Security blankets

The very existence of the concept of god is testimony to humans' need for protection from the dangers of life.

Throughout our childhood we are dependent on a parent - a being larger than ourselves - who (if we're fortunate) provides protection, warmth, nourishment and provides us with the knowledge we need to interact with the physical world and become independent.

We do not necessarily let go of the need for a parent as adults. The power of the physical world to harm us - storms, floods, droughts, accidents, illnesses - and the emotional traumas that beset us can be frightening. We seek some ability to control that which threatens us. Early man invented the idea of powerful supernatural beings who controlled those forces that threatened us and who, if propitiated, would protect us.

Modern humans are not free of the need for a being larger than themselves to whom they can appeal for mercy in times of need. No matter how intelligent and learned a person is in any field of endeavour they may be unable to face the difficulties and fears of life without the idea of a parent substitute who cares for them, loves them, forgives them and who will receive them after death.

We are ALL agnostics. No one KNOWS god exists. No one KNOWS got does not exist. It takes courage to live a god-free life knowing there is no higher authority to whom to appeal in time of trouble. Not everyone can do it. Even the most learned and intelligent. And when we can't, we get VERY clever at justifying our reasons for 'belief'.

Wishful thinking, no matter how cleverly defended, doesn't make it so.

On the other foot ...

Indulge me. Immerse yourself in my 'Hypothetical' ...

>> Remember that this is a game so the 'rules' here apply only in this game. 

They do not represent what I believe to be true and real outside the game!

The following rules for this Hypothetical are not open to question, refutation or negotiation for the purposes of this game.

The object of the game is in bold, after Rule 4 ...

Rule 1: It is the job of the 'doubter' to prove the non-existence of a deity (rather than the burden of proof being on the 'believer').

(Believers consistently and persistently demand this proof of atheists, so you can hardly argue with it here.)

Rule 2: Your deity isn't the only one in the universe; in fact, MY deity created YOUR deity.

Rule 3: Absolute and undeniable proof of my deity's existence has been provided to me. (The 'knowledge' is far too sacred to be discussed here where it may be open to ridicule by non-believers).

Rule 4: Your deity does not know my deity exists.


If you don't believe my deity exists, prove my deity's non-existence.

Got an answer/proof? Please post it in 'comments'. And keep it short.

Religion and Politics

Dear Editor,

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the recent meeting in Kyogle to meet the council election candidates.

So I wasn’t able to ask some important questions of the few people who responded 'Yes' to the question "Are you a Christian?"

I want to know if they’re just like all my happily-atheist friends and family - good, honest, kind people who care about justice and equality - or whether they really have got that extra something that marks them out as real Christians.

You see, as a sometime student of the Bible I know about the tough (and sometimes quite weird) standards a genuine follower of Jesus must meet.

For instance they must have sold all they own and given the proceeds to the poor (Luke 18:22). They must pray in private and not in a public place like a church (Matthew 6:6). And, most importantly, they are commanded to take up serpents and drink poison without being harmed (Mark 16:18).

If there’s anything to be learned from the potboiler that’s the present Presidential campaign in the USA it's that when you mix politics with religion you get an outbreak of stupid. Let's not do it!


[Published in our local paper 1st September 2012]

Free will. Yes or no?

If 'free will' is the ability to make a choice between two or more 'action' options, it seems likely that it's an illusion.

I should say, though, that I think it's been a useful (or even a necessary) illusion for humankind and might be essential for some people.

At every instant of our lives there is a collision between the past and the present.

The past which, it appears, we cannot change includes all the almost countless 'conditions' that make us uniquely us:

... when we were born, our parents, our sex, our height, weight, intelligence (or lack of)
what education we've had, what jobs we've done, where we've travelled, who we've met ...

The present is a 'soup' of all those physical conditions of the universe (which includes us and our physical state, brain chemicals, where we are on the planet ... ). There is, as far as I'm aware, no way we can alter the ingredients of the soup in the present moment. (What we do in THIS instant will change the conditions of the NEXT instant but the present conditions seem not to be amenable to change ... they just ARE.)

