life, but I wasn't aware of it until last year). I feel confident in my decision to be an atheist. I feel reassured that I'm right, or at least justified. After all, I haven't been struck by lightning or stricken with plague. I'm still here. Still whole. And I'm just as happy as I was when I believed... maybe even moreso. Without all that unnecessary guilt and such, I'm able to keep my life focused on progress. I find that although my past still haunts me, it no longer holds such powerful sway over my actions and thoughts. Being here on this trip after a year of open atheism serves only to reaffirm my decision. I am an atheist. There is no God. And that's fine with me.

Tuesday

Nothing

Wednesday

Nothing

Thursday

I went to Mass at the migrant camps tonight. Had a conversation with the youth minister in charge of our group afterward. She mentioned how the more develop our program here has gotten (in terms of the amount of food and clothing distributed), the smaller the attendance of Mass has been.

It seems obvious to me why this is the case, but of course I didn’t tell her: their needs are being met. They no longer need to rely on prayer out of desperation. Therefore, their religious conviction is dwindling. It follows the same trend as countries do; the higher the standard of living and education, the lower the religious attendance.

Friday

Ugh, we're at mass and it sucks. This stupid ceremony, all this pomp and circumstance, used to awe and amaze me. Now it fills me with disgust. Every minute of this tired dirge is brimming with pointless accolades and Catholic mind control.

The priest just made a crack about historians. Apparently BCE (before common era) is the current way to denote the time period before year zero. The priest said "so called historians and scientists" objected to the use of BC (before Christ) and AD (ad domine, of God). Well duh. Of course we do. Why do we base our entire historical catalog system off the birth of Jesus (which, by the way, didn't happen in the year zero)? Some people regard it as the most important moment in human history... but those people are severely misguided. Bleh.

This trip has been really easy. I spent a lot of time talking the Catholic talk and walking the Catholic walk, but I knew I'd have to do that when I signed up. I think my lack of faith is much stronger now, after a year away from the supernatural. I'm not assaulted by doubts or wonderings anymore. I don't have that subtle fear of being wrong that I did last year.

As I said to Jesus, safely stowed away in the tabernacle: "You hold no power over me. I'm not afraid. Does that make you sad? Angry? Scared?" I'm happy as an atheist. And this mission hasn't so much as loosened even one finger of my grip on reality.

Saturday

nothing

Once More Into The Breach

2010-08-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Well, here I go again. It was just about a year ago that I embarked upon a weeklong trip in the midst of diehard Catholics, and now I’m preparing to do it once more. I leave tomorrow. That trip last year was, for me, the final challenge as I deconverted: could I remain a steadfast atheist in the face of not only physical labor but also an overwhelming Catholic influence? Could I look into the eyes of the men and women who shaped me during my early religious formation, knowing that I no longer believed any of the things they’d worked so hard to teach me? Could I handle being the only person in a crowded room who didn’t buy into the mumbo-jumbo being touted at the altar?

Apparently the answer was yes.

So why go back? Didn’t I suffer enough the last time? Haven’t I had my fill of awkwardness and discomfort? Well, yes and no. I’m exaggerating how awful it was; no one really knew I was an atheist at that point, so most of the tension was in my head. But this year I’m out in the open. I’m not hiding anymore. And that means someone could (and perhaps will) call me on it.

I’m not scared. In fact, I kind of hope someone does call me on it. Preferably in private: I’ll be unable to make any headway whatsoever in a public setting with the deck stacked so heavily against me. But whether anyone does or not, I’m very aware that people know. I mean, I shouldn't care. I don’t care. But it’s still a bit difficult to go along with prayers and mass and such (or as I like to call it, “let’s play make-believe”) when other people know I’m faking it.

I fully expect to have a great time. I don’t think anything will go awry and I feel confident that I can outwit or stalemate anyone who tries to discuss their beliefs with me. I just wanted to leave this little primer here, and a teaser as well: I’ll be hand writing entries during the week, and I’ll backdate them into this blog when I return. So now you have something to look forward to!

See you in a week. Wish me luck!

Been A While

2010-05-23T22:46:00.001-07:00

Been a while, hasn’t it? There I was, all rip-roarin’ to go. Had a few posts under my belt, was eagerly reading every blog I could and posting comments where I dared. Then suddenly: nothing. Poof. Vanished, like smoke in the wind. I turned invisible, yes, but like the God I once believed in I promised that I was still hiding somewhere in the background, waiting for the proper moment to emerge.

And the moment is now! Ha ha! Well, now-ish I guess. I can’t guarantee that any more posts will be forthcoming, but at least I’m making an effort. Not that I’ve yet developed any readership, really. A scattered few at best. Still, I press on, for after all, this blog is as much my outlet as it is for others to read.

I recall that the last time I wrote was in mid-December. It’s now almost June, which means it’s getting on toward six months. What’ve I been up to? Working. Getting my life together. In the post-college slump that I find myself in, I’ve needed to devote a lot of time to pressing matters of economic and romantic importance (which is to say, getting a job and finding a girl). Alas, I am but one man, and something had to go to make room for these other issues.

But I haven’t forgotten about atheism and what it means to me. The liberation I’ve felt in the year since I became an atheist still astounds me. No more time wasted with prayers when I could be doing something more productive. No more fear of punishment for believing the wrong thing or failing to adhere to some obscure, unknown tenet. No more guilt over trivial “sins”. Along these lines, I’ve admittedly had someone throw the “you’re pretending there isn’t a God so you can do evil things and not be punished” argument in my face. Uh, no. I don’t need your God’s rules and laws to guide me—which, I might add, are really just projections of your own ideas about what’s right and wrong—and, in fact, I never really did. Even when I was a believer, I still generally did what I felt was right, which in a few cases conflicted with what I’d been told by the Church.

I’ve had some discussions with believer friends over matters of faith and I must say I’ve held my own pretty well. Those hours spent poring over articles and blog posts were not wasted. After coming out as an atheist, I thought I’d be under assault from all sides, but surprisingly that wasn’t the case. Most people either didn’t notice, didn’t care, or were too afraid to bring it up. Regardless, only one friend actually rang me up and gave me the third degree about it. That was an interesting evening. I think we’ve reached a bit of a standoff: she thinks I had a bad experience in college and I’ll come back to the faith in five or ten years, and I think she’s so desperate to believe in some kind of higher power that she’ll redefine “God” to slip and squeeze out of any logical sleeper hold I might wrassle him into. And that’s fine. Whatever she wants to do.

This entry has been a bit… rambling. Apologies. Guess I’ve just got a lot on my mind, and no focus whatsoever. I won’t swear that another entry is on the horizon… but I think my non-faith will become a matter of greater interest to me in the near future, and perhaps that will motivate me to write more. We’ll see.

RE: Dominion

2009-12-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a while since I posted anything in here, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. I’ve been busy with the holidays. You know how it is. I hope to have some posts about Christmas to throw at you soon, but in the meantime, I want to give you something to hold you over. So how about this: A comment on one of my old entries, and my reply! The thrills never end. Let’s get to it!

Original Post

Robert Walker said...

You are correct, in a way. We do indeed have dominion over all the earth. And, we may at times want to control all of it. But what should separate us from "beastly protocol" is a central value system. Hence, the rest of the bible. I'm sure if man "ruled" his "dominion" as God stated within Genesis, we would be fine. But we have strayed from that "value system" via independant "higher thinking" most of which end in "isms" (Socialism, Atheism, Denialism, etc).. Once we started "managing" the earth, as God intended, out of our own "wisdom" instead of by HIS value system, things did indeed begin to "go to hell in a handbasket." So I do indeed agree with yo my friend..

December 1, 2009 6:52 AM

My reply:

@Robert Walker: Thanks for your comment. A few questions for you, if I may?

"But what should separate us from "beastly protocol" is a central value system. Hence, the rest of the bible."

Right off the bat, I want to know: Why the Bible over, say, the Koran? I know you'll probably tell me it's because the Bible is true and other books aren't, but I have no reason to agree with you unless you provide some evidence.

"I'm sure if man "ruled" his "dominion" as God stated within Genesis, we would be fine. But we have strayed from that "value system"..."

Excessive quotation marks aside, can you be a bit more specific about what God tells us in Genesis with regard to taking care of the Earth? As far as I am aware, the story goes that God made this awesome garden, threw Man in it, and told him to rule the animals. But the animals weren't wild, and Man didn't need to farm to keep himself alive, so ruling it was pretty easy. After the Fruit event (which I like to call the Biggest Cosmic Setup Ever), God kicked Man out without so much as a "how-to" pamphlet. I don't recall any rules in Genesis about how to handle floods, tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, blizzards... or how to deal with animals that wanted to eat Man, rather than the other way around... or how to balance the desires of a species that was told to "be fruitful and multiply" with the desires of, oh, every other species on the planet, so that one doesn't snuff out the other. I guess what I'm asking is this: can you be a bit more specific about the "value system" you mentioned?

"Once we started "managing" the earth, as God intended, out of our own "wisdom" instead of by HIS value system, things did indeed begin to "go to hell in a handbasket.""

Again, what exactly do you have in mind when you say "HIS value system"? And moreover, unless you're an advocate for living in trees and eating nothing but berries (which I somehow doubt you are), I don't see how any value system could avoid stepping on the toes of other species. According to Genesis, God put Man here to be the ruler of everything, and "fill the earth and subdue it." How are we supposed to do that without bumping off species that would diminish our survival?

I think you missed my point in the last paragraph of my post. It reads: "Whatever the reason, too many people fail to see the difference between earning our place at the top of the food chain and deserving said position. We fought our way to the top. We were not put here."

We're just like every other species because we evolved just like every other species. Humans were lucky enough to be the first species to develop an intellect capable of the kind of thought we've come to take for granted. Along with that intellect came a weird feeling of entitlement: we feel like we were gifted our place at the top of the food chain, rather than realizing the truth; that is, the fact that our species struggled for millions of years to get to this point. If just a few things had gone awry, humanity as we know it wouldn't exist. Perhaps something else would instead? A reptilian race, or a canine or bovine one... who knows? The point here is this: there is simply no way to reconcile what the Bible says God wants us to do (multiply, dominion, subdue, all that) and how we actually feel about doing just that (I hope I'm not the only one who feels bad for wiping out other species). If, however, we face up to our evolutionary back-story, we’ll realize that this is just the way we are, and there isn’t anything wrong with it unless we deem it so. Species come and go. That’s life. It is, to put in simply and in one word, natural. And the sooner we get that through our heads, I think, the sooner we’ll be able to adopt a more reasonable, thoughtful, rational attitude about being the most powerful creatures on the planet.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T00:52:00.000-08:00

Another Thanksgiving come and gone. I spent the day feasting with family and friends. The air was filled with delicious smells, laughter, and the warmth of hearts sharing their love. It was a really nice day, and I couldn’t have asked for better. I want to pause here a moment and talk about this holiday’s buzzword: gratitude.

Back when I was a believer, I made a habit of thanking God before every meal. I had a standard prayer that I’d rattle off under my breath, something along the lines of, “Dear Lord, thank you for bringing me here to enjoy this meal. Please bless my family and friends, especially those in most need of your help.” I felt that this covered the bases pretty well; get some thankfulness in there, and also pitch in a word for those close to me. It was nice. It felt like a good thing to be in the habit of doing.

But what did being grateful to God really mean to me? The feeling was rooted in my understanding of God’s role in my life, which I didn’t exactly hammer down with any great clarity at the time. It went something like this: God created me. He also created this food, and the reason He did that was so I’d have something to eat. He has been guiding me through my life, encouraging me to make certain choices, and those choices have led me here. And I’m happy here. So I should thank God for His assistance in reaching this place.

Thanking God was, for me, a lot like thanking one’s parents for dinner. They “made” you, they put the food in front of you, and they guided you through life thus far. It’s an easy comparison to make, really.

And all of this is probably pretty obvious or generic; I imagine this is how most believers understand their relationship with God.

I wonder now, looking back, why I didn’t ask more questions about this. Actually, no, I don’t wonder. I know why. I was taught not to ask questions. But if I had asked questions, I would’ve quickly found some problems.

First of all, there are the big questions that the situation calls for: how exactly does God “guide” me anywhere? How does he encourage me to make certain choices, while still allowing my will to be free (and more importantly, the wills of the people in my life who are asking me to make the choices in question)? If God has my life all mapped out in his head, do my “choices” even really matter? Could I have ended up anywhere other than where I was just then, sitting at the table with the plate in front of me?

