Reason's Greetings

Seen on my Facebook feed. The religion of humanism and science:...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:14:48 -0400

Seen on my Facebook feed. The religion of humanism and science: hurting people, not healing!

I wouldn’t be alive today without modern medicine and science - without artificial insulin, I would die slowly of malnutrition, skyrocketed blood sugars, and other complications within a couple months. It would be a horrible, slow death of increasing depression, hunger, irritability, weakness and thirst, and prayer and religion wouldn’t do a thing.

"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:54:45 -0400

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.”

- Quote from Augustine in the fifth century, according to pages 47-48 of Knocking on Heaven’s Door by Lisa Randall.

Photo

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:00:50 -0400

elegant-wasted: Interesting. You dont see many...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:12:00 -0400

elegant-wasted:

Interesting. You dont see many images/viewpoints like this online.

Christianity

In the beginning there was an ultimate being which came from nothing, who then caused the nothing to explode, and out of the exploded nothingness the ultimate being created other beings with omniscient knowledge that billions of them would be sent to an eternity of suffering that the ultimate being created, also out of nothing.

Atheism

There is no evidence of this ultimate being, so it likely doesn’t exist. It’s okay not knowing how everything came into existence, but we’ll try to understand it better through scientific methods, if possible.

"The whole conception of “Sin” is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful..."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:01:56 -0400

“The whole conception of “Sin” is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature. If “Sin” consisted in causing needless suffering, I could understand; but on the contrary, sin often consists in avoiding needless suffering. Some years ago, in the English House of Lords, a bill was introduced to legalize euthanasia in cases of painful and incurable disease. The patient’s consent was to be necessary, as well as several medical certificates. To me, in my simplicity, it would seem natural to require the patient’s consent, but the late Archbishop of Canterbury, the English official expert on Sin, explained the erroneousness of such a view. The patient’s consent turns euthanasia into suicide, and suicide is sin. Their Lordships listened to the voice of authority, and rejected the bill. Consequently, to please the Archbishop—and his God, if he reports truly—victims of cancer still have to endure months of wholly useless agony, unless their doctors or nurses are sufficiently humane to risk a charge of murder. I find difficulty in the conception of a God who gets pleasure from contemplating such tortures; and if there were a God capable of such wanton cruelty, I should certainly not think Him worthy of worship. But that only proves how sunk I am in moral depravity.”

- Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, 1943

(via secularsociety)

Hi, could you explain what being an "agnostic atheist" is as opposed to being just agnostic or atheist. I don't believe in a "man in the sky" type god but I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility of something "higher" (who knows what) driving the existence of everything. If that makes sense... Thank you! :)

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:07:00 -0400

Hi :)

Gladly. As the term implies, “agnostic atheist” means one identifies as both an agnostic and an atheist, rather than being “one or the other.” Most people think that agnosticism is some sort of middle ground between theism and atheism, but this isn’t the case. Agnosticism deals with the question of knowledge: can one know anything about the subject in question? (In this context, a god, God, or gods.) An agnostic typically views that knowledge about said deity, Deity, or dieties is not accessible.

Theism and atheism deals with questions regarding belief, regardless of the question of knowledge. Clearly theism is believing in the existence of a deity, and atheism is not believing in the existence of a deity.

So, if you both do not believe a god exists, and you also do not believe knowledge about a deity is possible, then you are an agnostic atheist. It is possible to be a gnostic atheist, agnostic theist, or gnostic theist.

For a graphic and a bit of a longer explanation, check out this page by skepticalavenger.

Thanks for the question, and have a nice day!

Advantages

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:15:25 -0400

Advantages of the atheistic/non-religious and humanistic schema:

No faith to try to reconcile observations with, so one is unafraid to follow the evidence to its conclusions and can more freely and readily take delight in discoveries and insights. (This feeling stands out particularly strongly with the formerly religious).
Appropriate power to the self. One recognizes the ultimate responsibilities oneself and oneself alone has for actions. Moral decisions are guided in a context of personal conviction and not out of fear of punishment or desire for award. One recognizes that he or she is not born necessarily into a fallen, handicapped state, but one is also not born destined to be a child of God either.
Similarly, one’s mind is not clouded by an artificial context of being a central figure in a spiritual battle, but immediate reality tends to be clearer and plainer without trying to understand the indifference of nature in the context of a religious conviction which may view nature as a battleground between actual forces of good and evil.
Not having to deal with stress or concern that tens of millions of people worldwide are being sent to a hell each year. Rather, there is a stronger focus in trying to better conditions on earth and life quality in general, since one views this life as the only life one gets.
Better recognition of the true similarities and differences between people and cultures - if someone thinks or believes differently than you, they are not “lost” or in “need of salvation.” They simply have a different perspective, and one can see more easily that perspectives are a rational result of upbringing, experiences, even genetics and other factors.
An eclectic self. One is consistently and more efficiently evolving one’s views and perspectives based on new experiences and evidences since one does not root oneself in the teachings of a single book.
Better recognition of inequalities and injustices - this one is more from the humanistic and not necessarily non-religious front - because one is less susceptible to prejudices and feelings of superiority or inferiority to others. For the humanist, nationalism for example holds little weight since the humanist looks more to the similarities between himself or herself and others, and national origins is seen more naturally as an artificial divider.