So ...

What you can do, at any instant of your life is completely controlled by the meeting of your incredibly complex past and the incredibly complex present.

Those who say 'anything is possible' are being hopelessly naive. I am 164cm tall. No matter how much, at this moment, I want to be 170cm tall it is totally impossible for me to fulfill that desire. And I might want to be in the middle of the Amazonian jungle at this very moment but if I'm in the middle of London's Oxford Street I'm not going to get my heart's desire.

I might be thirsty right at this moment and you might think I can choose to get up and fetch a glass of water but wait ... is my thirst strong enough to overcome my need to finish this post? Can I overcome the upbringing I have that a job must be finished before I can walk away from it? Is my knee still too sore from this morning's run for me to be able to walk from the couch to the kitchen? Will an expected and important email plop into the IN box just as I start to get up drawing my attention away from the fact I'm thirsty?

The more you think about this instant and the restrictions placed on 'choice', the more obvious it becomes -- at least to me -- that what you can do at this instant is extremely limited and possibly so limited that what you'll do is predetermined by 
PAST CONDITIONS ><PRESENT CONDITIONS

There are lots of arguments about whether free will is desirable or not but that doesn't actually change whether it exists or not.

And for those who believe in an omniscient, omnipresent deity ... my view is that omniscience is a bit like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant; you either are or you aren't. Likewise with omniscience ... you're either omniscient (you know EVERYTHING) or you aren't.

If you know everything, you know the present, the past and the FUTURE. If you know the future it is predetermined and therefore no-one can do anything other than that which the are predetermined to do = no free will.

A deity cannot, I suggest, be anything less than omniscient because this would mean not being all powerful, a condition I would suggest is impossible for the kind of deity claimed by all the major religions.

YOU GOTTA BE BRAVE

Here's the main difference between those who believe in a god and atheists:

Believers are content to use logic and reason to seek answers to reasonable questions but only while the conclusions support what they want and need to believe.

When logic and reason begin to return conclusions that are at odds with those beliefs, the believer generally resorts to ...

ancient or modern superstitions:
there's a reason for everything, or
this was meant to be, or
there are some things we're not supposed to know


the supernatural:
god did it, or
god has his reasons which we're not privy to, or 
god moves in mysterious ways that we're not always meant to understand, or 
this is god's way of testing me/us 


Atheists also use reason and logic to see for answers to reasonable questions. But when those tools fail to provide reliable answers, the atheist says, "OK. I don't know ... yet!"

Superstition and the supernatural are the false refuge of those who cannot

be brave enough to not know all the answers.

 

A FEW 'GAY' THOUGHTS

“The discovery that biology plays a role in sexuality also has at least one obvious benefit.
It demolishes a key plank of homophobia -
the argument that being gay is unnatural or a matter of personal choice.
Individuals, it seems, have little more control over their orientation
than skin colour or who their mother was.”

Biology shows that homosexuality is as natural as the colour of your skin, Mark Henderson, Times science correspondent, The Times [London (UK)] 16 Oct 2004: 4.

Victim -v- No Victim

Sex between an adult and a child is assumed to be non-consensual; the child is therefore a victim. Thus this activity is considered to be a criminal act on the part of the adult.

There are no victims in consensual sex between adults, regardless of their gender. This private, personal activity is not the business of anyone else including politicians and law-makers.

First- and second-class citizens

As long as ‘civil union’ confers fewer rights and benefits compared to marriage, it cannot be moral or fair to discriminate against any couple, forcing them to accept a ‘second-best’ civil union.

Sexual orientation

There is now considerable evidence that pre-natal development and in-utero conditions can affect an individual’s gender identity and sexual orientation and that once ‘set’, sexual orientation is not malleable. While the influence of ‘nurture’ can’t be discounted, it seems evident that homosexuality is usually not a ‘lifestyle choice’ but an inbuilt characteristic.