If we put all that stuff aside and just run with it, a second worry comes up: why thank God? Not just for the food, but for anything? Let me explain with an analogy: say I release you into some kind of gigantic maze, like the ones scientists use on rodents, and observe you from above, to see how you navigate it. I’ve spent lots of time making sure this maze is deviously complicated; there are dead-ends and roadblocks everywhere. Now, I’ve also set little pieces of “cheese” along the way for you (whatever reward “cheese” is depends on the person, I suppose). And as you stagger through this test, wondering where you’re supposed to go and why the hell you’ve ended up in such horrendous situation anyway, you come upon these pieces of cheese. Would you be grateful to me, the test maker (by the way, I’ve also left a bundle of old notes about me, the scientist, written by previous maze-runners. I haven’t actually shown myself to you or anything crazy like that)? Would you express your thankfulness to me for the bountiful rewards I’ve seen fit to give you?

I wouldn’t. You can’t buy my love, God. You can’t just give me stuff and expect me to do whatever you ask. I thought that was what free will was all about? Being able to choose whether or not to love God? The problem here is this: if God is going to put all these material rewards in front of me and then wiggle his eyebrows knowingly and go, “Eh? Eh?”, then you can count me right out of that nonsense. Even the promise of an immaterial reward is just that, a promise. Until I see the pay dirt, I don’t have much of a reason to be swayed by such a reward.

I’ll try to sum this up: I don’t see much reason to thank God for his “gifts”, because they come with a hidden agenda. There is, to borrow the old adage, no such thing as a free lunch. If I cram in a mouthful of the delicious apple pie in front of me, I’m in essence saying, “Ok God, I’ll bite. I’ll accept your gifts, and with them the knowledge that you put them there so that I might believe in you.”

Don’t you see? God has a monopoly on the situation! Where else am I going to go? If I want to turn down his gifts and strike out on my own, I don’t have any other options.

The reason I exist is because God made me; therefore, I begin the game indebted to him. Again I go back to the maze analogy (apt, I think, because a lot of people view this life as a “test”): sure, while trapped in the maze, I might be enjoying these rewards the scientist left for me, but I’m stuck in the maze because of the scientist! I didn’t have any option but to be here! So to be grateful to him for trapping me in a labyrinth and then throwing down treats is a bit… silly. Maybe if I’d been given the option of not being in the maze, then I could see saying “thanks”. But I didn’t get to make that choice. So these “gifts” are permanently tainted by the fact that they’re only put there to placate me and coerce me to follow God’s will.

A kidnapper might be nice and give you candy, but he's still a kidnapper.

All right, enough about this. Thank goodness none of it is true: God didn’t give me my meals because there isn’t a God. Phew.

Thanksgiving is, now, an even better holiday for me. Why? Because instead of thanking some invisible man with a beard for the mountains of grub, I can give my gratitude to those who truly deserve it: my family and friends. I can thank them for being a part this brief, fleeting experience we call living. I can be happy that my brain has produced an epiphenomenon called “me”, and thus I’m able to think about how much I enjoy turkey and stuffing. I can just be glad to be alive now, at this very exciting juncture in human history, instead of a thousand years ago or five hundred years ago or any of the other really nasty time periods prior to the present.

Most of all, I can give thanks for the goodness in the hearts of my fellow human beings. That’s what I was most grateful for this Thanksgiving: the beauty and compassion of everyone around me.

Hope you had a wonderful Turkey Day. I certainly did.

Moral Relativism, or Why Everything Isn't OK

2009-11-12T01:56:00.000-08:00

I discovered something interesting tonight, and it has me thinking more than usual. Which is saying a lot, since I spend quite a bit of time thinking. I learned—via a somewhat heated discussion over and after dinner—that my father is a moral relativist, or at least comes across as such (whether he’d stick by his guns under pressure is a question I’m not currently qualified to answer). Now, by this I mean the following: he believes that what is right and wrong is relative to the culture and society of the people who perform the action. Moreover, his explanation suggested that he saw right and wrong being contingent upon the beliefs of the actor. What’s right for me may not be right for you. Morality is subjective. There is no objective right or wrong. If I perform an action that I believe is morally right, then it is morally right.

Just to be sure I understood him, I asked him point blank: “So it’s 1785. Is slavery wrong?” He said it wasn’t wrong then, but when we look back with current understanding, we see it as a morally impermissible action. Or rather, some of us do. Because I’m sure there are still people out there in the world who advocate slavery. And according to my father’s theory, they’re right. According to his moral relativism, insofar as I understand it, for such advocates to enslave other people is not only morally permissible; it’s a good thing to do. A right thing to do.

In having this conversation with him (the rest of my family watched as our minds clashed), I realized that I couldn't exactly explain what I felt was wrong with the theory. Every point I made was rebutted in a way that, while logically consistent and rigorous, still felt somehow off to me. Moral relativism is a theory that doesn’t require any sort of deity’s intervention, and that’s something I can most certainly get behind. But on the whole I feel it to be untenable, for reasons that I find myself unable to adequately explain. Perhaps if I raise some of the objections I’ve been contemplating, I’ll discover more about why I feel that this theory isn’t worth grabbing hold of.

If I were to dive back into this debate with my dad (and I intend to, once I’ve formulated my thoughts a bit more), I would want him to answer some questions for me. They are as follows:

1) “Under your theory (your form of moral relativism), what’s right and wrong are determined by the actors themselves. So if I commit some action that I believe is right, are you justified in telling me that it’s wrong to commit that action?”

Under your theory, dad (and I’m sorry that I have to bring this into it, but it’s the best example I can think of), Hitler was a saint. Hitler did exactly what he believed was right. According to your system, what he did was right... for him. Oh sure, you don’t think it was right. You’d tell him he was doing something bad, something wrong, something that shouldn’t be done. But how can you justify that position? Certainly, the action is wrong for you to commit, because you believe it to be a wrong action. But Hitler doesn’t. So what right do you have to say anything about his action?

2) “If I am presented with a moral dilemma that I have not encountered before, how does your theory assist me in determining the correct course of action? In other words, when I’m faced with an ethical problem, what criteria do I use to determine the morally right decision?”

If there are no such criteria, then the moral theory provides no way for its proponents to determine right action, except the following axiom: “Do what you believe is right, and it will be the right thing to do.” What if I don’t know what I want to do? What if, in looking at a situation, I find both actions to be equally offensive, or desirable? How am I to make any kind of judgment call about what I should do in those circumstances?

3) “If moral action is determined by the actor, then how can we ever say, ‘He did the right thing,’ and have that statement actually be meaningful?”

My father talked at length about how people needed to have “constructs” in order to get through their lives, and I agreed with him there. His point was that everyone needs to have some kind of “belief system” about the world. I’m cool with that. I have a “belief system”, based on reason, empiricism, and evidence, but like anything it’s subject to my own biases (which I attempt to remove as much as possible). Anyway, I’m getting off track: the thrust of this question has to do with comparisons. If Smith commits an action that Smith believes is right, then he’s done the right thing (under your theory). If Jones commits the same action, but Jones believes it’s the wrong thing to do, then Jones has done something wrong. So the same action can, depending upon the actor, have different moral value? What this means is that, in essence, I cannot praise someone for doing the right thing or scold someone for doing the wrong thing, because what’s right and wrong are all based on what they think is right and wrong. So there are, in Catholic terms, no saints or sinners. Everyone does what they think is right, and that’s all there is to it. No one deserves a pat on the back or a slap across the knuckles.

4) “According to your theory, what’s right and wrong in a society are largely determined by the majority or a vocal minority. If this is the case, then isn’t this a glorified version of ‘might makes right’?”

This objection is based more on emotion than the others, but I feel it’s worth mentioning. The example I used in our discussion was gay marriage. According to this theory, if the majority of people in this country believe gay marriage is wrong, then it’s wrong. But moreover, if a minority of people believe it’s wrong, and they just happen to have the necessary power to change the laws and minds of those around them, then it’s still wrong. I guess what I’m getting at here is this: it doesn’t seem correct to me that the strongest group in a society gets to determine what is morally permissible or impermissible for that society. Moreover, it doesn't seem correct to say that actions committed by other cultures—the example I used was female circumcision, a horrific practice still performed in many African nations—are morally right because the majority of the culture believes that the action is right.

I think all in all, I have a problem with the following scenario: Say that, hypothetically, a man comes in to see my father at work. “Hello sir,” he says. “I have unfortunate news. It is my belief that people in your line of work are moral monsters who don’t deserve to live. Thus, I have a moral obligation to kill you.” The man pulls a gun and shoots my father dead. Questions: Would I be mad about this? Yes! Would I want to do something about it? Of course! Would I be correct in saying that the man did something wrong by killing my father in cold blood? No, I would not. After all, the man did what he thought was right, and thus, according to my father’s theory, he committed a morally permissible action. I can clamor for revenge or justice all I want, but in no way do I have any sort of moral justification for doing so.

That just seems wrong to me! Of course I would be morally justified in seeking justice or revenge against my father’s murderer. I don’t see how it could possibly be any other way. My father’s moral relativist stance leads, I feel, directly into chaos, for after all, if whatever I believe is the right thing to do—no matter how twisted, sadistic, or malicious my thoughts may be—is the right thing to do, then everything becomes morally permissible, and I would be morally justified in committing any action whatsoever. When all of morality is subjective, it really doesn’t even make sense to say that an action is “right” or “wrong”. I can just do as I please, and the only argument anyone can use against me is, “I don’t like that, so don’t do it.” Were someone to call me any name in some way related to morality—“evil” springs to mind—I could immediately counter with, “I’m not evil. This is the right thing to do.” And I would be completely justified in saying this.

Moral relativism of the kind my father seems to ascribe to is untenable because it, in essence, annihilates right and wrong, and instead replaces them with an “anything goes” system, under which anyone can be justified in doing anything they want. As much as I am against the idea of moral absolutism—the view that certain actions are always wrong, no matter what—I can’t help but feel that this view put forth by my old man is a bit too far in the opposite direction. Certainly I don’t want a system where every action has a moral value that cannot be altered no matter the circumstances, but at the same time I don’t want a system where no action has that status. Like most things in life, moderation appears to be the key to morality.

Humanist Symposium #45

2009-11-08T00:20:00.000-08:00

Fellow humans:

Thank you for tuning your Feeds to tonight’s presentation. As mandated by law, we are required to remind you not to engage in full-mind activities while driving, operating machinery, or performing any other task that may require the majority of your mental capacity to perform correctly. Remember, nourishing your mind can be dangerous if done without regard for your surroundings. Feed Safely™.

The International Council of Historians is most pleased to present tonight’s edition of: Humanist Relics.

*cue exciting music and dramatic, colorful title screen*

Here on Humanist Relics, we open the ICH archives and showcase some of the greatest works ever created by human minds. It is our ambition to bring the history of Humanism to the world so that all humans may know and remember the struggles our forbearers went through to actualize a society built on truth, reason, and the pursuit of equality.

Tonight’s piece is one of the crown jewels in our collection of timeless Humanist writings. It is with great honor that we present to you the following archival data, entitled: The Humanist Symposium #45.

Taken from the “Internet”, and written in 2009 (just three years before… well, we all know what happened in 2012 from our history classes, don’t we?), this collection of writings is an outstanding microcosm of Humanist thought during that time period. We’ve broken down the original long piece into a few subgenres and taken the liberty of reformatting them to meet current data specifications, for easier user processing. (Please note: All written data has been translated from Old New English to Modern Word. For the data in its original Old New English format, please contact ICH.) If your Feed is not equipped with the necessary emulators to run this ancient program, please activate this link to download the appropriate drivers.

And now, without further ado, tonight’s datastream:

Topic One: On Being Humanist - Writings about the world from the viewpoint of an atheist/humanist, and what it means to live in a world guided by humanist principles. (A note to our viewers: These pieces were written prior to the adoption of Humanism as the global worldview! A fascinating look into life as part of a growing minority population.)

Title – Funerals and Christianity

Author – Amanda ; Original archive – Free to be Me

Notable quotation – “I’m accustomed to Southern conservative Christian funerals being a ‘salvation’ sermon instead of a standard eulogy, but I guess I’d never really paid attention to it before because I was so involved. Basically, the message boiled down to ‘I know he’s in heaven; if you want to see him again, get saved!’ There was also your standard variation of hell sucks, if you want to avoid it get saved! Where, in either of these two examples, is there a motive of becoming a Christian because you believe in the saving power of Jesus Christ?”

