Lay Theism

I really enjoy listening to NPR and This American Life… I actually pick up TAL from the free podcast most of the time.  I am currently listening to the latest episode where this poor woman named Trisha was moved by the good works of a decent man (who happens to be a Christian):

This past Christmas a story swept the internet about a football coach at a Christian high school in Texas who inspired his team’s fans to root for the opposition: a team from the local juvenile correctional facility. Among the thousands of emails that the coach received in response to his actions, one stood out to him. Trisha Sebastian mentioned her loss of faith, and coach Hogan got a message from God that he was meant to bring her back. We eavesdrop on their phone calls.

Problem is, she sent him an e-mail.  She was not just moved, but moved to action.  She had a friend that had died of colon cancer a few years earlier and never could reconcile this with her Catholic faith (”very lapsed Catholic”).  She also made the mistake of saying that she is “borderline agnostic”… a big mistake.  After this admission, there was a protracted exchange where God “moved his spirit” repeatedly to witness to her about “the idea of God”.  His first e-mail response to her even included the admonishment “I expect to hear back from you, young lady”.

They spoke on the phone and with permission Trisha recorded the call.  It really went off the rails when Coach Hogan dragged Hitler into the conversation in the context of “objective good” and “objective evil”:

Hogan: If you say “Good” is only people’s opinion it stems from our own… [stammer]… you define true for you and I define true for me then how do you reconcile that with Hitler saying it is true that if we can eliminate Jews and other people on the planet then it will be a better planet because we are a superior race?  And he of course he gets his world view from Charles Darwin.

Sebastian: Right.. Wait. Wait Wait…

And that’s where he pretty much lost her.  I’m sure there was plenty of nonsense and weirdness before this, but she took a GIANT step away from him when he went there.  There are so many issues with that asinine statement, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

1. The concept of “race” to Darwin, Hilter, and modern science are very different.
2. Hilter was a Christian (aka, Hitler was not an Atheist)
3. Darwin was correct about Evolution (it’s a fact)

 
It’s a shame that we have to live with the legacy of Darwin’s relative ignorance about the similarities of men.  At the time (150 years ago), class, geographic isolation, religion, and extreme differences in culture and skin pigment contributed to the classification of people as coming from different races.  While evolution certainly was responsible for the genetic variations Darwin and others observed, we know now that there is common ancestry of ALL humans less than 8,000 generations ago.  It certainly wasn’t the Tower of Babel, The Great Flood, or some other cataclysm that caused our differences.

I wish I had more time, more energy, and more knowledge (I am only a laytheist, after all) with which to explain and debunk Christian bullshit, but there are so many angles… if you aren’t happy with scientific comparisons, just compare to other religions.  That should be enough to convince anyone that religion was made up solely by men at different, overlapping times all over the world.

Why would one be better than the next?

Trisha, I’m so sorry about your friend.  The truth is that she had a groups of cells in her colon malfunction and go bad.  In what sounds like a fairly serious cell breakdown, the cancer was virilent enough to cause the rest of her body to ultimately lose. Now, do you really think that this is a mechanism that God put in place to eliminate some people for reasons we can’t know? If so, why are there so goddammed many mysterious ways for the body to break down and die?  Wouldn’t two or three be adequate? Is suffering necessary?  Why have we been able to permanently eliminate some previously fatal diseases and maladies?  Doesn’t it make more sense that it’s a product of millions of years of evolution and change…?  And that sometimes the shit just breaks?

Agnostic, Atheism, History, Religion, Science belief, bible, Catholic, Christian, darwin, evolution, faith, turd burgers

Great name for a blog post… even better name for a blog!

http://www.heavingdeadcats.com

Way to go, Neece.  I really liked your recent post. One of the more frustrating aspects of being a non-believer is being a minority:

The very fact that we have atheists today, in growing numbers all over the planet, shows that if you take away the dogma and expose the lies and myths, some people will shrug off the mantle of religion even though in most societies, it means putting oneself outside the supposed comforts of society. It turns them into an outsider, to some degree.

I can assure you that here in the deep south, I am a minority, but not quite an outsider.  I am not an outsider, because I keep my atheistic beliefs fairly quiet. When asked directly, I am always forthcoming, but generally it doesn’t come up.  What is stunning is the number of times per day that people will refer casually or tangentially to their faith.