Evolution and homosexuality

There are many ‘traits’ that continue to be expressed even though they may not contribute to the survival of an individual or group: attached earlobes, blue eyes, left-handedness, colour blindness, myopia, albinism, diabetes, haemophilia, cystic fibrosis, etc. 

While same-gender sex is not capable of producing offspring, same-gender sexual orientation (which is not a disability) does not make an individual incapable of breeding.

Christian objections

Most resistance to homosexuality seems to be based on religion.

I’m not going to discuss any religions here except for christianity because it’s the only belief system I know enough about.

While the bible appears to prohibit ‘same gender’ sex (mainly male-male, since it has less to say on female-female sex), especially in the (now apparently superceded) old testament, no attempt seems to have been made to give reasons or justifications for the prohibition.

Why? Were there NO good reasons? Were there reasons but god omitted to say what they were? Or did the people who were supposed to write them down forget to do so? Or perhaps they thought they weren’t important?

For a deity to call a behaviour an ‘abomination’ but not state why is odd, dictatorial and oppressive and to treat one’s followers like children, slaves or imbeciles.

In generations past parents who wanted to protect their children from harm might have thought it was too complicated to say to a child, “Don’t wander outside the camp because there might be wild animals that will kill and eat you. Or you might eat the wrong berries and be poisoned. Or people from another tribe who may steal you. Or you may fall down a crevasse and be killed.”

So, because the child needs to be frightened into safety, they might have said, “Don’t go outside the camp because the Boogey Man will get you.”

This will work until the child has sufficient reasoning power to understand that there is no Boogey Man but forgives his/her parents for the lie because it’s understood that the parent was just trying to keep a young child safe.

For a god to prohibit behaviour without giving reasons is the same as saying "Behave yourselves or the Boogey Man will get you!". It’s treating apparently mature, thinking, rational adults like infants or morons.

That might be OK with you but it’s not OK with me. And it shouldn't be OK with you either.

So what could have been (your) god’s unstated ‘reasons’ for prohibiting homosexuality?

1: It’s not ‘natural’ or it’s ‘wrong’

That doesn’t stack up. If god thought homosexuality was wrong it would be a rational to assume that no homosexual behaviour would be found in any animals species. Yet it’s found across many species and unbiased research (i.e. that which looks for facts rather than seeking to support a particular point of view) will demonstrate this to be so.
See Homosexual Behaviour in Animals reference below.

If the claim is to be made, though, that homosexuality is considered to be ‘wrong’ because it is 'unnatural', then marriage must also be considered ‘wrong’. While sexual intercourse is undoubtedly natural, the joining together of two people by ceremony must be considered to be a comparatively late development in human history and entirely of human invention, mainly to ensure inheritance, alliances and the genetic lineage of one's offspring. And as a mere human-designed 'contract' it cannot be 'natural' and therefore must be 'wrong'.

By the same reasoning, monogamy - clinging to one's spouse and 'forsaking all others' - must also be considered to be 'wrong' because it is clearly not natural. If it were there would be no need for the bible to specifically prohibit adultery or to warn a man against coveting his neighbour's wife. Divorce would be unheard of because no-one would would sexually stray outside their marriage and there would be no need for a promise of fidelity in a marriage ceremony.

2: It leads to sexually transmissible disease

It can. But first, why not say so and, secondly, is anyone claiming that these diseases can't also be contracted through heterosexual sex?

3: It distracts men from women

This is more rational. But why all the nonsense about 'abomination'? Possibly because the bronze age desert-dwellers who wrote the bible tended to treat their readers like children and this was the Boogey Man they needed to get compliance.

There are two main reasons why an old testament tribe needed men to fully occupy themselves with 'servicing' their women folk to keep them pumping out babies and ensuring they had enough food to survive on:

# There is strength in numbers and 

# If, in old testament times, infant mortality was a problem (and given the lack of biblical instruction with regard hygiene it probably was), then quickly replacing the babies that died was important.

The old testament is full of stories of ‘god’s chosen people’ taking over land belonging to other tribes. Only by force of numbers could they ensure holding on to that ‘stolen’ land.