Title – The Purpose of Life

Author – PaulJ ; Original archive – Notes from an Evil Burnee

Notable quotation – “In the absence of a religious purpose for human life (for instance, "the glorification of God"), it might seem reasonable for perpetuation of the species to be offered as a substitute. But reproduction is simply what humans, and other species, do. If they didn't, they would become extinct. Reproduction is not, therefore, a purpose, but simply the result of evolution. Those that are best at reproduction (which includes being good at surviving to reproductive age) are the ones who pass on their genes to the most offspring.”

Title – Life's Value

Author – the chaplain ; Original archive – An Apostate's Chapel

Notable quotation – “One does not need to believe in divine sanction to treasure life. Rather, all one needs is an appreciation for the wonder of a cosmos that humankind is just beginning to understand. As far as we can tell so far, life forms play small roles on the stage of the cosmos. Organic beings may be relatively few in number, but we’re pretty amazing nonetheless. This shouldn’t surprise you. After all, it’s often the bit characters that steal the show.”

Title – In Honor of Terry Pratchett

Author – Ebonmuse ; Original archive – Daylight Atheism

Notable quotation – “If you're an atheist and a regular reader of sci-fi and fantasy, you probably know the name Terry Pratchett - and if you don't, you should. He's the award-winning and much-loved author of Discworld, a series of fantasy novels set in a flat, circular world that's carried through space on the back of a giant tortoise…Pratchett is also an atheist, and many of the Discworld books (including my personal favorite, Small Gods) show the virtues of atheism and humanism - no small feat in a riotous fantasy world where, as the author puts it, ‘the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows’.”

Title – Coming Out Atheist: Is Losing Your Relationship Worth It?

Author – VJack ; Original archive – Atheist Revolution

Notable quotation – “It is fairly common for people in a relationship to be as attracted to the potential of someone rather than to the actual person. And yet, it has been my experience that such relationships are often doomed if they do not quickly progress beyond this point. If I am in love with what I want someone to be rather than what they really are, I'm resigning myself to being perpetually disappointed and unhappy. One could reasonably argue that this wouldn't be a relationship at all but merely a form of narcissism. It is difficult to imagine it working in the long run.”

Title – Marriage, or why I really really want same sex couples to be able to marry.

Author – Michelle Bell ; Original archive – The Gaytheists

Notable quotation – “My emotional tie up is more than wanting equal rights, and it’s more than fighting against religion having a bitchfit that they can’t make the government their happy fun-time bigotry playground. I guess I have a little bit of a confession to make – I want same-sex marriage because I’m selfish.”

Topic Two: Humanism in Action – Writings about the ways in which Humanism and Humanists are working to make the world a better place for all people. (A note to our viewers: As commonplace as Humanist principles now are in law and social life, there was once a time when Humanist organizations were viewed as fringe and looked down upon by the majority of society. These activists were well ahead of their time, and should rightly be regarded as heroes for their efforts despite great opposition.)

Title - The gay marriage: All animals are equal but some are (apparently) more equal than others

Author – Robert Nijssen ; Original archive - Gibburt

Notable quotation – “If you would want to defend that you have a certain right, but you would not want to extend that same right to your neigbor [sic], there is an easy strategy to follow: first find a distinguishing quality between you and your neighbor…an example could be that the neighbor wears glasses. Then you take that feature and argue that because of this feature he should not be allowed to have this right, for example people with glasses are not allowed to use the public bus system. And presto no more people with glasses on public buses (this last step of course will only work if you can convince enough other people of your idea).”

Title – World Food Day

Author – Michael Fridman ; Original archive – a Nadder!

Notable quotation – “But suppose we could teleport food. Surprisingly, this can cause more harm than good. The USA gives more food than any other country. But its policy (or law?) is that it must be US-made food brought on US Navy ships. This floods the local market with food, driving prices down and sending local farmers into even greater poverty. And ironically it’s local farmers who’re most likely to go hungry. Their crop becomes worthless so they can’t sell it to buy other produce they need. So even giving food is no silver bullet.”

Title – Repair Job

Author – Secular Guy ; Original archive – Towards a Rational America and an Enlightened Judaism

Notable quotation – “If nothing else, it's in our own self-interest to try to improve society and in turn benefit from these efforts. Moreover, through such responsible living perhaps people will mature ethically and will outgrow the need to look to an imaginary supreme being for guidance. Under these circumstances, ‘God’ will wither away, and civilization can then advance, liberated at last from the constraints of theism.”

Title – Brights co-founder on atheists and the 'non-religion religion ballgame' (video)

Author – Paul Fidalgo ; Original archive – Secularism Examiner

Notable quotation – “…but I also think that if the Brights approach adoption from the standpoint of ‘being an atheist is too stigmatizing,’ they will continue to have trouble, as most momentum that I've seen is on the side of pushing broad acceptance and pride in the a-word…They will have to sell themselves as an augmentation, a clarification, much as the term ‘humanist’ is, if they wish to woo more atheists to their particular cause.”

Title – Scientific Thinking to Guide Compassion

Author – Andrew Bernardin ; Original archive – the evolving mind

Notable quotation – “But I do realize that simply throwing money at a problem can miss the mark. What the practice of throwing money at a problem accomplishes is the comforting thought that you are doing something, and sometimes little else. I want to help, but not if in the end it’s not helping.”

Topic Three: Appreciating Humanism – Writings about gaining a deeper understanding of Humanist principles, tenets, and concepts. (A note to our viewers: It may seem strange to write articles about topics that are now commonly taught in schools and public forums, but at the time these pieces were written Humanist ideas were still in development. Historical archives such as this one are enthralling because they show the development of Humanism over time.)

Title – Why The New Humanism

Author – Greg Epstein ; Original archive – The New Humanism

Notable quotation – “It is also important to note that the New Humanism and the New Atheism absolutely share the same views on questions such as whether God exists (almost certainly not), or how best to understand the nature of the world around us (science and empiricism). And as to whether we ought to fight for such causes as the separation of Church and State, the teaching of evolution, and the promotion of atheism and Humanism as valid, patriotically American ways of life, our answers are also the same as those of the New Atheists -- you bet your life we ought to.”

Title – Science and the Worship of Truth

Author – Eric Michael Johnson ; Original archive – The Primate Diaries

Notable quotation – “While religious proponents believe that there is a One Truth that has been revealed through their sacred book, science operates under the assumption that human reason is finite and that a scientific theory is only valid until further evidence either refines or discards it for a better explanation. Science is never finished. It's a continuing work in progress and any accepted theory is merely ‘provisionally true’ for the time being.”

Title – A Few Words on the Dangers of Language

Author – E.M. Cadwaladr ; Original archive – e.m. cadwaladr

Notable quotation – “…Social identity is, as it were, familial identity writ large. It is an expression not of the need for a reliable source of knowledge, but rather it is the expression of the need for a reliable source of personal context and security. To be either a Christian, a communist, or even (to an admittedly lesser extent) a certified public accountant is to project what is essentially a family identity onto a group of individuals far too large and diverse to be a family. It is to expect a certain level of protection from inclusion in this group, even if, in some cases, this protection only amounts to a vague sense of social legitimacy.”

Title – Atheism, Openness, and Caring About Reality: Or, Why What We Don't Believe Matters

Author – Greta Christina ; Original archive – Greta Christina's Blog

Notable quotation – “There is an impossibly huge infinitude of things that we could imagine about the universe. Only the tiniest fraction of those things are actually true. If we're going to be truly open to the mind-altering magnificence and hilarious freakiness of the universe, if we're going to truly understand and accept and explore what is true about the universe to the best of our ability, we have to be willing to say ‘No’ to the overwhelming majority of things we can imagine about it. We have to be rigorous in sorting out reality from unreality... and relentless in our rejection of unreality.”

Title – Reverse-Engineering Religion, part four: A Humanist Creation Myth

Author – D ; Original archive – She Who Chatters

Notable quotation – “So see your vanity for what it is, embrace your vexation with all your spirit, and chase after the wind with a joyous heart. In the fullness of time, there shall be no reckoning, for everything that there is shall return to the nothing from whence it came. Fear nothing, and hold to the Law. All the World is open to you now, so take up understanding and love and pleasure, and be at peace with your mortality. This is the final mystery, for as death comes to us all, in death no one knows any thing, and so even your love and understanding and pleasure shall pass from you even as you yourself pass into the nothing.”

This concludes our program for tonight. Tune in for our next show on November 29^th, 2009, when we’ll be presenting The Humanist Symposium #46 (due to restrictions from our network hosts, this presentation will be broadcast on an alternative Feedquency entitled You Made Me Say It!) Thanks again for your interest in the diverse, fascinating, and inspiring history of Humanism!

Be well, and may prosperity and peace flourish in the lives of all of humankind.

Hey, look at that! It's death!

2009-11-07T00:55:00.000-08:00

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. It’s a very big part of a lot of peoples’ lives. People deny things all the time, for starters: “No, I didn’t know about that rule.” “Of course I didn’t sleep with her!” “I’ve never seen that Peruvian cocaine in my life!” But I’m talking about something deeper. Something darker. Something more pervasive, and less easy to brush aside as simple lying.

Let me try to explain by starting with the thought that prompted this… um, thought. I was contemplating death—something I do with greater frequency than I’d prefer, it seems—and I came to the realization that I live in a form of denial almost every day. As an atheist, I don’t believe in an afterlife. Which means when I die, that’s it. Doesn’t matter what I do during my life, I won’t get anything for it at the end. Now, I’m getting a lot better at accepting this as the way things are and finding fulfillment in it, but even so, there’s a nagging worry. No matter how much fame and fortunate I may amass, I won’t be able to change the following fact: one day, the universe will end. All humans will die. Our planet will be destroyed, our civilization lost, and no one will ever know we existed. It’s sad, but it’s true. And knowing this, how can I find much motivation to create anything? It’ll all be annihilated anyway.

Well, that thought was certainly a downer. Yet I’m writing this blog entry, and I write in my journal, and I write stories, and I’m working on a novel. Why? When placed side by side with the knowledge of the ultimate end of the universe, creating things seems like a futile endeavor. So what keeps me going?

Denial. Subconscious, unaware denial, but denial nonetheless. I just pretend it isn’t true. I put the thought out of my head and focus on the task at hand. After a short time of doing this, the thoughts are completely gone and I’m able to devote myself fully to any creative task I might be undertaking. Denial is a great tool for me, it seems.

Perhaps another analogy is in order. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a chasm. If I want to accomplish anything, I need to keep my eyes zeroed in on something other than the chasm. Sure, I know in the back of my head that someday someone will push me and everything I’ve ever made into that black pit, but by pretending the pit isn’t there, I’m able to actually stay focused on my work. I deny reality to maintain my sanity.

And I don’t see anything wrong with that. Maybe I should? After all, isn’t that the underlying motivation for a lot of people when it comes to belief in the afterlife? They don’t want to face the fact that death is final, so they embrace a comforting thought, regardless of its truth value or how certain they are of its actuality. Is this what I do?

Well, no. Not really. Not even close, actually.

I don’t pretend that I’m not going to die. I don’t pretend that there’s something to look forward to after this life runs its course. I know full well that death is death, the end, goodbye, game over. Even when I’m at my most productive, I can look at the things I believe and find “death is final” among them. So perhaps denial isn’t the best word for this.

Yeah. That’s right. Denial isn’t the right word. I think I know what the word is.

Distraction.

I keep myself busy so that I don’t have time to focus on matters of mortality. In doing so, I don’t deny the truth of the proposition; I simply avoid thinking about it altogether. In that sense, I still do something that believers do—not think critically about what I believe—but I feel that this is simply the way life is, and if we were to do otherwise, we’d drive ourselves mad. Believers live unexamined lives because they’ve been taught to do so, and sometimes they know that examining their beliefs would result doubt. I live an unexamined life when I need to get other things done. But the key difference is this: I examine my life. I look at it with great frequency. Many believers do not.

Are they just doing what I do, though? Being distracted? I really don’t know. I feel like I’ve gotten very far from my original topic here. Guess I’ll just call this entry good and leave with this final comment: I don’t pretend that death isn’t waiting for me. I just ignore it when I need to get some living done.

The Horrors of Atheism

2009-10-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

I’m something of a horror buff. I won’t lie: I get a kick out of things that send most people fleeing in terror. In particular, I’m a fan of psychological horror. You know, the kind that makes you wonder whether you’re going insane? The kind that slowly creeps into your psyche, pushing aside what you know about reality to make room for demented fantasies? The kind that makes you jump at the slightest sound, see shapes in the dark where you know nothing lurks, and feel a gnawing sense of something being just, well, wrong with everything around you? That’s my cup of tea.