Just today I was talking with a coworker about a recent death of a friend. I inquired about upcoming services because it was important to him, but seemed to be taking a while. He mentioned that the friend had opted for cremation. He went on to say that this person’s family does things a “little differently”. I said, “Whatever do you mean?”  He went on to say that “Uhh…cremation has never been practiced in Judeo-Christian tradition and only pagan religions cremate.  Look it up… throughout recorded history… blah blah”.

I can count on one hand the number of times the word “pagan” has ever come up in a conversation. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that atheists tend to opt for cremation as well. You can well imagine where this person stands on the issue.

Anyway, if you were not already aware, here is some additional reading, statistics, and fun facts on the topic of cremation.

Oh, and keep up the great work, Neece (and Butch).

Atheism, History, Religion, Science, Statistics Christian, death, hell, pagan

Rafael… Dude, you rock. Welcome to the blog world.

whygod.weebly.com

Thanks for coming out for non-belief. You are on my list of favorites already.

I’m just an average Joe. I do not believe in any dogma or any powerful being. I don’t like labels but I guess I’m an atheist, although I think of my self as just plain rational. I don’t claim to disprove God’s existence, I make no such claim because I cannot prove that God doesn’t exist. No religion can prove that he does either. It’s all faith. I know that I cannot compete against faith. I am just talking about having reasonable doubt.

I think that’s fantastic… if we took God to court, he would surely lose on that basis alone.

Update: Weebly sucks and Rafael’s site may be down.

2nd Update: Weebly still sucks but whygod is back up with minor damage.  Why would they have taken every weebly site down for several hours during peak US surfing hours?  Idiots.

Agnostic, Atheism, Polling, Religion, Science atheist, bible, blog, doubt, faith, god

In my latest snail mail from Free Inquiry, I noticed this insert from Richard Dawkins. I thought it was worth republishing since I could not find it in its entirety on the web. I am not suggesting you subscribe to Free Inquiry (I don’t) although it is a quality publication that I enjoy from time to time. I just really like the way Mr. Dawkins phrases several things here. I have reproduced exactly as it appears in the insert including British spelling (I added the hyperlinks as paper-based hyperlinks are still elusive).

Enjoy.

Dear Friend,

If you live in America, the chances are good that your next door neighbours believe the following: the Inventor of the laws of physics and the Programmer of the DNA code decided to enter the uterus of a Jewish virgin, got himself born, then deliberately had himself tortured and executed because he couldn’t think of a better way to forgive the theft of an apple, committed at the instigation of a talking snake. As Creator of the majestically expanding universe, he not only understands relativistic gravity and quantum mechanics but actually designed them. Yet what he really cares about is “sin”, abortion, how often you go to church, and whether gay people should marry. Statistically, the chances are that your neighbours believe all that – and they can vote.

In other parts of the world, there is a good chance that your neighbours believe you should be beheaded if you draw a cartoon of a desert warlord who copulated with a child and flew into the sky on a winged horse. In other places, there’s a good chance that your neighbors think their wishes will be granted if they pray to a human figure with an elephant’s trunk.

Even if your neighbours don’t hold any of those mutually contradictory beliefs, they probably take it for granted that we should unquestioningly respect those who do. And a huge majority of American and British newspapers and periodicals go along with this abject kow-towing to what their educated editorial staff must know, in their heart of hearts, is nonsense.

In all this darkness we discern occasional pinpoints of light, beacons of evidence-based intelligence. There are just a few publications that serve as light-houses in a dark, foggy ocean, and of these my favourite in all the English-speaking free world is Free Inquiry. In keeping with my pessimistic opening, its circulation is not large, but it is growing. Free Inquiry’s list of regular columnists is as star-studded as any in America. Free Inquiry is committed to piercing the darkness, rolling back the fog, and restoring the Enlightenment values that inspired the founders of this great Republic.

I think it is clear that we are gaining ground, and I believe our pace is accelerating. Free Inquiry is in the vanguard of this exhilarating adventure in critical thinking. Please subscribe to, and join me in celebrating, a magazine that believes all ideas are open to rational debate and critical examination, a magazine that is not afraid to speak out in language that flashes as clear as a light-house on a dark night.

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is a world-renowned evolutionary biologist and the author of bestselling books including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion. His writing frequently appears in Free Inquiry.

Agnostic, Atheism, Religion, Science belief, doubt, faith, freedom, muhammad, reason, secular, skeptic

Pretty well done… nice cameo from FSM (watch out for the noodly appendage).

Agnostic, Atheism, History, Religion, Science