Feel free to add to this list.

Consent Survey

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:30:45 -0400

Consent Survey:

abaldwin360:

This takes like, 2 seconds to do and I am interested in seeing the results.

godlessmen: I couldn’t resist. /logic/

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:05:43 -0400

godlessmen:

I couldn’t resist. /logic/

pseudoatheist: goddamntoothbrush: Never not reblogging...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:24:02 -0500

pseudoatheist:

goddamntoothbrush:

Never not reblogging this.

Never not reposting this.

Both of these are good.

The first - drawing parallels between an abusive relationship and how it’s very much the result of a mind-controlling religion.

The second - because the religious person IS the one being mentally abused, ridicule and personal attacks is the wrong way to go about debating religion with a believer. Attack the religion not the religious. In most cases. In some cases I think it is clear when someone is trying to use religion for power over the minds of others. Attack them if you’re going to verbally tear down someone.

I owe an apology...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:01:44 -0500

skepticalavenger:

tb92sma:

To liberals, because of my “Jesus would’ve been a republican” stance that led me to believe all liberals were evil. Now I see the good in the things they stand for in politics. And especially thank you for making it possible for a poor person like me to pursue my college dreams. I know conservatives aren’t too into that kind of thing.

To pro-choice activists and Planned Parenthood for all the unjust hatred I harbored towards you for promoting the “murder of innocent children”. I recognize now that you are only giving women a choice of what to do with their bodies, and making those choices safe and accessible. As a former pro-life activist, I now see how dire it is to make this choice available. Every woman should be allowed to have an abortion should the need arise. And every woman should have access to birth control. So thank you for making that possible.

To Obama for hating you just because it was the Republican thing to do. I apologize that I didn’t have the courage to stand up to the Republicans i knew when it came time to vote. But know that I rejoiced when I saw that you had won. I support you fully as the President of the United States. You’re doing a great job, no matter what the Republicans say.

To feminists for hating you as well because you oppose so many biblical standards. Now that I see the bible for what it is, I think those standards are right to be opposed. I thank you for the equality you have brought to woman. Women should not be silenced, as the bible demands.

To atheists because I thought you were terrible people. Now, I know that to be false. Perhaps atheists are even better than Christians because they don’t do all that they do based on a reward/punishment system.

To scientists because I always thought you were just trying to “disprove god”. But if the evidence points away from god, so be it.

To anybody that I judged while being a Christian because it was wrong. And I’m sorry.

I realize that Christianity led me to hate more than it led me to love. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have even a hint of hatred towards Christianity at this point. Maybe one day I’ll come to terms with it. But right now I hate what it did to me and I hate what it does to those I know. I would just like to see the world to be more loving and religion free.

Wow!

Apology accepted, especially considering I certainly had a past similar to this, though not as extreme…

Hey you religious people!

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 23:07:33 -0500

lostinthought92:

religiousruminations:

These are mostly for Christians, since I’m writing for my audience and it happens to be the religion I know most about, but some others will apply to other faiths as well.

Question time.

First, let me explain my intentions - people always seem suspicious of this, which surprised me at first, but it’s easier now just to explain right away. I’m interested in your answers, and from your answers I might ask more questions. I’m not trying to make you lose faith. I’m trying to understand the many different ways people think about and interact with religion, if I disagree with something you say, I won’t do it by calling you a derogatory name. I expect the same type of courtesy back, because otherwise I can’t learn anything from you and neither can you from me. I’ve simplified these a lot and changed them from my wordpress account. Anyways, here we go.

If you believe that the purpose of the universe is to foster human life, how do you explain the time surrounding human existence? 99.999999% of all time in which anything existed did not include human life, so this means the universe did some serious procrastinating in turning us up on earth if it is supposedly created for us.

Assuming that God created the whole of existence, where does God come from? If you claim god is eternal – how/why? Why is is conceivable for god to be eternal in order to have created all of the matter that makes up existence, but not for matter to have possibly existed in a way that would make the big bang plausible?

How do you explain inconsistencies in the bible or other holy books? If man wrote them, are they not fallible? Why should they be trusted? There was no peer review process, we have only speculation to go on about their authors and at what time they were written. They are famously unreliable documents with bits of history sprinkled in.

Do you believe evolution? Why/why not? If you do, how do you explain the conflicting teachings of religion with evolutionary theory? Do you know what deism is?

How do you explain that stories such as virgin birth of a savior who was also resurrected three days after their death showing up in earlier religions? These religions often worshiped multiple gods that were nothing like the Christian gods, and had different prophets - yet these stories remain.

Do you think it makes sense to use one lifetime to judge what happens to your eternal soul?

Why do you think there is no clear evidence for God? Feelings are not clear evidence - I used to be a Christian, every time I felt some amazement at something and credited god - I still have those feelings, I just don’t find any reason to credit god anymore since I find no reason to believe god exists.