To change the topic entirely—but not, I assure you, without good reason—I must say that October is an awesome month. I think the most interesting thing about it is Halloween. Let’s take a moment and look at this holiday. It’s based on pagan rituals from yesteryear, yet few Christians I’ve met feel anything but affection for the event. It’s the one day of the year when jumping out of bushes with a fake chainsaw and a hockey mask to frighten children is considered socially acceptable (whereas doing this on any other day would likely result in bodily injury, jail time, or both). It’s a weird concept, all around: why do we dress up like monsters? Why do we give away candy to strangers? Why do we let our thoughts dwell on death, misery, and horrors too grim to imagine for more than a fleeting moment? If you explained this holiday to someone from outside American culture, I think they’d find it downright strange.

“So what?” you may be asking yourself, clever devil that you are. “Where is this going?” I’m getting to my point. Bear with me a moment or two longer.

As someone who appreciates horror, and psychological horror in particular, I derive unique pleasure from letting my mind wander to such realms as no mortal dare tread. Pushing out into the brink of madness is an exciting experience. At no time is this more deliciously topical than in the weeks prior to All Hallow’s, and I take every opportunity to indulge in creepy films, books, and video games during the month of October. But since I became an atheist—perhaps it would be better put as “realized I am an atheist”—I’ve discovered an unnerving—ironically, almost more disturbing than the horror I so enjoy—change in my appreciation of all things scary.

The change is thus: I don’t get as scared as I used to. Now, there may be many reasons for this: I’m growing up and thus feel more capable of warding off any boogiemen who might assail me; I’ve been exposed to so much horror that it takes more to frighten me; perhaps something else altogether. One possible cause, and the one I will now expound upon briefly, is this: I’m harder to scare because I’m firmly rooted in reality. As an atheist, I understand the power of the real world. I understand better than most how to live a life dedicated to believing true things, to following the course of the evidence wherever it leads, and most importantly, to dismissing ideas for which I have no logical backing. Like ghosts. And zombies. And haunted towns. And evil eldritch gods from beyond the stars.

Part of the draw of horror is the thrill of being afraid. We’ve all been there. Sometimes it’s fun to be scared. But being scared only works if there’s a legitimate reason to be scared, or alternatively, if one can convince oneself of such. In other words, the easier it is for a person to find something to be afraid of, the more likely they are to be afraid. And unfortunately, for someone who is as committed to the actual as I am, that task has become exponentially harder. It’s not as simple as wondering if there might actually be a real, unliving spook lurking in the darkened closet. There isn’t. I know there isn’t. The odds of there being such a thing are infinitesimal. Perhaps it’s a flaw in me, rather than an aspect of being an atheist, this inability to be as frightened by the unknown as I once was, but now that I’m a non-believer, the darkness isn’t brimming with demons and supernatural forces out for blood. All I’ll find there are the things I’d find if it were lit: furniture, coats hung awkwardly on chairs, curtains blowing in the wind, and just that damn cat again.

Now, although this new, shall we say, mental shielding I’ve developed has made it harder for me to enjoy the macabre, it also has benefits. I’m even less afraid of the dark. I can stride confidently into a “haunted” house or “spooky” old cemetery without so much as a flinch. And on a slightly different note, I can make a more sophisticated assessment of the effectiveness of the horror I do partake in. My evaluation is simple: if it scares me, it’s pretty damn good stuff. After all, it takes a lot more to spook me now than it used to. So if something gives me a chill up my spine and causes me to peer into the blackness around me with wide, panicked eyes, I know I’ve found a truly captivating work.

Being an atheist hasn’t ruined Halloween so much as… put it to the test. This holiday used to scare me with both hands tied behind its back. If the things that go bump in the night really want to get under my fresh atheist skin, they’re gonna need to take it to the next level. And I hope they do… because I’ll be waiting with a double-barreled shotgun.

Sell the Vatican, Feed the World

2009-10-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know, posting a video doesn't count as a real post. But this was just way too hilarious not to stick up here. Grabbed it off of PZ Myers' blog:

As an addendum, and so as to not just miss out on an opportunity to jump on a soapbox for a second, let me say this: she might be on to something. Not in a literal way, no sir. But still... think about it. Why does the Pope live in a palace? Why does the Vatican store treasure? What, does it make God happy to look down on piles of gold and whatnot? (as an aside, why gold of all things? It's not even that great an element). If the Vatican liquidated its assets, I'm sure it would find itself with all the money it needed to fill the coffers of its churches around the globe (although the thought of chucking more money to individual parishes does give me pause; abuse cover-ups, anyone?). No more pledge drives, no more tithes... well, for a while at least. But back to my main point: if so much of Christianity is about forsaking the wealth of the world, then why does the Vatican have archives full of valuable artifacts? As Indiana Jones would say, "It belongs in a museum!" Even if they didn't want to sell it, couldn't they put it out for people to see? After all, I suspect that's one of the main arguments that would be put against me were I to bring this up with a church official: "It's priceless artwork!" If that's true, why keep it hidden away underground?

2009-10-14T16:26:00.001-07:00

Dear (hypothetical) readers:

I have not abandoned this blog. Work and life transitions are keeping me occupied, and thus my free time in which to write posts has been drastically diminished. Until I can get into a steady schedule, I'm afraid my posts will be sparse. But rest assured: there will be more.

Thanks for reading. I hope to have something new for you very soon.

-Dale

The Supernova Worry

2009-08-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

I just came up with a silly little argument. It contains a fairly large amount of reasoning that many Christians would reject outright—not on the basis of the reasoning being faulty, but on the basis of it conflicting with Biblical “science”—so I don’t know how far it’ll get me, but oh well. I’m going to call it…

The Supernova Worry

I feel that this would be better laid out as a narrative rather than in premise format, so that’s what I’ll do.

Suppose God exists. Suppose He designed the universe and everything in it. Moreover, suppose the Bible is accurate in its depiction of the creation of the universe. God spent a couple days creating everything else out there, from galaxies to black holes to comets, and then devoted a huge amount of time to crafting one tiny planet. He stuck that planet in orbit around one of the flaming gas-balls He’d made and kick-started life. If the universe was designed by God, a perfect being, then that would mean everything that occurs here—from flowers blooming to atoms splitting to stars exploding—is part of God’s grand plan, and that what God has made is good and does not at any point need to be fixed or repaired. God did not create an imperfect universe.

But if this is the case, then what of our own sun, the star that provides heat and light to our planet? One day—granted, a day so far in the future as to be incomprehensible to those currently living—that star will erupt into massive flames, and the Earth will be burnt to a crisp. Is this part of God’s beautiful, majestic design? If He cares so much for humans, why would he put them on a planet that has a limited lifespan? Surely it is within the scope of God’s powers to create a sun with infinite energy, or a planet that supports itself without the need for a star to nourish it? But God has done neither of these things. It would appear as though God has placed human beings on a very unstable tract of land, one that He put a ton of effort into designing just for us but seems content to allow to be annihilated by another one of His creations—for recall that God also made the sun, and designed it to explode violently when it runs out of fuel.

The fact that our Sol will one day consume us suggests one of several options: a) that God created things this way for a reason, b) that God created an imperfect solar system and will need to step in to prevent the destruction of Earth, or c) that there was no special favor garnered to Earth (and therefore its inhabitants) in the designing of the universe.

If (a) is true, then what would the reason be? Some might argue that it is the unfathomable will of God, but this is just as much a cop-out now as ever. Oh! Could it be because God is encouraging us to develop space travel and find a new planet to live on? But wait… why would God want that? He made the Earth for us; doesn’t He want us to stay? And the Earth is where saints, prophets, and Jesus himself walked and spoke. People kill each other for control of places that Christ visited or lived. Wouldn’t God want us to remain here, if those places are that important? Maybe it’s because of “evil” (this feels like the Catholic answer, although I don’t know what the Catholic answer would actually be). My reply is: how? How does “evil” have anything to do with the machinations of the stars? Is Satan going to make the sun blow up? Ooh, bad Satan! Naughty Satan! And obviously God can’t intervene, because doing so would interfere with Satan’s free will, right? Or maybe the free will of the sun? Or wait, was it only humans who have free will? So how would preventing Satan from detonating the sun affect our free will in the slightest? Perhaps I’ve taken the wrong tack here; maybe it’s supposed to coincide with the Rapture, and all that fire the Bible talks about is actually the rapidly expanding sun coming to eat us up. But if that’s the case, then we know when it’s gonna happen. Isn’t it written that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2)? Could it be that we, mere humans, have unlocked the secret of the Apocalypse? And more importantly, if the sun going supernova is the Day of Judgment, then why are people so convinced it will be sooner than that? It can't be both ways; either the sun’s temper tantrum is the end of the world, or it isn’t. If it is, we can rest assured that we’ll all be long dead before it occurs. If it isn’t, then there must be another reason for God to let the sun expand and kill us, or (b) or (c) is true.

If (b) is true, then God is certainly much less perfect than was initially reported. Perhaps it’s just unavoidable; despite His power, God is not omnipotent and thus cannot create a fully functional universe on the first try. Or perhaps it’s a matter of awareness; God is not omniscient, and thus couldn’t foresee the vaporization of Earth before it happened (although how we, just tiny insects compared to God, are able to predict it remains a mystery). Denying God either of the properties I just mentioned makes God seem a whole lot less worthy of worship than most people would like. Do you want a God who can’t do everything to be looking out for you? What if He can’t protect you from a more powerful evil? How about a non-omniscient God? Do you really want a being who doesn’t know everything to be your judge when you’re put to trial for your “sins”? Maybe it’s just a matter of God not wanting the Earth to last forever; but this brings us back to point (a), and the refutations explained there still stand.

If (c) is true, then nothing happens. God’s behavior or creative “error” doesn’t need to be explained, because human beings are not (shock of shocks!) the center of the universe. This option allows for design theories to remain on the table (only to be brushed aside by other arguments) while simultaneously pruning away our arrogant assumption that everything in the universe happens with us in mind. We’re the center of nothing but our own worldviews.

Questions? Comments? Feedback is appreciated.

Read & Blog Fail

2009-08-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

Well, shoot. Here I was, all geared up to do a “Read & Blog” thing with this book I picked up from the library, and now I’m not going to. Why? Because this collection of pages is, if you’ll pardon my language, the most capricious, delusional, unreasonable, biased piece of Christian literature I have yet laid eyes upon. To say that this book portrays atheists in a fair and accurate light is an understatement on the magnitude of calling the Pacific a charming pond. The author clearly has it out for us, and not in any way that can be fought against with weapons of the intellect. To be frank, the only thing that’ll stop this guy from thinking the way he does is death, and I’m slightly saddened by the fact that he won’t be able to experience the crushing disappointment of discovering that the afterlife he has long dreamed of is a lie. I have no malign intent here; all I’m saying is that there is nothing on this Earth than could convince the author of… well, anything he doesn’t already believe to be true.

The book I’m referring to is You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can’t Make Him Think, by Ray Comfort. Here’s a picture of the cover:

From the foreword to the endnotes, this book is one colossal, misinformed attack on atheists and what Ray has convinced himself they believe. Others have done a better job than I can of giving this waste of paper the thrashing it deserves, so I won’t do much of that. What I will do, however, is point out a couple of things that occurred to me, and then cast this wretched tome back into the library’s deposit box faster than Ray can decide I’m an idiot simply because I’m an atheist.

First, I really do feel sorry for Ray. It’s clear that he believes what he’s saying with every fiber of his being. There is not a single un-Christian inch of Ray Comfort, and I must admit that his ability to remain steadfast in his theology despite what I’m sure are a number of warning sirens that have been going off in the rational part of his mind for quite some time (assuming he hasn’t already eviscerated that part of his intellect) is quite impressive. And thus, I don’t feel any particular anger toward him for being so bigoted against non-believers. What he wrote I can be upset at. But him, the person? Naw. He’s not trying to be insulting for insult’s sake. He’s just doing what anyone would do if they truly believed Hell is a real place where anyone who doesn't practice the right kind of Christianity goes. I can’t say that I blame him. I don’t agree with him, not in the slightest, but I can’t say I blame him. Incidentally, I find it very interesting that there aren’t more Christians out there who act as if Hell is real. Maybe they just don't want to think about it? I’ll have to ask my Catholic friends (I’ve told some of them that I’m an atheist).

