Yeah, I agree with most of that. I have to say that I have never understood the "under god bit" or "in god we trust" on money. Especially the latter.
Even as an atheist, I am not sure how impressed an omnipotent god would be advertising money, garden furniture, shoes or handbags.
I think it is impossible for an Atheist today not to believe in evolution. Although, it is not a requirement to be an Atheist, I just can't see what alternative there is even if the Atheist isn't science minded. Of course, prior to Darwin, there were Atheists, but I'm not sure how they figured out how man got to be man on this planet, or if they thought that science would one day figure it out.
Beep, the God on currency in the US came about in the 50's during the Cold War scare.
Solipsists don't believe in evolution, most likely. The same would go for radical Cartesians who believe only what they can glean from their own experience. We're not talking about a lot of people here, obviously. My main point was that atheists are not all the of the type that O'Reilly and Coulter rail against. There's endless variety.
Good post... I've never needed a label for my beliefs but perhaps I'm a Deist... I dunno.
Anyhow, why is Newdow a jerk? Maybe he's annoying to you, but it's his time to waste and he's attempting to correctly separate religion from government. Right?
Eh, Newdow gives a bad name to atheists and feeds right into the O'Reillyian/Coulterian argument. They conflate his 'crusades' with atheism in general. He's like Michael Moore is to the left: he may be right some of the time, but he hurts his own side.
I don't really believe that "under god" in the Pledge or "in god we trust" on our money is a real church/state issue. It's basically irrelevant. My biggest issue is that "under god" badly fouls up the rhythm of the original poem.
Just like right-wingers intent on banning flag burning, Newdow is engaged in a largely symbolic struggle that has little to no bearing on the actual lives of actual people.
The risk is that when an actual church/state issue comes up (like say, banning abortion or gay marriage on religious grounds), the FOXies and Friends will call on the Newdow example as proof that people who agitate for church/state separation are loony whackjob fringe characters who hate the Pledge of Allegiance and, therefore, America.
Well, I think God in the Pledge --and the Pledge itself, as a tool-- has some effect on children who must recite it every day. The pledge ritual is to foster nationalism and the guys who put in God did so just to persuade faithful types (adults I mean) to entwine their lord with American power... many fall for it.
The Pledge is certainly not the biggest problem today, but it is a pretty handy tool for warring/profiteering types to use.
It's like any other type of advertising: get 'em young and have 'em for life.
Yeah, I realize the connection between MacCarthism and the "in god stuff". It isn't a new development in US history. Just new enough to make a couple of generations feel like it was somehow part of the original formation of the nation.
RE jewish atheist:
I accept evolution. But this acceptance is based on the concept that parts of it may be developed and new information may be added. It's not faith that every word in every book concerning evolution is absolute. Therefore, I wouldn't call it faith in evolution. I wouldn't want it to be confused with religious faith.
Having said that, I know of many theists who also accept evolution. They are theists who do not believe in the literal 6 days bit in the bible, or theists who are of different religions.
I doubt that many of them would call it faith in evolution either.
I did the whole pledge thing as a kid. Heck, I even went to church every Sunday. It didn't brain my damage.
I also did the pledge... and a wee bit o' church now and again (read: holidays with grandparents). But both of us were exposed to many viewpoints, either by family or by virtue of living in a city. Think of folks in more isolated environments... certainly some learn/are encouraged to question things but many more believe the same things at 10 and 40 and 80, having missed out on ideas/experiences or even having intellectual incuriosity drilled into them.
In such circumstances, the Pledge and the truck commercials and the revivals and the rest have an influence, I'll bet.
Recap: Pledge creepy at best, harmful at worst.
Anyhow, again, good post, boyo.
Great blog. I run a atheist's meeting and two days ago we had a speaker try to convince us that atheism was a religion. This post is a fine refutation of that opinion.
On the whole I think you've made about the most concise, articulated argument I've seen for atheism not being a religion and one of the few that takes into account that atheists as a group are not homogeneous.
I dont resign myself to the fact that religon is here to stay however, and in that I take issue with your last points; I suggest reading Sam Harris's book "The End of Faith." It might sway you on that point.
I apreciate your willingness to advocate for the middleground and while Michael Newdown might be a jerk, he's a much needed counterbalance to a culture that is absolutley stocked with blowhards on the other side.
Thanks for the great insight, and again, great blog.
-Brian
A belief in the Christ of God is not a Religion, Christ never started a new Religion, He gave no regala, rituals, no such garbage you find in Religion. Christ said I am the way the truth and the Life. Christ freed us from all Religion, have you ever heard of Freedom in Christ, Religion equals slavery to some form of ritual of do's and dont's which equals slavery.
celestials1938@msn.com
Will Faith “always” be Necessary for Salvation?