Having large families might have been desirable in old testament times, for the newly-formed christian sect and for families needing children to work on the land to provide enough food. It’s no longer fine when the world is struggling to feed its present population. 

We have reached a point in human history when heterosexual sex seems like the problem!

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Homosexual Behaviour in Animals; An Evolutionary Perspective

Edited by: Volker Sommer, University College London / Edited by: Paul L. Vasey, University of Lethbridge, Alberta

ISBN: 9780521864466, Publication date: July 2006

Description: Behavioural observations from both the field and captivity indicate that same-sex sexual interactions are widespread throughout the animal kingdom, and occur quite frequently in certain non-human species. Proximate studies of these phenomena have yielded important insights into genetic, hormonal and neural correlates. In contrast, there has been a relative paucity of research on the evolutionary aspects. Homosexual Behaviour in Animals is a 2006 text which seeks to redress this imbalance by exploring animal same-sex sexual behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. Contributions focus on animals that routinely engage in homosexual behaviour and include birds, dolphin, deer, bison and cats, as well as monkeys and apes, such as macaques, gorillas and bonobos. A final chapter looks at human primates.

DEAR CHRISTIAN ...

I can appreciate that your belief and your faith brings you comfort and joy. That's wonderful for you. I don't want to destroy those warm and fuzzy feelings, but I DO need you to understand this:

>>>  I support your right to believe whatever you want even if those beliefs seem utterly foolish to anyone else.

BUT Your belief and faith does not make you a better person than those who don't share your beliefs or your faith. The days when religious belief confers any respectability are coming to an end, and in the opinion of a growing number of people, it's way past time they did.

You probably don't appreciate being told your beliefs are utterly foolish. Oddly enough nor does anyone else, including those of us who don't have any religious beliefs at all.

Telling someone who doesn't have any religious beliefs they're going to burn in hell for all eternity only strengthens their view of you as someone with utterly foolish beliefs.

>>>  Atheists are, on the whole, happy, moral people who are good citizens, care about justice and equality and would prefer to carry on living that way without being told how bad or misguided they are. I don't respect your views but at least I don't tell you they'll cause you to writhe in agony in the flames of hell for all eternity. Please extend the same courtesy to me.

>>>  Your holy book might be a source of inspiration and 'truth' to you but to me it's a self-contradictory, error-ridden account of a people following a mythical 'war god' whose supposed actions, if repeated by a modern day human in a civilised country, would see him thrown in jail (preferably never to be allowed out) or, in some states of the USA, executed. 

If you haven't read the whole of the Old Testament, you should. So many Christians haven't and they're shocked when they finally do. 

The existence of the New Testament doesn't make any difference. In fact it makes your beliefs look worse because your god was either a very nasty entity in the OT and changed his ways in the NT (although no-one seems to be able to explain why a  perfect being would need to do that) or he's still just as nasty as he was in the OT and you're deluded about him being good, kind and loving.

But if you insist on your holy book being a divinely-inspired, faultless instruction for life, let me remind you of The Gospel of Luke chapter 18 verse 22: 

"Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him,
Yet lackest thou one thing:
sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven:
and come, follow me." 

If you have not followed that instruction (to the letter, rather than just popping a few coins in the collection plate on Sunday -- because Jesus apparently wasn't leaving any wriggle room here) and you claim you 'follow' Jesus, you're a hypocrite.

Show me where Jesus told you which of his instructions you had to follow and which you could safely ignore and still be counted as one of his 'followers'.

And before you're tempted to lie in order to tell me you have followed this very clear instruction from your 'Lord', let me remind you that you believe that your god is watching you and recording everything you do and say and that by lying you'll be breaking one of the ten commandments. 

 

>>>  Many Christians claim that atheists cannot be moral and good because they don't believe in your god. If you're one of them, you're actually saying that you are only deterred from being an evil person because you believe that god will burn you alive for all eternity for being bad or reward you with heaven for being good. You're saying that you'd be exactly like you assume atheists would be without god -- a rapist, paedophile, thief, murderer -- unless you had specific instructions from god and he watched you every moment of your life, keeping a record. 