Second, I wonder why Ray is the way he is. Has he ever read anything about evolution? I’m no scientist, but I think I already know more about evolution than he does, and could explain it better than he did in this book. So why not study up? Wouldn't it be better for his arguments if he could say that he was intimately familiar with the other side? Oh, wait, silly me. That’s not in the least what he’s trying to do here; Ray’s “arguments” hinge entirely on an audience that is just as uninformed as he is. Without an ignorant readership willing to take everything he writes at face value, Ray’s entire literary empire would collapse overnight. Luckily, uneducated believers are a dime a dozen.

Which brings me to my third and final point: it terrifies me to think that there are people—perhaps millions?—out there who honest-to-God believe the stuff in this book. They believe “the atheist is someone who pretends that there is not god” (Preface). They believe that evolution means random chance with no controlling factors or forces. They believe that the acceptable way to answer any and every question is to ignore the question and quote the Bible. Are there really people out there who buy into this stuff? I heave a sigh as I realize, yes, there are. And they may well have read this book. Which means if any of them were to meet an atheist on the street, you can bet they’d have some totally ridiculous things ready to say.

All right, enough with this. I’ll be glad to rid of this book; maybe the next time I grab some apologetics from the library, they’ll actually present a decent intellectual challenge. YCLAEYCMHT, on the other hand (wow, what an acronym!), could be refuted by a four-year-old… assuming that four-year-old wasn’t brought up by fundamentalist Christian parents.

Final Thoughts on the Mission

2009-08-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

This entry was written while I was away from home on a Catholic mission trip and subsequently placed in its correct timeslot. Line breaks generally indicate some amount of time between the writing of the paragraphs, as I penned these thoughts over the course of the day. I have not changed the content of this entry, save for minor spelling and grammar corrections.

Social justice is important for everyone. It doesn’t matter that these people are Catholic and I’m not; equality and respect of human dignity are things that we can both agree upon. I’ll be honest: I agree with almost everything I’ve seen this week, with the exception of the Catholic stuff. Take all that faith nonsense out, and you have an amazing set of morals and some people who will do anything to promote social justice. These are good folks. They’ve got it all right… except, again, the religion part.

I feel a bit like I’ve been unplugged from the Matrix of religion. I can hear Morpheus’ words as I write this: “Most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.” They’re not! I asked Allison today if she thinks the story of Noah’s ark is literally true, and she said yes. When I asked her why, she more or less said that she didn’t have a reason. I realized then that Allison is in deep. And why wouldn’t she be? She’s been doing it her whole life. I respect her and I think she’s very intelligent, but here’s the thing: She doesn’t want to think about it. It matters very little to her whether it’s true or not, because what’s more important is her children, her husband, her career, and her social status. Whether God is real or not is, overall, not that important. And this is likely true of a lot of Catholics/Christians I know. So ultimately, all I can do is agree to disagree and leave it at that.

Wishing for the Truth

2009-08-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

Back in the chapel again. I… I wish it was true. All of it. I’m scared. I don’t want to leave. I’ve been drifting away for over a year, and yet still I cling. Still I hope. But this mission is the last straw for me. I’ve seen now that even a strong desire to delude myself is not enough. I’ve chosen reason. I’ve chosen the truth. Harsh, biting truth, colder than the dark side of Mercury. No matter how I’ve tried this week, I know in my heart and mind that I can never go back. I’m out forever. I am an atheist through and through. And thus, here I sit. Alone. Quiet. Calm. Contemplating. Resting before the tabernacle, a relic I once believed holy and cosmically significant. I look up at it with pleading eyes, because for the first time since I became a non-believer, I want to have my knowledge wiped away. Alas, nothing. No final, shocking revelation from God. No whispered words of an angel. No loving embrace from Christ. I am alone in this chapel, and with a sickening lurch, I realize that I’ve always been alone here. Even in days gone by, when I would pray in places like this. Even at the heights of religious ecstasy. Even when among thousands of believers.

No matter how much I want it to be true, it is not. Christianity is false. I am alone here.

And I think I’m finally ok with that.

I think empathy is one of the most beautiful emotions in the human repertoire. The ability to feel the pain of others is unique to our species, and thus we carry a special type of burden that other creatures do not. I’ve seen lots of empathy this week, but nowhere is there more of it than during the closing ceremony for the mission. Everyone shares a story about something that touched them this week. Most of the stories are about events that cause others to feel happy. Many people cry during this ceremony. Myself, well, I guess my heart has been hardened. I used to be too empathetic (note the suffix). Now I’m not empathetic enough. But oh well.

I’m suddenly reminded of a line from a Regina Spektor song: “You laugh until you cry/you cry until you laugh/and everyone must breathe/until their dying breath”.

This is a beautiful ceremony. There is so much love in this room. So much compassion. I wish desperately that I could say a magic word and suddenly everyone would realize that God isn’t here right now; and more importantly, we’re fine without him. “People! Listen! You don’t need God to tell you to be here! You can just be here!”

Worshiping Bread

2009-08-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

I didn’t write much yesterday, primarily because I was really busy. It was our distribution day, which means we had to hand out all the food, clothes, and supplies we’ve been organizing all week. I saw a lot of great things from the students (leadership, patience, etc.) and of course the warm fuzzy feelings you get from helping people were also nice. And again, let me stress: No faith necessary. It’s just me, the human. I’m looking out at a world that will someday fade, but for the time being it’s here, it’s now, and I’m part of it. And no matter what happens, the fact that I existed will always be true. I live my life by a guiding principle similar to the one held by the faithful: what we do in this life is what matters.

On an unrelated note, I now find it very funny to put “sin” in perspective. Why would the creator of the universe care one iota about what we, mere insignificant specks on an insignificant speck, do with our time? “But God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us,” you say. Is that so? God’s idea of a personal relationship is pretty fucked, then. “I’m going to silently watch you everywhere, at all times, and if you screw up even once, I’m not letting you back into Heaven until you say you’re sorry. And mean it. Cuz I’ll know if you don’t.” For Catholics this means you must tell a priest your sins. It’s not good enough to say them to yourself, even though God is everywhere and in each of us. We’re all with God, but some people are more with God than others.

I sit now in the presence of “Christ”. “He” is locked up safe and warm inside the golden tabernacle here in the church. Did you know that tabernacles and dishes for Mass are supposed to be made of gold? After all, we must show proper respect to our God. Can’t be keeping him in any of those other metals he created, no sir. Only gold is fit for God. Anyway, looking at this situation from an outside perspective reveals just how ridiculous it is. I’m sitting in a special room designated for one purpose: to house a golden box in which is held, under lock and key, a few pieces of unleavened bread. I’m supposed to genuflect to this box when entering and exiting the room.

The other day I heard someone say, “Christ is really, physically present, in the form of bread and wine.” What? This is nonsense. It can’t be both ways: either the bread changes into some other physical substance, or it doesn’t. It if does, that’s testable. If it doesn’t, then the implication is that the bread and wine have immaterial/spiritual properties. But that’s absurd. Wheat and grapes don’t have souls. This is why they call it a “mystery”.

There’s no mystery. You’re worshiping a piece of bread.

We celebrated Mass at the migrant camp today. It made me a little sad. These people put up with the horrible state of their lives partly because they believe that they’ll go to paradise after death. Sure, maybe the thought of that gives some of them the hope they need in order to keep going. But at the same time, it cripples their drive to fight for change and equality. They stay where they are because they believe God will reward them for their suffering.

False. There is no God. Heaven is a logical impossibility under Catholicism. These people have been brainwashed, and they’ll stay that way until something drastic occurs.

I feel bad sometimes, thinking this way. In our group, I find myself placing people into one of several categories as I stand among them: too young or naïve to truly believe; indoctrinated by their parents; not smart enough to understand the arguments against their faith; intelligent, but unwilling to search for the truth; set in their ways and unwilling to change; and so on. Is it wrong of me to think this way? Every single one of these people is deluded in some way. Each would require a different style of argument or piece of evidence in order to convince them otherwise, assuming it’s possible to do so.

But that’s not my place. They may believe as they wish. All I ask is for the same privilege.

no title

2009-08-12T16:07:00.000-07:00

It’s true what they say: there are no Christian children. There are only the children of Christian parents.

St. Claire's Cat

2009-08-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

Another restless night. I hope I can sleep this evening, because waking up each day with progressively higher levels of exhaustion is not something I’m looking forward to. Oh well. That’s what I get for not bringing an air mattress.

Entertained an erotic fantasy about previously mentioned older woman; fantasy involved shower room and relative privacy enjoyed therein. More on this story as it develops.

Mass again. We’re gonna do this every morning, I’m thinking. Oh well. If God were real, he’d be pis (Mass began as I was writing the preceding statement. Make of that what you will.)

St. Claire’s cat: During Mass, the fast-talking Irish priest told us about St. Claire of Assisi. At one point he said, “According to legend, when St. Claire was bedridden, she wanted a towel from across the room. So she asked the cat, and the cat got it for her.” Everyone laughed.

…seriously? The idea of an invisible best friend who follows everybody everywhere all the time and can grant wishes is totally fine, but the notion that a woman—who, by virtue of being a saint, is able to call down favors from God Himself—can somehow communicate with a cat is a little too far beyond the pale?

Theists… *shakes head*

I suspect that a few of the junior high girls have taken a liking to me. No matter. My heart beats only for one; perfection, thy name is MILF.

Ironically, someone made a joke this evening about Allison [note: name has been changed] and me showering together. The circumstances permitted such buffoonery. I laughed it off… and got just a tiny bit aroused. More on this story as it develops.

Today was long. Very long. But worthwhile. My old passion for social justice is coming back. And totally God-free too! I gave a very inspiring speech this evening about how immigration isn’t a black and white issue. They ate it up. I was phenomenal. And again, didn’t need to mention God even once. I’m starting to see that my life isn’t as different as I thought it would be. I still do the same things. Now I just don’t waste time praying to an imaginary being. Saves precious minutes and hours of my very finite life.

All right, time for rest. Until tomorrow, I remain: Closet Atheist.

Leave Jesus at the Door

2009-08-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, holy water doesn’t burn holes in atheist foreheads.

I’m sitting inside a church, getting ready to endure Mass. Sigh… the things I do for the sake of appearances. But revealing myself would be far worse, I feel, so for now I will put up with it.

A good day. Almost no mention of religion at all. When we began working at the distribution center, we went around and said why we’d come on the trip. I think maybe two people said something about God. I thought to myself, “Why bring that in? It’s clear that most of you didn’t even think of it when you signed up. Just leave Jesus at the door!”

Also, I find myself strangely attracted to a woman at least fifteen years my senior. More on that story as it unfolds.

You know how I know that I’m really an atheist? Because I’m in the thick of it. I’m in the best that Catholicism has to offer. We’re not telling people what to believe. We’re just handing out food and clothes. This is a place where I thrive, a place where I want to be. But what makes it different is this: I don’t need God to tell me I should feel good. I don’t need God to compel me to be here. And I think if my companions really thought about it, they’d realize they don’t need God either.

The definition of “confirmation bias”: Claiming that a certain turn of events is a miracle or a godsend or a blessing or whatever when you prayed or wished for it beforehand, while simultaneously ignoring the overwhelmingly large number of times that similar prayers or wishes went unanswered.

If you get what you want, surely God has blessed you. If you don’t, well, the Lord works in mysterious ways. The random nature of when prayers are answered does nothing to sway your faith. Yet if, say, a parent treated you that way, you’d claim child abuse.

Beginning The Mission

2009-08-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

You know how I know I’m not just going through an “atheistic phase”? A “dark night of the soul”? Because I wish it were true. I wish desperately that it were true, that I didn’t have to go from moment to moment knowing that one day it will all disappear. I know it’s not a phase because no matter how desperately I’d like to believe that the amazing, wonderful people I know won’t someday perish, never to be seen again, I just can’t. I can’t force myself to believe. There are so many reasons against it that it can’t be true… yet I want it to be, very much.

I had to lead the prayer before we left the church this morning. Thankfully, I’ve always been good at spontaneous prayer. Still felt really weird though. Felt like someone asked me to lead a prayer to Demeter, or Thor, or Quetzalcoatl.

I am an atheist in isolation here. A lonely stone in a sea of believers. And no one has a clue. I’m on my own here.

I also led evening prayer, and am apparently the go-to guy for prayer this week. Shit. One of the first things I lost faith in was the power of prayer. I never should’ve redone those journals [Note: I reformatted the reflection journals for this trip prior to our departure].

