atheists and agnostics

[miriam_e]

I'm convinced that if we are to survive the next several decades we must outgrow the stupidity that is religion. It poses the greatest threat to our children's survival. Each religious group hates each other with an unshakeable faith that they are the one true path. All religions justify murder and repression in the name of their illusory beliefs.

We need more non-religious heroes and heroines in books and films. More atheists and agnostics should stand up and make themselves known as honorable people ...before we become the next targets of the religious crazies.

Comments

[sleepyaardvark.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Advocating the eradication of religion and saying that it is a profound threat. Interesting theory.

I'm not at all surprised you feel this way, based on some of the things you've written, particularly to my post on Islam recently. Let me be upfront with you in saying that your attitude makes me extremely uncomfortable. To be honest, it seems to me like a secular version of the very same ideological extremism that is the reason I have a problem with religions to begin with. To say that a point of view represents a grave threat and that, therefore, it must be stamped out, is very dangerous thinking. I would be just as opposed to someone with your way of thinking being in power as I would to a religious fundamentalist being in power.

The fact is, in matters of religion, we simply don't know. People who are militantly insistent that there is no god or or no human soul or no spirituality are, in my opinion, just as misguided as religious fundamentalists--its extremism from the other side of the coin, but extremism nonetheless. I was a physics major in college and grew up with a lifelong love of science going back to very early childhood, but science has its place. Science deals with what we can detect and measure with our senses. Spirituality, by definition, is outside the realm of science. I think its important for scientists to remember that we do NOT have all the answers. To not acknowledge that there is a whole lot we don't know or even that we could possibly be wrong is unscientific.

My apologies if I've offended you; that was not my intent. I was merely being candid, which is how I usually approach things.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:) How could I be offended? I appreciate the feedback.

Unfortunately though, you have mistaken what I said for the similar, but more scary kinds of things often said by religious fanatics. I want religion to release its grip, but I don't advocate its active eradication. I plead for people to write more atheistic and agnostic heroes and heroines for books and films, but nowhere have I ever suggested that we should fight, kill, or punish religious people. I see religion as a sickness rather than a bunch of evil people. Just as I would not suggest victimising people who have, say, herpes, I don't see religious people as bad. The religion itself is the danger and we must work out ways of countering its pernicious effects just as a virus needs to be prevented from spreading.

The problem with sick memes is that you can't hospitalise people to "fix" them. You can't brainwash them either, because that simply replaces one illness with another. The only cure that I can see is simple knowledge coupled with good sense. The best we can do is to place information at people's disposal and lead by example. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." Any attempt at forcing the change undoes the original intent.

I think the reason people mistake what I say for a kind of secular fanaticism is because it is so unusual for voices to be heard speaking out about the danger of religion. Everybody is so scared of religion! (Mind you they have good reason to be.)

I've many people say that science is good for uncovering knowledge about the real world but that spiritualism is good for matters beyond that. But that just doesn't make any kind of sense. Saying that the soul is something beyond science doesn't make it so. Saying that a god is beyond proof or disproof doesn't take it beyond the realm of science.

Hmmm... maybe I should dispense with the word "science" for a while. I don't like science being used as a religion. People who do that make the same mistake that other religious people make. Many people see science as simply what people in white coats do. To my mind science is just knowledge, and is open to anybody with the desire to think.

See my argument that shows the soul to be an absurdity (http://werple.net.au/~miriam/soulless.html). It is not complex or difficult to comprehend (though I really should rewrite it to make it even easier). A five year old can understand it. Though few religious people will. The argument against a god follows on naturally from that. And there are other points that can be made against the concept of a god and worship. See my short play Grace (http://werple.net.au/~miriam/grace2.html). (A triple-threaded version is here (http://werple.net.au/~miriam/grace3.html) too.) These things don't require any great scientific knowledge... just simple good sense and clear thought.

The great problem with religion is that it doesn't come down to good sense or clear thinking. In the end everything hinges on faith. And anything can be done in the name of faith, because it is not open to logic. Gays are bad because the bible or koran says -- not because of anything that is open to the clear light of good sense. Sure, an atheist can dislike gays, but at least he can be shown that his point of view is based upon prejudice and doesn't make sense. You can't do that with a religious person. At some point come up against a brick wall and they can go no further.

Religion is declining, as knowledge and understanding increases. But I'm worried that this is not proceeding fast enough. The spike is estimated to arrive in about another 50 or 60 years. We had better be mature enough to deal properly with it or we will be in a very dangerous situation. Shedding superstition is one of the major steps in humanity growing up and we have a limited time in which to do it.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

That said, I have to admit that your point does niggle at me. What I say about religious extremists -- "religious crazies" -- is potentially dangerous. It could be inflammatory, and if I had any great following might persuade some to violence against religious groups. (Could be a lucky thing I have no real influence. :)

Violence often achieves the opposite of what is wanted, but especially so in relation to religion. It feeds off violence and repression by using such things to make believers feel special, further strengthening the sick meme.