Why is it that, when someone dies Christians are so sad? If the person was good, they’d go to heaven wouldn’t they? Isn’t this a sort of cognitive dissonance that suggest that deep-down, there is unbelief? I understand this is a basic question, it was just something I often wondered as a kid

Why is it, do you think, that descriptions of heaven are so vague and the ones of hell are so vivid? Is it possible that this is a sort of marketing ploy to keep people afraid and to keep the idea of heaven vague so people could make what they wanted of it? Did you know the ideas of heaven and hell have basically evolved from the Judaic Sheol?

Do you know what the Council of Nicea is? If so, what are your personal views on the work they did? In so many words, I’d view it as the biggest marketing ploy of all time by the church, instead of being concerned with truth.

Tagging this intentionally with a lot of “Christianity” tags, because I’m also curious.

Photo

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 23:01:48 -0500

A standing ovation to your response to tested spirit! And a follow.

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:03:45 -0500

Thank you! I still have a ways to go in understanding evolutionary processes I think; I didn’t believe evolution was “real” only about two years ago actually. But I think a standing ovation in my inbox is an encouraging sign that I’m starting to not only understand it fairly well, but also be able to explain it understandably to others. So I appreciate both your ask and the follow! :)

Happy Darwin Day??????

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:47:55 -0500

testedspirit:

The poor misguided atheists don’t realize that Darwinism does not effect most Christian’s faith. If there was a news report released today that said evolution has been proven as fact, it would not weaken my faith at all. The genetics of evolution have already proven that the genes of the first bacteria could not have occurred at random and so had to have creative design. To insist that many proteins randomly occurred in that specific order is like asking sane and intelligent people to enter a lottery they know they can never win. It just shows that atheists are not necessarily reasonable or rational in their thinking.

“The genetics of evolution have already proven that the genes of the first bacteria could not have occurred at random”

How so? I don’t know a whole lot about genetics. Could you explain this proof to me? … I don’t think you can though, since bacteria were not the “first life.” Modern-day bacteria are complex because they have been evolving alongside the rest of life for 3 billion years, so their cells are probably only remotely like the first single-celled life on earth. And be careful with that word, “random”: in evolution, that means that new mutations do not “know” what will be demanded from the environment. The types of mutations are not correlated to the change of environment. Evolution works via this “random” algorithm - changes and mutations that happen to be favorable tend to be reproduced over those that are not favorable, and, since population growth is exponential, this causes an exponential fall-off of anything not beneficial.

The only requirement for this algorithm to work is that the system in question is capable of reproducing. Single cells with practically no complexity at all other than a tendency to output or generate more cells (I don’t even think this requires DNA. It can be done at a chemical level if I understand things correctly) can experience the effects of natural selection.

So I disagree. I do not think a proof exist that excludes the possibility of life gradually arising from non-life. I don’t think there’s a solid line, a sudden point where one would cry “THIS IS LIFE! IT WASN’T LIFE JUST 10 YEARS AGO!” And the first life was nothing like the complexity we see today, because evolution has been working algorithmically for the last 3 billion years in creating the apparent complexity. The first “life” was probably very basic comparitively.

I also take issue with that last statement. Atheists tend to have a capacity to question their intuition or common sense. Believing things contrary to initial expectations does not equate to being irrational. We know that reality holds counter-intuitive truths. Just because we don’t know how something happened or why it happened (first life, the big bang, etc.) that doesn’t mean answering our ignorance without “GOD” makes us irrational. To the contrary. “I don’t know.” means just that. We do not believe God did it because we don’t have reason or evidence to believe it was done via supernatural means.

Be careful with founding your faith on scientific ignorance, because then your belief hinges on a dwindling pool of as-of-yet unexplained phenomena.

Happy Darwin day everyone

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:09:04 -0500

Happy Darwin day everyone

Yes isn’t it cute? They’re all going to grow up...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:05:59 -0500

Yes isn’t it cute? They’re all going to grow up believing evolution is a myth, others around them are going to hell if they don’t believe, and that an all-powerful being is watching everything they do and is reading their thoughts. Very very encouraging!!!!

theonion: Resigning Pope No Longer Has Strength To Lead Church...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:16:00 -0500

theonion:

Resigning Pope No Longer Has Strength To Lead Church Backward: Full Report

"If morals only matter because god’s telling you what they are, they’re not morals...."

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 23:31:17 -0500

“If morals only matter because god’s telling you what they are, they’re not morals. They’re instructions.”

- http://www.buzzfeed.com/seancurry1/questions-atheists-are-sick-of-answering

A Quick Reminder

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:01:29 -0500

teachthemhowtothink:

Indoctrination into a faith is like being surrounded by a dark, smoky cloud. Things that are obvious to others are completely obstructed. You might have moments… glimpses of clarity, but then the cloud rolls in again from the big ol’ fog machine of the church.

Someone who has been blinded should not be mocked for not being able to see.

If you lean toward anti-theism, please remember your focus should be on fanning the smoke away and exposing the fog machine. Not attacking the people inside the cloud.

(And yes, this “Quick Reminder” applies to myself too. No high horse here.) ~JJ

Pretty good analogy - worth noting though I think that there are people who know how the smoke works and actively try to keep people blinded by it. Attacking those people I think is a bit more justified.