We rely on the living God who is the saviour of all mankind, especially of those who believe [1.Timothy.4:10 1-12 Cv]. This we are commanded to teach. [v.11]. How is it that practically all teaching is contrary to this? Because Faith which is supreme in this administration, is forced into the consummation where it has no place. In the creation commission of Mark, ‘He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, yet he who disbelieves shall be condemned” [Mark.16:16]. This was fulfilled [v-20] in the Pentecostal administration. Later Paul received a special revelation in which he was sent not to baptize, but to preach the evangel [1.Corinthians.1:17]. This is in the succeeding administration, which has much in common with the present. Justification must be of Faith that it may accord with grace [Romans.4:16.8-9]. And salvation by faith is for grace [Eph.2:8, 9 ]. “NOW” THERE IS NO SALVATION APART FROM FAITH.
But this is a special salvation, for the eons. Therefore it is called an eonian salvation [Heb.5:9]. Those who do-not believe are not saved during the eons. They have eonian judgment [Heb.6:2]. God’s picture of redemption is the fifty year period of the jubilee. If a man had a redeemer, he could be saved before the jubilee. But, if he had none, he was saved without one, for God’s law was such that automatically every fifty years he regained what he had lost. [Lev.25]. Thus God in the lifetime of each of His people, gave them a shadowgraph of His dealings with His creatures. Redemption is only for the eons. But there is a return “without redemption”, through the blood of Christ’s cross [Col.1:20,Cv].
-S.M.K.
What was Jesus Teaching on Hell
We must remember Jesus never spoke English, so He never used the word Hell. He was bilingual Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee. “No English”
Most of what we believe about hell comes from Catholicism and ignorance of the Old Testament, not from the Bible. This study will cause you to re-examine current teaching on hell and urge you to further study on what happens to the wicked after death. "Don't you know that hell is just something the Catholic Church invented to scare people into obedience?"
I was righteously indignant when, a number of years ago, a caller uttered these words on a call-in radio show I was conducting. Perturbed by his haphazard use of Scripture, I pointed out to him and the audience, that hell couldn't possibly be something invented by Catholic theologians because Jesus talked about it. I forcefully read some of the passages where Jesus did, and concluded that hell couldn't possibly be the invention of an apostate church.
I now believe that hell is the invention of Roman Catholicism; and surprisingly, most, if not all, of our popular concepts of hell can be found in the writings of Roman Catholic writers like the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), author of Dante's Inferno. The English poet John Milton (1608-1674), author of Paradise Lost, set forth the same concepts in a fashion highly acceptable to the Roman Catholic faith. Yet none of our concepts of hell can be found in the teaching of Jesus Christ! We get indignant at the mention of purgatory-we know that's not in the Bible. We may also find that our popular concepts of hell came from the same place that purgatory did-Roman Catholicism. The purpose of this study is to briefly analyze Jesus' teaching on hell (more correctly Gehenna, the Greek word for which hell is given), to see whether these popular concepts are grounded therein.
A Plea for Broad-Mindedness as We Begin
The Apostle Paul said be Broadminded, in all things, If we strive for broad-mindedness and truly want to know what the Holy-Writ teaches, the following quotation will help us in our search:
We do not start our Christian lives by working out our faith for ourselves; it is mediated to us by the spirit of God, in the form of sermons, from the scriptures, booklets, and established patterns of sound teaching, scripture study life and fellowship. We study our Bibles in the light of what we have learned from these sources; we approach Scripture with minds already formed by the mass of accepted opinions and viewpoints with which we have come into contact, in both the nominal Church and the world. It is easy to be unaware that it has happened; it is hard even to begin to realize how profoundly tradition in this sense has moulded us. But we are taught not to become enslaved to human tradition, either secular or Christian, whether it be “catholic” or protestant tradition, or “critical” tradition, or “ecumenical” tradition. We may never assume the complete rightness o
Isaiah 53:1-12
A prophecy about Jesus’ life, saving death, and resurrection
from the Old Testament
“Who has believed our message? To whom will the Lord reveal his saving power? [2] My servant grew up in the Lord's presence like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. [3] He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care.
[4] Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! [5] But he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed! [6] All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.
[7] He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. [8] From prison and trial they led him away to his death. But who among the people realized that he was dying for their sins—that he was suffering their punishment? [9] He had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man's grave.
[10] But it was the Lord's good plan to crush him and fill him with grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children, many heirs. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord's plan will prosper in his hands. [11] When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of what he has experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many “(All)” to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. [12] I will give him the honors of one who is mighty and great, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among those who were sinners. He bore the sins of many and interceded for sinners.
He died for the many sinners, and the same many sinners will be made righteous and alive, beyond the reach of death…
New Living Translation
This blog post is a master-piece. We are fortunate that atheism is not a religion. Otherwise, it would have become dictatorial, dogmatic, tyrannical and oppressive. Now, it does only a convincing (or try to unsuccessfully convince) work.