The only way that I know of to dispel religion is through knowledge and balanced good sense. Maybe one day we will have some good conceptual tools to quickly and easily undo the damage wrought by sick memes like religion. (Cognitive therapy may be the beginning of such a toolkit.) Until then we just have to do it the slow and gentle way.

Thanks for prompting me to think further about this and to examine my feelings more carefully. I appreciate it.

[sleepyaardvark.livejournal.com]

No problem. Although I do share your suspicion of religion, something about the way you phrased things just bothered me somehow. I'm probably going to respond to your replies more at length later, but I haven't had time yet this morning.

But I do want to ask you one thing. I've recently been talking to this girl (a college student) who is an admitted conservative Christian. She says she is voting for Bush because she believes him to be the lesser of two evils and "fears for our country" with a "less fundamentalist president", although she says she doesn't agree with him on a lot. She says she can't in good conscience vote for Kerry but that the war in Iraq is not an overriding issue for her. When asked what she DOES support Bush about, she stated that mainly she was concerned with supporting the "pro-life pro-family" agenda.

And yet...I could be totally offbase here but from the way she says things and her whole attitude, I'm getting a feeling that it'd be worth it to try to wean her off of the religious fundamentalism. At the very least, she seems very mild-mannered, willing to listen, at least somewhat openminded, and definitely not some raving rabid lunatic. Perhaps I'm totally reading it the wrong way and she's simply a more mild mannered fundie wacko, but my sixth sense (yeah I know you probably don't believe in that because its "unscientific", but I do) is telling me its worth it to at least try.

I've done it before, but the two before can be chalked up just as much to accident as anything else. For instance, in one case, I had no idea the girl had even listened to a word I said until we got back in touch a couple of years later and she'd done a total turnaround. So I'm not sure I know of any systemic way to do this. "Knowledge and good sense" is all weal and good in the abstract, but that doesn't help much for figuring out practical concrete steps to take. So...any advice would be appreciated.

I'd also like to invite you to Agnostic's Corner (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agnosticscorner) if you by chance have a Yahoo account. It's a forum I moderate that used to be very very active once upon a time (as you can tell from the message archive) but lately has died somewhat--I'm trying to get it jumpstarted again and yours would be an interesting perspective to have. Also, this whole idea of an atheist/agnostic culture is one we've touched on briefly in there long ago but would no doubt make an interesting new thread.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:) I actually do think what people often call a sixth sense is a real thing, but I would call it intuition -- the ability of the mind to unconsciously integrate thousands of tiny bits of information to come up with a probabilistic result. It can be right or wrong, but used intelligently is still useful. It is what we do when we read someone's body language during a conversation. Unfortunately it is also what we do when we take an instant dislike to someone based solely upon their appearance. Intuition and prejudice are very closely allied and it is often difficult to separate them.

As far as "converting" this girl, I don't know what to say. I can't think of anybody that I've met who I've turned from religion, so I'm probably not much help. I can mention a few theoretical points that might have some bearing...

We all have a compulsion to follow others. It probably evolved as a handy survival trait, and is the reason why fashion works and religious and political leaders can get people to do things that would otherwise be incomprehensible. It stands to reason that it should be possible to encourage people to think more by providing them with good examples. This is why I was pleading for more atheistic and agnostic heroes and heroines.

A trick that is commonly used by religion and politics to brainwash people is to present them with a terrible problem that there is no way out of (you are going to burn in hell for all eternity) and then when all seems lost they provide an out (god will save you if you just believe). I don't propose that the same evil trick be used (ugh!), but I do think it can be undermined to loosen the grip of the nasty meme.

[Darn! My post was too long. I have to break it in two. More to follow.]

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

• A truly just god wouldn't punish people who find it impossible to choose between the thousands of religions, every one of which insists they are the only one that is correct. Recall that each does this with no evidence, relying upon faith only. Original texts are no help because the bible is interpreted thousands of different ways by thousands of different kinds of christians, and the koran is interpreted many different ways by different kinds of moslems, and then you have different kinds of hindus, buddhists, and so on and so on.

• If you were a god would you be so shallow, psychopathic, and needy as to demand that people worship you? (My story Grace (http://werple.net.au/~miriam/grace2.html) centers on this.) I'd just want my people to be happy and do good to one another and wouldn't care if they knew of me or not.