I don’t know what to expect from this week. Already I’ve had to conceal my non-belief multiple times, in the form of leading prayers and reading Bible passages. I might as well be reading from Harry Potter, for all the truth that’s in the Bible. And prayer to a nonexistent being seems like a big waste of time. I wanna relax and enjoy myself here instead of constantly entertaining a sarcastic inner monologue about all the church talk we’ve gone through. I’ll make an effort to do that tomorrow.

Thought from Mass this morning: When they say, “This is the body of Christ,” all I hear is, “The emperor is wearing clothes!”

Another Week

2009-08-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, the time has come once again: I’m to pass as a Catholic for a week. Remember the service trip I mentioned in my deconversion story? The one that got me started on the trail to a life of faith? It’s that same trip, led by my home parish of St. John of the Cross. I’ll be going with a number of other adults and a huge group of junior and senior high school students, some of whom I will be directly responsible for. These details are largely irrelevant; what is relevant is the fact that this is, in every regard, a Catholic event. We have prayer time built into the schedule. We’ll be attending Mass during the week. Discussions about faith will be the norm. I’ll be expected to plan evening prayer at least once.

I’m not looking forward to any of these things. So why am I going, you might ask? Well, one of my siblings is attending, so I’d like to spend time with them. But more importantly, I want to serve. Just because I don’t have God elbowing me in the ribs and saying, “Aren’t you gonna go help them?” anymore doesn’t mean I don’t want to care for my fellow human beings. If anything, atheism demands an even greater attention to human suffering, because there’s no great equalization at the end of life. If people aren’t treated justly here and now, they won’t be compensated in the future. So I want to be a part of bring about a more socially just world.

Nervous is probably the best word to describe what I’m feeling. I’m nervous. I don’t want someone to come up to me and ask my where I’m at with my faith, because I’ll be forced to do one of three things: lie, evade, or confess. Lying is something I try to avoid if possible. Evading is difficult. Confessing is the most ideal of the three, but doing so will lead to a much more involved conversation, one that I’m frankly not sure I’m prepared to have.

I guess there’s no real point to this entry except to vent. I’m worried about what will happen and kicking myself for thinking this would be a good idea. I’ve been away at college for years now, but the same youth pastor still works at the church. She knew me quite well back then. When the meetings began for the adult leaders, she instantly assumed that my beliefs were the same as before. And why wouldn’t she? I’ve given her no reason to think otherwise. I’m debating whether I should tell her or not. On the one hand, telling her seems like the honest thing to do. She thinks I’m someone that I’m not. But on the other hand, she was an integral part of my Catholic development. To tell her that all her efforts ultimately did nothing to prevent my departure form the faith may be an unnecessary blow to her ego. But maybe I’m over-thinking this.

I plan to write a bit while I’m away. I’ll post those entries when I return, but backdate them so they correspond to when they were written. Until then, peace.

Unshakeable

2009-08-06T22:59:00.001-07:00

Tonight I attended a training session designed to educate me about child abuse. I needed to go to this because I’m going to be working with kids next week and it’s required that all volunteers undergo training of this kind. Members of the Catholic Church put the training materials together (why I’m attending Catholic training of this sort is a matter for a separate entry, which I’ll hopefully have finished by tomorrow, but the long and short of it is that I’m going on a Catholic mission trip). I went in with no expectations. I came out shaken to my core.

I suppose this may be one of the many lines that separates me from the believer I used to be—or, if I’m honest with myself, might well have never been. We saw a few training videos that included commentary from actual sexual abuse victims and stories told by real, convicted child molesters. These stories were utterly devastating to listen to: children as young as two being taken advantage of; girls being touched by their pastors, priests, coaches, foster fathers; boys being touched by their teachers, uncles, friends of their parents; abusers who found themselves unable to stop despite repeated attempts to quit… the list goes on and on. One particularly horrifying story involved a boy who was already a “problem” student when the abuse began; he felt trapped by his previous behavior, because his credibility had been damaged and he no longer thought anyone would trust him. On the other side of the spectrum, one of the perpetrators told his story on screen as a bearded adult, but ended it with the revelation that he was 15 when he was caught, thereby implying that he’d been in prison or rehabilitation since that time. Every story was heart wrenching. I became simultaneously horrified and furious: what sort of world is this that we live in where these things happen?

And as these emotions hit me, so too did something familiar: doubt. I remembered the doubts I’d faced many months ago, and the fact that some of them had come about because of similar situations. I’d hear about some kind of ghastly violence or terrible disaster, and I’d gaze upward and wonder, “Would a good God let this happen?” As I sat reminiscing, the rest of the class began discussing the films. I was easily the youngest person there, and undoubtedly the only non-believer. After all, this was a Catholic event: why would anyone who didn’t believe in God be present? But, again, that’s a story for another time. I noticed that instead of any expressions of uncertainty about God, everyone seemed quite able to fit sexual abuse into their Catholic worldview.

This may all seem trivial, but allow me to make my point: these stories of child abuse did not cause the die-hard Catholics in the room to question their God in the least (as far as I was able to tell). But that same stimulus, when shown to an atheist, made me wonder how anyone could believe in a perfectly good God (and I say this with full awareness of my own past faith). I was sitting there asking myself how I could’ve ever thought God was watching out for humanity, while everyone else was perfectly fine with letting God permit such despicable evil.

What justification can there be for sexual abuse of children? What possible reason could God have for letting innocent children be abused? I’m aware of the stock answers: free will, opportunities for others to be caring, unknown purposes, and so on, but (as is likely obvious) none of these answers satisfy me.

Perhaps they never did. Perhaps my faith was never as strong as I thought it was. But I’m ok with that now, because I can stand behind one thing that I’m very proud to say: I will not make excuses for a God who does nothing to prevent the sexual abuse of children.

The Born for Hell Dilemma

2009-08-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Ebonmuse for his commentary on this argument.

Hell is an all-to-familiar concept for most theists. Depending on the tradition in question, human beings may be cast into that infamous lake of fire for just about any offence, from lying, to being a member of the wrong religious order, to simply eating the wrong kind of food or working on the wrong day of the week. The properties of Hell—and the punishments suffered while interred there—differ from sect to sect, but one thing remains relatively static: Hell is a place of punishment, and is reserved for those who have failed to meet whatever criteria for goodness the religion in question has laid out.

For my purposes here, I will be exploring the deity of the dominant monotheistic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity): omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good and just, and so on. I wish to present a logical argument against God having certain properties, namely either perfect justice or omniscience. Although this argument may already exist in some form out there in cyberspace, I have not yet been able to locate it. If any reader has information about this argument or one similar, I’d love to see it! All right, without further ado, allow me to present:

The Born for Hell Dilemma

A quick definition first: by ultimate fate, I am referring to the final place where the soul in question will end up, after living out its time on Earth. There are two possible answers under the monotheistic religions: in Heaven with God, or in Hell. Every soul will go to one of these places, with no exceptions. All right, let’s begin. The argument can be laid out as follows:

1. Either God knows the ultimate fate of each human soul from the moment he creates it, or he doesn’t.

2. If God knows the ultimate fate of each human soul from the moment he creates it, then he sometimes knowingly creates souls that will be sent to an eternity of torment in Hell.

3. If God does not know the ultimate fate of each human soul from the moment he creates it, then there is something that God does not know.

4. If God sometimes knowingly creates souls that will be sent to an eternity of torment in Hell, then God is not perfectly just.

5. If there is something that God does not know, then God is not omniscient.

6. So, either God is not perfectly just, or God is not omniscient.

This argument, as far as I can tell, is logically valid. However, to be assured of its soundness, I will provide a defense of the premises:

1. This premise is a simple binary: either A or not A.

2. If God possesses perfect knowledge of where any given soul he creates will end up, then he obviously knows what he’s doing when he makes that soul. Thus, he is well aware of the fact that he occasionally creates souls that, from the moment they come into existence, are doomed to Hell.

And occasionally is probably too gentle a term, if many theists are to be believed: under most versions of the monotheistic religions, the majority of people will end up in Hell; thus, if God knew what he was doing when he made those souls, then he created the majority of humans with a one-way ticket to Hell built in from the start. Some examples: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

3. If God creates souls without knowing where they’re going to be once their Earthly lives end, then there is—perhaps obviously—some fact of which God is not aware.

4. This is the premise that I think requires the most defending, so pardon me if this section is a tad on the longer side.

What does it mean to be perfectly just? It means that in every instance, a perfectly just being will act with justice in mind. He will never punish any living thing unfairly. He will give unto each of his creations what is due to them, and nothing more or less than that. Now, suppose for a moment that God is about to create a new, Hell-bound soul. What possible reason could God have for forming this soul and placing it in the world? God knows that no matter how hard the person he’s about to make tries, that person will nevertheless be damned to eternal suffering (a fate so horrific that it’s practically impossible to justify… but that’s a different topic, and one that has been covered quite well elsewhere.)

So why make this person? Why bring into existence a being that will live on the Earth for an amount of time so short as to be inconsequential, and then be forced to suffer terrible pain for eternity? Surely it is within the scope of an omnipotent God’s power to only create souls that will end up in Heaven? Furthermore, wouldn’t a perfectly good God desire that state of affairs? God wants his creations to be with him in Heaven (John 14:2-3, KJV), and allegedly does everything he can in order to prepare his followers to go there. Why would he make a soul that had no chance of getting to Paradise?

One more thing: if God can create one soul that’s doomed to Hell and another that’s bound for Heaven, why would he ever make anything except Heaven-bound souls? Surely a good God wouldn’t want to put anyone in Hell unless he absolutely had to? So why would God ever make anything except souls that were pure enough to be worthy of redemption and eternal life?

It is not, I wish to argue, in any way just for God to perform this action. Let me explain: in order to be eligible for punishment, one has to be in command of one’s actions, and then commit an act of injustice. If a person is not acting freely, then it is unjust to punish her. If she has done nothing wrong, it is unjust to punish her. Yet through no fault of their own, certain people come into existence already marked for Hell. Their punishment is set in stone before they are able to commit any actions that might condemn them! Moreover, God made them this way! What justice is it for God to stack the deck in this manner? How could a perfectly just being commit so unjust an act as to create a soul that has no chance for redemption? If life is a test (as some believers assert), then God has already given certain people a big red F stamp before he’s even handed out the exam.

5. This premise appeals to the definition of omniscient. An omniscient being is one who knows all that is knowable. Thus, if God does not know where the souls he makes are going to end up, then he is unaware of certain knowable propositions, and thus fails to meet the requirements for omniscience.

6. This is a logically valid conclusion that follows from the premises.

I will now address a few possible objections:

“Everyone has a chance to get to Heaven / some people choose not to love or accept God / people choose to go to Hell / any other statement regarding the reasons why people are condemned to eternal suffering.”

If everyone were on a level playing field, this might be the case. But as I pointed out, a God with the knowledge of where each soul ends up is a God who is rigging the game. God creates souls that, no matter what they might do, will wind up in Hell. They have no chance at redemption, because God knows where they’re going as soon as he brings them into existence. And thus God is committing an injustice that no human sin can compete with, an injustice for which countless souls are suffering endless pain, if theists are correct.

“God makes neutral souls. Our choices on Earth decide where we go.”

You’re missing the point. Check premise 1 again: either God knows what will happen to us, or he doesn’t. There’s no middle ground here. He can’t just have a decent guess about the matter. It’s one way or the other, and the argument continues from there.

“Human souls choose by their own free will where they will end up. Whether God knows where we’re going or not, he is still acting justly when he punishes people to damnation for sinning.”

Allow me to provide a quick analogy to illuminate why this is not the case. Suppose I am a police officer. If I caught someone in possession of stolen goods or illegal drugs, it would be a just action for me to arrest that person and ship her off to prison. But what if I planted the goods on her? What if I slipped the drugs in her pocket? Then we can easily see that I am committing an injustice by arresting her.

This is exactly what is taking place when God creates a soul that he knows will end up in Hell; that soul had sin written on it from the start. It is unjust for God to judge that soul before the soul has a chance to prove itself, and yet if God knows how he’ll eventually judge every soul he makes, then he never gives those souls that chance. Hell-bound souls are deemed guilty before they even walk into the courtroom.

“The ultimate fate of a soul is not a knowable proposition at the time of that soul’s creation.”

This may be a possibility, but I think it is highly unlikely. Look at it this way: God is alleged to have perfect, intimate knowledge of our souls. He knows us through and through; not a thought crosses our minds that God is not aware of, nor can we ever do anything to shock or surprise God, for he so fully knows our nature as to be able to know what we are going to say before we say it (Psalm 139:1-5, NIV). Surely it is necessary for God to be completely aware of who each person is, in order to judge him or her fairly? If that’s the case, then that knowledge stems from an awareness of our souls, for it is in the soul that all of our memories, personality, and morals are said to reside (and if that’s not where they are, then what does the soul do? For more on that topic, try Ebonmuse’s A Ghost in the Machine).