Beep, I'm not trying to say that evolution is a faith. It is a theory based on scientific evidence and there has never been one scientific finding that runs contrary to the overall theory.
The point I'm trying to make is that not all evolutionists are Atheist but all Atheists are evolutionists by default. There really isn't a third option to man having evolved or man starting out as man on this planet, for example.
Thanks for composing this article. As others have mentioned, it is the most concise and articulate explanation of atheism that I've seen. Keep up the great work!
I agree with you that it is absurd to call Atheism a religion, but it certainly can be a form of fundamentalism and like religions it often is. This is basic human fear of the unknown, and it does not differentiate between mental habits and choices.
Thankfully, the fundamentalist atheists and the fundamentalist theists will no doubt get the final showdown they both secretly dream of, and die miserable useless deaths, but adequate to terminate thier miserable useless lives for sure. One side will die dreaming victorious Apocalyptic dreams, envisioning the other side as the minions of the AntiChrist, which itself will fall with righteous Nietzschean scientific 'supernerd' fury, martyrs to the cause of 'scientific truth' to the very end. I hope and pray that you and I will not end up underneath this fray of wasters.
The God that I know and don't know in my own bleak and shining way is beyond being and non-being, and therefore unperturbed by the idiocies of mankind's false dualisms. This God, or absence of God, is, as George Harrison sang, 'Within you and without you'. With this Root Power of Creation our opinions as atheists or theists counts for squat. Jesus spoke of God because he was a Jew and spoke like one. But he spoke not for the theists but for that which escapes them as such, that 'That' which Jesus understood and even adopted as final identity: I AM I. He also warned the atheists (at the time people who believed in the forces of nature personified in deliberate mythologies, gross but true precursors of the scientists of today) that there was something there beyond what man in his mental limits could immediately comprehend, and which moved and was alive, much more alive than the so-called 'living' who waste thier lives arguing with thier neighbors (and themselves) about being and not being, good and evil, science and religion, cool and nerd, whatever and whatever...
Finally, I would like, as a French-American, to comment on the following passage of yours:
"I'm aware that atheists are an embattled minority, far less likely to be elected to the presidency than Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, child molesters and Frenchmen."
Given the absolute comfort with which Americans bash the French (an advert for FIJI water on the NY subway recently had as sales pitch: 'Not from France', which shows that such habit is well established and casually accepted) I am beginning to think that the use of 'French' is a sort of coded euphemism for 'Nigger' which our society no longer dares to use in such a joking manner, for obvious socio-historic reasons. The new whipping boy as it were.
For what if you had written instead:
"I'm aware that atheists are an embattled minority, far less likely to be elected to the presidency than Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, child molesters and niggers." What an e-drubbing you would have endured my friend! You can even substitute the 'N word' with 'Blacks', it would
my last thoughts were cut off, must be a word limit.
Anyway, the French are jokingly hated (and all jokes have a bit of truth) by the American Wasp (and his many power-hungry sycophants of all colors and creeds) because they, like the Jews and Muslims, know or are suspected of knowing something which the Wasps do not, and because they, like the homosexual and the child molester, have or are suspected of having more fun than he will ever allow himself! The same can be said, of course, for the Black man, but the 'Niggah gonna kick yo ass', if you use him that way in a sentence you little intellectual faggot! But the Frenchman, being overseas (mostly) and more interested in good wine than what foolish Americans say about him, will not.
When Barak Obama becomes president, I, as a Frenchman, will cheer to see one of my people elected to the presidency!
Maybe some day we will see this add on the subway: "America, not made by Atheists" That would be a clever little ad campaign....
This is a common theme, but I'm saving this page URL because you've formulated it very well. In particular, you've hit on the key point about the "you have faith that God doesn't exist" argument:
People who make this argument are admitting that they have zero respect for faith. If they felt that faith were a better reason to believe in something than evidence, reasoning, research, etc., they would say so. By saying "your belief is just faith too (therefore it's no better than mine)," the implied assumption that faith is just believing whatever you want to believe regardless of the evidence...
p.s. I've applied that same Homer Simpson quote to religion on my blog as well, here: Simpsons proverbs.
p.p.s. I'm just skimming your other comments, and I kind of understand how Angu feels here regarding comments about the French. It amazes me how socially acceptable it is for Americans to say all manner of hateful things about the French. It's actually worse than being an atheist because those who slam atheists are mostly believers who are feeling defensive about their own belief, whereas slamming the French is fun for everyone across the board. I know it's all jokes (which is why you jokingly included the French in your list of hated groups), but it is unbelievably pervasive...
Great stuff, it's in, thanks!
absurd thought -
God of the Universe hates
hearing MERRY HOLIDAYS
possibly the atheists have doubts
about their lack of faith...
.
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