• If there is a god then given the choice between looking at the natural world around me as being its creation or of reading a series of self-contradictory, 2000 year old texts written by superstitious, cranky old men who often make statements of pure evil (e.g. promoting mass murder Deuteronomy 13:12 - 13:16), I would take the natural world anytime. And guess what? Any god that made the natural world blesses homosexuality -- all intelligent species (dogs, geese, horses, lions, giraffes, cattle, dolphins, etc) have a proportion of their population that is gay.

• Religions promote the belief that morality springs from their teachings. But that isn't true. Morality just simply makes good sense and exists in all societies except where crushed by organised politics or religion. We all survive better if we are considerate of each other and help those in need -- it is simple good sense to be a good and honorable person.

• Religion is a meme -- like a computer virus of the mind. It uses a number of very effective strategies to ensure its survival and spread. It specifically blocks being questioned because that is one thing it can't survive. If you find that you are feeling uncomfortably emotional about questioning your religion then that is a very good indicator that it is not truth but simply infection by a dangerous meme. A real god would welcome honest examination, but no religion does. This is the clearest sign of a controlling meme.

• Use my argument that disposes of the soul (http://werple.net.au/~miriam/soulless.html). I should rewrite it to make it easier to read though. Currently, religious people find it difficult to follow.

• Of course there is the simple, truly obvious point that I tried to show a religious teacher when I was in primary school: Religious people think the universe has to have been made because they can't manage the idea that it always existed, yet they paradoxically are happy to say that god always existed. This just doesn't make any sense at all. Eternity is either possible or not. Adding another unnecessary step into the process takes things to a whole new level of absurdity -- especially since it involves creation of the entire universe. Clearly the only logical thing is to accept that the universe has always been. (I've never met the religious person who is able to let go of their security blanket here. It just seems impossible for the poor souls. I don't really know why. It also seems impossible for a lot of otherwise intelligent scientists too, who go to utterly crazy lengths to start the universe in a big bang.)

Hmmm... maybe I should put together a site of strategies that could be used to short-circuit the religion meme. Might be worth a go.

Anyway hope this helps. I'd better get a move on. I should have left by now and here I am still tapping away on this keyboard.

Thanks for giving me a reason to assemble these thoughts. I shall ponder this more. Have a great day!

[sleepyaardvark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to write all this out. Its definitely helpful in organizing my thoughts. To me, one of the strongest arguments is where you said:

If you find that you are feeling uncomfortably emotional about questioning your religion then that is a very good indicator that it is not truth but simply infection by a dangerous meme. A real god would welcome honest examination, but no religion does.

To me, it only makes sense that to comprehend the creation of any god, you have to start by looking around you at what IS. And what we CAN see is that is no matter how humans got here (I'm not going to go as far as you and say there's no god, because I am firmly in the agnostic as opposed to atheist camp), what differentiates us from every other living organism is the ability to think and reason at a very high level. Paradoxically, western religion does recognize that humans are apart from other organisms but they fail to acknowledge the most basic thing--thinking and reasoning--that makes this so. After all, what else have we got? The cheetah is far faster, many creatures are much tougher, many creatures are far more beautiful, hell, even a simple sponge is more durable than a human being. So what's left if not the mind?

We have the ability to reason and to be curious and inquisitive so it seems to me to logically follow that IF we were in fact created by a god, then it stands to reason that he wanted us to use these abilities. And what is it that science does except to try to understand the natural world--God's creation if you will--around us? And yet it is the scientists and intellectuals that get persecuted by religious fundamentalists as if we are some kind of threat.

Which brings us to the political dimension. Paradoxically, thinking people are considered a threat to God, and yet this God is said to be all-knowing and all-powerful. OK, I can accept the all-knowing and all-powerful part, because the universe is filled with powerful forces that humanity can't even come close to imagining, yet alone being able to replicate in any way. But how is a person thinking and being inquisitive going to be any kind of threat to a god with power over such forces as the nuclear fusion in the interior of a star or the gravity of a black hole or even the comparatively puny destructive force of an ordinary tornado?

And the short answer is, we are no threat to any god that might exist at all. But what we ARE a threat to is the political power of the clergy. As you said, that power depends on control and that control is mostly accomplished through irrationality, fear, and guilt. In short, its basically, as you so accurately put it, "brainwashing". It has far more to do with psychology and politics than about spirituality. Teaching people to think, to question, to reason is empowering the individual and giving them control over their own lives--and again, using basic psychology, people who feel in control of their own lives have no need to resort to superstitution and cults.

I've had the fortune to know quite a few people in my life who are, as I call them (only half-jokingly), "recovering Christians". And there's something about these people that just makes me smile. It is difficult to explain, but its this overwhelming newfound sense of freedom and curiousity about the world around them. Perhaps it is much like people who finally break free of abusive relationships, finally being able to be free of guilt and fear and to enjoy their lives.

Again, thanks for taking the time to write all this out. You have a lot of good ideas and I enjoy hearing them.