But then wouldn’t it be the case that God knew of all of those factors when he created the soul? None of those things arose by chance; God put all of them there, carefully, intentionally, and with full awareness. So it doesn’t make much sense to say that God created everything that will eventually decide a person’s ultimate fate, but then isn’t able to figure out what that fate will be until the person has lived out their life. It would be like an author with perfect knowledge of her characters claiming that she doesn’t know—and furthermore, cannot know—how those characters will fare at the end of her book.

I have attempted to show here that God must either be lacking in justice or lacking in knowledge, for there is no way a God with maximized versions of both those attributes could create souls that will end up in Hell. This is because God must either be creating souls that he knows he will condemn, in which case he is acting unjustly, or he is creating souls without any idea where they’ll go, in which case he is missing a rather critical piece of knowledge. Either way, God loses an important characteristic.

Thoughts and comments are very welcome.

My Deconversion Story, Part 3

2009-08-02T01:45:00.001-07:00

I can’t really pinpoint a moment or a specific event. Most people can't, it seems. And part of me is really glad for that fact, because if I could point to one thing and say, “That's it. That’s what did it,” then I’d have to wonder if maybe I just haven’t done a decent job of getting over whatever tragedy I blamed on God and religion. Maybe that would be easier for my Catholic friends to accept. Maybe if I had this big, terrible event I could blame, then I could get my faith back.

But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t just one thing. It was thing upon thing upon thing.

“Why is there so much suffering in the world? Why does God seem to answer only the most random of prayers? Why is it that even when I pray for someone with the deepest convictions of my heart, nothing changes? Why do I have to watch my friends go through pain and agony of many different kinds—physical, spiritual, emotional—without so much as whisper of reassurance from God? Why is it that every night I stare at the ceiling for hours, wanting so badly to feel that presence again, but try as I might I can’t? Has God abandoned me? Furthermore, why does it seem like I’m coming upon more and more aspects of God that just don't make sense? If God is good, why did he perpetrate so many evils in the Bible? If God is all-knowing, how can we have free will? If God is omnipotent, why is this world as horrible as it is? If God is perfectly just, how can he send people to Hell?” I could go on and on, and I know these questions aren’t particularly complex or deep, but they all came cascading down on me in the final months of my tenure as Retreat Planner. They shook me to my core. I sought professional counseling, for these and other problems. I wanted so badly to go back in time and erase the doubts, but I knew that was impossible.

Summer came and went. I thought a lot about what I believed. I realized that the reasons I’d had in the past weren’t trustworthy because they were primarily emotional. I believed in God because I felt like he existed. I loved Jesus because I felt like he loved me. But I had no reasons to back up those feelings. And try as I might, I couldn’t let myself believe something just because I wanted it to be true. I had to seek truth on its own, for its own sake, and without bias if possible. Nothing else would satisfy me.

I told myself I would take a break. See how things went without attending mass. Maybe I was just burnt out? Maybe I’d spread myself too thin during my service year? After all, some of my friends thought that, and I’d certainly devoted the majority of my free time to the Ministry. As my next and final year of college began, I opted to stay home on Sundays instead of going to mass. I tried to avoid weekly house prayers, but ended up going to those for the sake of keeping everyone on good terms. And a remarkable thing happened: nothing. I wasn’t struck by lightning. I didn’t get horribly sick. In fact, I had better grades that quarter than in any quarter of the previous year. I made new friends. I started living life for myself, instead of living for the expectations and approval of others.

And slowly, but surely, I let go of my faith. It was terrifying. It hurt so bad. But I let it go. I began studying arguments for and against God, seeing which ones held their ground and which ones fell flat. I told myself I was an agnostic, but once my last quarter arrived I could no longer deny how things had progressed. It felt good to step blinking into the sunlight. I was finally ready to face what had been coming for a year or more.

My name is Dale. I am an atheist. I once believed in God and his son Jesus Christ, but I don’t anymore. I don’t know what’s out there; I won’t claim to be sure that God doesn’t exist. But I know that I haven’t found a reason to cling to my old beliefs in the supernatural. I can understand a world that is purely physical. I can see it. It makes sense to me. And a world without a god seems more likely than a world with one, so for now the best answer I can give is that it’s likely that god does not exist.

I’m still searching for the truth. That hasn’t stopped either. This blog is a chronicle of my journey, written backwards, but also forwards, because even as I look at what I used to be, I get images of what I will become. I think and grow as I read more and more. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll be eating these words. Maybe not. That’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

Our lives are a one-shot deal. Now that I’m no longer encased in a web of superficial, paper-thin illusions and imaginings, I can start making the most of mine.

Thanks for reading.

My Deconversion Story, Part 2

2009-08-02T01:43:00.000-07:00

It was quiet. Subtle. I didn’t even notice at first. My nine-month tenure as Retreat Planner had already begun. I think it may have been in the first eight weeks or so that I discovered an alarming trend: I wasn’t getting as much out of Mass as I used to. I’d sit and stare up at the altar (makeshift; we held our masses on campus, so we had a plastic table with a cloth on it, but eh) during the Consecration and try to feel something. But there was less emotion there. There was less of a glow, less of an aura, less energy. I wondered why I’d been able to sense God’s presence easily in the summer, and now it was so difficult. As schoolwork piled up and the Ministry began demanding more and more of my time, I started to lose focus. I prayed for help. I heard nothing. I prayed more, harder, longer. Burned through rosary beads. Went to daily mass. Confessed my sins.

I’ll take this opportunity to mention that I moved into a house with seven other Catholic men at the beginning of that school year. It was a choice that made perfect sense in the spring prior, when I was still totally embroiled in the Ministry, but once I finally arrived I realized that it was going to be different than what I’d expected. The house maintained weekly prayer as a group, and there was an expectation of good Catholic behavior while in residence. These things weren’t a problem for me at first… but we’ll get there later. Back to the topic at hand.

I got totally screwed in a relationship early that year. Felt pretty beat up about it. On the plus side, my retreats were a major success. The one early in the year was a huge hit (Blair and I had to do some fancy footwork when an unexpectedly small number of students showed up, but we managed to turn a potential disaster into a night of fun), and the one in the fall was even more amazing (two words: Catholic Rave). We were on a roll. But something was missing. It seemed like there was… I dunno… a hole in me. Something that used to be filled, but wasn’t.

No, that’s not the right way to put it.

It was more like waking up from a dream. I kept looking around me and catching brief glimpses of the real world, but then I’d put myself back to sleep, sometimes forcibly. I didn’t want to see the world that ceaselessly tried to creep into my vision. I didn’t want to think about all the things that didn’t make sense about my faith, about God, about Catholicism, about religion in general. I didn’t want to confront the blatant hypocrisy and ignorance of some of my classmates and housemates.

Anyway, there was one more event that I feel is worth mention, and then everything else after that just continues downhill. Keep in mind, this was not a turning point; rather, I see it as a catalyst for a reaction already occurring. In preparing for and during the execution of that year’s “Search” retreat, I finally saw plainly just how artificial the whole of the religious experience on that retreat is, and it disturbed me.

Let me explain: Search is run almost exactly the same way every single year. Friday evening is when the students first arrive. We group them up and let them get to know one another. Make them comfortable. Saturday is filled with almost non-stop activity: prayers, talks given by older students, discussions among small groups, various faith related activities, and so on. The main event is that night; we give the students a long break in the late afternoon, and then subject them to another talk (usually their fifth of the weekend). But this is no ordinary talk. This talk is very carefully designed to evoke a certain emotional response in the students: guilt. We want them to relate to the wrongdoings of the speaker, and then feel in their hearts a desire to change whatever wicked ways they may have. The speaker calls for them to turn over their sins to Christ through the sacrament of Reconciliation (confession, for you non-Catholics). But things don’t end there, no sir. This party is just getting started.

We put on an “impact skit” for the students. Usually the older student leaders on the retreat do this. The show is generally about a student who becomes weighed down by sin and can only find peace and redemption by turning to Jesus. The purpose of the skit is to—and I kid you not—turn on the waterworks. Our objective is to not see a single dry eye in the house. And usually it works; the emotional charge from the talk carries over to the skit, causing that guilt I mentioned to compound upon itself. The students are now becoming malleable putty in our able hands, and there’s still one more shot to fire: the “impact activity”. This is a hands-on, prayerful event that allows us to transfer the students from the gymnasium they’re seated in to the nearby chapel, where they can go to confession. In the three years I attended and worked on Search retreats, we used blindfolds in two of the impact activities. They’re a fantastic way to maintain the emotional state we're shooting for. We didn’t use them that year, but nonetheless we succeeded in keeping everyone in the highly vulnerable state we wanted them in. They went to the chapel, they confessed their sins, they prayed their little hearts out, and low and behold, their faith grew exponentially.

Those poor kids. They had no idea we’d set them up.

Not even one minute of that evening is unplanned. We spend hours and hours before the retreat getting everything ready; coming up with the most impactful talk, skit, and activity, gathering supplies, rehearsing the performances, and generally trying our best to make the evening as emotionally evocative as possible. And we always succeed. Not a dry eye in the house.

This practice raised a red flag for me. At the time, I tried to justify our actions. “Perhaps what we’re doing is necessary?” I thought. “Perhaps these students (some of whom haven’t been involved in the Church for years when they attend) need a major hit of faith smack to have their eyes opened to the power of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice? Perhaps what we’re doing is making it easier for God to speak to the students whose hearts have been hardened by sin?”

“But why, then,” I reasoned, “would a God of infinite power need us to so flagrantly interfere with the emotions of these students? Surely God can do a fine job of communicating on his own? Moreover, it seems downright counterproductive to put these students in a highly emotional state; after all, how can we trust that what they feel when they’re all worked up is really the presence of God, and not just the feelings they think they ought to be feeling at the time? How do we know we’re opening a channel for God to speak to them, and not just making them extremely vulnerable to suggested thoughts and experiences (which we then graciously provide)?

Anyway, my apologies for that long story. The overall point is this: after seeing how crafted the whole of the Saturday evening experience is at Search, I realized that everything I went through on that fateful night at my first Search two years prior was, in fact, just as artificial. I could no longer trust the revelations I’d had at the time, despite how real they’d felt and how much they’d meant to me. I became jaded. I wondered how much of what I’d been through in my faith life up to that point was formulated the same way.

After that, things continued to crumble. I got embroiled in another unhealthy relationship. My grades fell. I did things that I knew my religion taught against (things that would make a nun blush, if you take my meaning). The final retreat Blair and I planned that year went well, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t feel like praying anymore. For months and months I’d been asking God for a sign, for help, for anything. Here I was, living with die-hard Catholics and acting as a spiritual role model for the Newman community, and I was having doubts about God’s existence! I hated what I’d become, and I tried even harder to hang on to the God who seemed to have disappeared from my life.

But like an old picture left in the sun… God faded.

Next time: The exciting conclusion! Stay tuned!

My Deconversion Story, Part 1

2009-07-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet, because I don’t know that it requires a lot of explanation and other people have already told stories similar to this one many times over. Sure, it’s my story this time, but that doesn’t necessarily make it more interesting for you to read. Anyway, on with the show.

I was raised in a “Catholic” household. I use sarcastic air-quotes here because my home was not a stereotypical Catholic home, and thus it’s almost unfair to classify it as such. My father is a cradle Presbyterian (though he’s been practicing Catholicism for the last twenty-something years) and my mother is a cradle Catholic. I was always carted to church growing up, and I attended Sunday school classes, but that was the extent of it. No prayers at home (save for the occasional grace before meals, when we remembered). No rosaries or Bible readings. And certainly no discussions about faith, God, or the Catholic Church. I went to public school and spent my time on other pursuits. My knowledge of religion came from weekly Masses, and nowhere else.

As I got older, I became interested in learning more about Jesus and all that rigmarole. When I was about twelve, I attended a weeklong summer service trip in a nearby town and worked with an impoverished migrant population. This adventure taught me how to feel the presence of God. Doing good things for others made me happy and satisfied; I attributed this emotion to the Holy Spirit and its invigorating presence in my soul. After that trip, hanging with the youth group in middle and high school seemed natural. I attended Catholic conventions and rallies. I became a leader in my church community. I was often the only person in my family who wanted to go to church, and as soon as I was able to drive I generally flew solo on Sunday morning. But none of that bothered me: I was sure that I was doing the right thing, and any doubts I had about my faith I attributed to my lack of a firm Catholic upbringing. Surely I’d know all the answers, if only I had the time to study/had had them drilled into my head from the beginning!