That's infantile thinking. By all means apply it to your self but don't apply it to me. I'm an adult who can control their behaviour without punishment or reward. 

Christians make up 75% of the USA's prison population and 91% of the death-row inmates in Sing-Sing who have been executed for murder were Christians. So much for belief in god making you good!

>>>  Religion has always dragged its feet when it comes to knowledge. I have challenged Christians to give me chapter and verse when they say the bible contains science and no-one has yet provided a single example. 

The scientific community is largely atheist. 

Religion seems determined to fight scientific knowledge every step of the way. Let's not forget that religion wanted to kill the man who said that the earth stool still while the sun revolved around it! 

Christians insist that all the rules and instructions in the Old Testament became redundant in the New Testament. But why didn't god think to make sure someone put a note in the NT about washing your hands after shitting. In fact even the disciples didn't seem to know this was a good idea:

 

Mark 7:1-5 : Now when the Pharisees gathered to him ...
they saw that some of his disciples ate
with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed ...
And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him,
“Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders,
but eat with defiled hands?”

Just a quick note to us all from Paul in one of his never-ending letters would have done the trick. I suppose we must assume your god didn't care about the countless number of newborns who'd die soon after birth because their parents didn't know how to stop contaminating them with their germs.

I'll concede that water is important to your New Testament god, but only for walking on, turning into wine, washing feet or dunking people ... but not for hygiene.

>>>  You are not entitled to be a bully by insisting that everyone else on this planet live their lives according to your set of moral standards derived from a book that contains many errors and deals with the doings of a mythical being. Atheists tend to get rather angry when you want your myth-based morals enshrined in the laws by which all must live. 

For example, many Christians want to ban gay marriage, prevent abortions (even under circumstances where a raped woman's life is endangered by the pregnancy), control women's right to contraception and so on. Notice that the things Christians want to control are almost always about sex and reproduction. Please get over the idea that you have any right to control what people do with their own bodies.

Let me propose a few scenarios to you. Note that I am not proposing these laws nor is anyone else I know of! I'm merely trying to make a point here. Consider whether you would be happy to have your rights limited by others whose views you disagree with and whether you'd be happy if all or any of the following laws were imposed on you by them:

1. A law that meant when you bought an airline ticket its cost would depend on how much you weigh: the more you weigh, the more you pay. Thin people shouldn't have to subsidise fat people who eat more than they need and can't discipline their eating habits.

2. A law making it a crime to eat meat because raising and killing animals for meat is cruel?

3. A law that limited couples to one child. Afte the birth of this child both parents would be compulsorily sterilised because the world is already over-populated.

4. A law that limited the amount of fossil-fuel-produced electricity you could use per day because carbon emissions are causing our climate to collapse.

5. A law that allowed you to use your car only on certain days because the oil crisis means we must limit oil consumption.

Now you might argue that you don't believe some of the 'facts' stated above (oil crisis, killing animals for food is cruel, climate change, fat people are greedy and overeat) and you might resist these laws being enacted. But that's the position that militant Christians put others in; other people who neither share nor approve of any religious beliefs and who don't wish to have their lives controlled or dominated by them.

>>>  Some Christians complain about 'militant atheists'. In the last two thousand years being an atheist could get a person tortured, drowned, pulled apart on the rack or burned alive and all at the hands of the disciples of an apparently loving god. Thank goodness those days are over, but they are not forgotten. While Christians insist on bullying behaviour by insisting that their standards be imposed on unwilling 'others', that bullying will be vigorously resisted.

 

If you're one of these 'militant proselytising Christians' who complains about militant atheists, it seems to me you have two options: give up your bullying and bigotry or get used to the loudly voiced resistance of those of us who don't appreciate being controlled or preached at.

And if you can't or won't back off you're just going to have to grow a thicker skin!