High school graduation arrived, and with it came a college acceptance letter. I attended a public liberal arts university, and on my first day there I sought out the Newman Ministry on campus. It was a thriving community, filled with firm believers who were knowledgeable in all areas of the faith. I was among people my own age who shared my beliefs. I’d at last found a place that I could call home! I dove eagerly into every activity they could throw at me, attending retreats and other functions with great regularity. I learned new things about the Church; my first experience with Adoration (the Catholic practice of displaying and worshipping the “Body of Christ”, in the form of a communion wafer of course) took place during that initial year, and I learned many new things about Catholic morality (for example, I had no idea that there were “degrees” of sin, i.e. mortal and venial). Again, I found no reason to doubt or wonder at why I believed what I believed, or whether it was all true and worth following. People I thought were cool were telling it to me. That was good enough. I was among believers. I knew very few people of other religions, and no atheists. My main friend group consisted of Catholics and other Christians. Why would I ask any questions in that kind of environment?

Well, all right, perhaps I should be a bit more generous, because I wasn’t entirely without questions. I took an introductory course in the philosophy of religion (incidentally, my professor is extremely well-known in the field; I’ve seen his work cited in my textbooks and on some of the atheist blogs I’ve read) and came out with more questions than answers. Why did it seem like every argument for God ended in a heap of fractured logic, while every argument against God led to, if nothing else, the idea that disbelief was at least reasonable?

Another incident that planted small seeds of doubt was a series of classes I took with the Ministry. They were extracurricular and student-run, so their accuracy with regard to Catholic doctrine is somewhat questionable, but I have no reason to think that my teacher (a fellow student) misled her pupils deliberately. She taught us to the best of her ability with all the materials she had access too. The classes were on the Theology of the Body (ToB), which, in short, is a series of teachings that explain the divine purpose of human sexuality. I attended these courses and listened to her words with increasing unease; I felt utterly unprepared as I discovered how strict the boundaries were. I’m sure you’re aware of the basics: birth control is wrong, pre-marital sex is wrong, etc. etc. Catholicism 101, right? Well, this class explained why the Church taught against these acts. And the reasoning behind many of the tenets was, as far as I could tell, shaky at best and downright contradictory at worst.

I hope you’ll pardon a brief anecdote on that topic. One of the inconsistencies that bothered me the most was this one: ToB proclaimed that love needed to be given Freely, Fully, Faithfully, and Fruitfully, or it was not “real” love, but instead some kind of twisted perversion of love, one which God could not bless. This was all explained in great detail, but the thing that struck me was the claim that having sex without being married or while using birth control was denying one of those F’s (Fully and Fruitfully, respectively). Furthermore, if I were to commit such an act, doing so would be tantamount to lying, because what I’m doing when I have sex under these conditions (unmarried, with birth control) is saying through my action, “I want to give myself to you… but not my whole self.” Thus, although my act of engaging in sex indicates that I wish to give everything I have to my partner (which is why I’m having sex in the first place), this is impossible while the conditions are being met, and thus I am being untruthful in my actions. My body is saying one thing, but my heart is saying another. Basically, I am lying with my body, and lying is a sin.

Counter this with a point made much later in the sequence (perhaps to help keep people from noticing the logical discrepancy?): many of the teachings of ToB are not in line with the beliefs of American society. Pre-marital sex, birth control, and so on are all widely accepted in our country today. And thus, convincing oneself that these things are wrong, for reasons that required a month of classes to explain, is a tough task. How were we told to go about it, you ask? One of the keys was—and I wish desperately that I could quote the documents I was given on this subject, but I have lost them over the years—to act as if you believe in the rules laid out by ToB, despite having doubts in your heart. Does this sound like anything I’ve already mentioned? Isn’t it the case that doing this would fall into the category of lying with your body? I’ll make it perfectly clear, if I can: In the example I gave earlier, the sin was that I did something with my body that my heart was not in agreement with. Yet when I’m trying to live my life under these new rules, I’m supposed to do something with my body that my heart is not in agreement with!

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That’s what it boils down to. But enough of my digression; let’s return to the topic at hand.

I shrugged off all these worries; surely they meant little to me, a true believer. I couldn’t have my faith questioned. I was too deeply involved in that community. On the Ministry’s “Search” retreat in the winter of my first year, I had a spiritual experience unlike anything I’d been through before. I honestly believed that God was sending me guidance, that I could somehow “sense” his presence. I knew what I had to do, though how I knew it I could not explain. I made some changes in my lifestyle: I joined the choir, read the Bible more often, and stopped fooling around with my girlfriend (a move that, as you can likely imagine, was met with a fair bit of displeasure in both the literal and figurative senses). Although these changes were difficult, I did my best to stick by them. And I found fulfillment in carrying out God’s wishes.

For a while, I was happy in my faith. During the summer, I ended up breaking things off with that girlfriend I mentioned (though not for any religious reasons), and consequently started my second year on shaky footing. But luckily I had the Ministry to turn to, and I found solace and comfort in that community. The school year came and went. No major turning points, just a greater level of involvement in Ministry activities. In the spring I interviewed with and was selected for a paid position within the Ministry in the following school year—I was set to be a Retreat Planner, along with another student who I’ll call Blair. My involvement had reached its highest point. I’d never felt so in tune with Christ or the Church, and I anxiously awaited my opportunity to give others the kind of experience that had brought me closer to God just twelve short months prior. I was on fire with God’s love. The Holy Spirit imbued me with purpose and zeal. Nothing could stop me.

And surprisingly, nothing did. No one came forward to say, “Dale, you’re nuts. Here’s why you shouldn’t be a believer.” Nothing terrible happened in my life: no deaths, no personal losses or tragedies, no arguments or broken promises. Sure, I screwed up a couple of relationships over the next year or so. But there wasn’t a devastating loss or a sudden realization. There was simply nothing.

And in the end, nothing was exactly the problem.

Next time: Part two of three!

Entering the Atheist Blogosphere

2009-07-25T00:05:00.001-07:00

I’ll be honest: when I got the idea for this blog, I was woefully uninformed about the atheist blogosphere. I had no idea that there were so many amazing, brilliant, well-written atheist blogs out there. And frankly, I feel intimidated. Really, really intimidated.

What do I have to contribute to this field? What can I say that hasn’t been said a dozen times, each in better prose than I can conjure? In what way does my story add anything to the existing body of outstanding atheist works? Can I hope to compete with minds far greater than my own? I minored in philosophy in college, but I managed to routinely perform poorly in religious philosophy classes. What hope do I have of saying something useful or meaningful?

Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. It’s not combat I’m engaged in here. Far from it, in fact. I created this blog in part because I wanted to display my atheistic thoughts to the world, and it would be utterly uncivilized of me not to consider atheist bloggers my companions on this journey toward the truth. If anything, I should look at those established blogs as mentors. Father and mother figures, here to help guide me as I take my first baby steps away from the Catholic doctrines I’ve believed for so long. Yes, I think that’s a much more productive way to view things.

So perhaps I should not be intimidated so much as impressed, or awestruck, at the glory of those who’ve come before me. I am humbled by the knowledge exhibited in blogs out there. It is my solemn hope that some day, I will have something as unique and interesting to share as those bloggers routinely do. Until then, I’ll just have to do my best.

Next time: My deconversion story! Every good atheist has one, and now you’ll get to read mine!

"...and let them have dominion...over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Gen 1:26

2009-07-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I hate this place. Society, I mean. The human race. As a species we have caused more death, destruction, and desolation than anything else ever in the history of the planet. It is unclear whether humankind is the first intelligent creature in the universe, the only intelligent creature, the last, someplace in the middle, or perhaps not even intelligent at all. I’m inclined to go with the lattermost of those options, for reasons I will expound upon briefly.

What is the ultimate goal of life? A question posed to the sagest of minds across history, and one that I don’t presume to be able to answer correctly or thoroughly, but the question that nonetheless now captures my attention. Allow me to rephrase: what is the ultimate goal of living creatures? Put this way, the answer is simple: perpetuate the species. Create more life. Do not allow the group to perish. This simple and obvious truth needs no justification; just take a look at any creature that walks, swims, flies, crawls, slithers, trots, tumbles, or whatever else, and it will shortly become apparent that their primary objective is to eat enough to stay alive and reproduce.

We are no different. Oh, sure, we’ve got culture and art and technology and morals and a ton of other fancy intellectual gadgets, but what does it all come back to? Survival. Human beings seek endlessly to dominate this planet and transform it into the perfect habitat for our own kind. We play games with ourselves, trying to pretend that humankind is somehow “noble” and “unique” among the world’s creatures. We’re unique all right; no other beast on this rock is able to cause as much damage to the other beasts as we can. With the push of a button, we can annihilate huge portions of the landscape, wiping out anything that lives there and making the area uninhabitable for the remainder of the foreseeable future. Perhaps more terrifying than that is the fact that without even realizing it, we can still cause the death of dozens of animals, human or otherwise; pollution and terraforming alter the Earth in ways that have consequences we cannot foresee.

But there’s a deeper question here, and it’s this: What’s wrong with that? So what if we want to, in slightly cliché terms, take over the world? Isn’t it our prerogative to make an attempt? Isn’t it our right as one of many species to use our natural advantages to our, well, advantage? Shouldn’t we get as fair a shot as any other animal?

Yes.

It is our prerogative. We do have the right. We’re part of this survival game too. Our ability to reason at a higher level than other creatures is an evolutionary advantage that we have literally no choice but to put to use. Human beings are captured beneath the yoke of self-awareness. Our capacity for conscious thought is simultaneously our greatest asset and our biggest flaw. With it, we are unable to do avoid using it. Without it, we could scarcely be considered human (not that that distinction means nearly as much as we’d like it to; after all, the line we draw is human/beast, and I’ve spent the last several paragraphs trying to blur that barrier).

So here we are. Capable of so much. The smartest creatures on the planet, or so we tell ourselves. Yet we live in denial of our nature. We are animals that masquerade as gods. And in our rush to birth a human-friendly Paradise, we forget that we’re just running the same kind of plays that other creatures run: eat, sleep, reproduce, die. Pass on the genes. Do it all again. Over and over and over. Our means change. We invent clever devices to do our work for us. But the goal remains the same.

And that’s why I feel so disenfranchised with the whole thing: because we pretend it isn’t true. Maybe it’s for the sake of our sanity? Maybe it’s because as we spill more oil and evict more rainforest denizens and murder each other over shiny lumps of compressed coal, we need to feel that it’s all somehow justified by our inherent uniqueness as a species? Maybe it’s just part of being self-aware?

Whatever the reason, too many people fail to see the difference between earning our place at the top of the food chain and deserving said position. We fought our way to the top. We were not put here. And until we can break free of our sense of entitlement, we’ll never understand our true nature as a species. I don’t have an objection to wanting to survive. All I want is for more people to realize that our toys may be different, but the game we’re playing is the same.

Something Awful

2009-07-23T13:19:00.001-07:00

If you’re in the mood to become thoroughly disgusted by humanity, read this. Then go outside and stare at the sky and ask whatever god you believe in, “Why?”

I promise you, no one is going to answer.

My (non)Virgin Birth

2009-07-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

A post with actual substance is forthcoming. For now, I'm afraid you'll have to content yourself with a teaser.

Hi. My name--for purposes of confidentiality--is Dale. I was a Catholic. I suppose I technically still am, since I've been baptized and confirmed, but I no longer consider myself part of the Church (and I suspect the Church herself would have a few choice words for me if she'd the mind to say them). Regardless, I do not practice the Catholic faith any longer, nor do I ascribe to any belief in God or any other deity. This, you might think, would qualify me as an average, run-of-the-mill atheist. However, my circumstances--for the past four years, at least---have been particularly unique.

For the last two years, I have lived in a house with seven extremely devoted Catholic men, next door to a house with seven die-hard Catholic women. I have been heavily involved with Catholic activities at Northwest University—again, the name has been changed to protect, well, me—and have even worked on the Church’s payroll for a time.

Welcome to my blog. I’ll be using this space to tell my story and share insights. I’m an open-minded person, so comments are welcome; however, flaming is discouraged. Unless you’ve thought about what you’re going to say, don’t say it. I’m not interested in starting a fight.

I hope you enjoy the journey. It has been a living Hell for me to get where I am now… and I don’t even believe in Hell.