http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
Posted on Dec 7, 2005

By Sam Harris

An Atheist Manifesto

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=757) should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightly—not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors—we will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity.

We live in a world of unimaginable surprises--from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth--and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.

Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/) Neither did the genocide in Rwanda, ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/africa/2004/rwanda/default.stm) even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox (http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=Smallpox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi) in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion--to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources--is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

<<<to be continued>>>

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The Nature of Belief


According to several recent polls, 22% of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years. Another 22% believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44% who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As President Bush is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing Scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote largely on the basis of religious dogma. More than 50% of Americans have a “negative” or “highly negative” view of people who do not believe in God; 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be “strongly religious.” Unreason is now ascendant in the United States--in our schools, in our courts and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution; 68% believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

Although it is easy enough for smart people to criticize religious fundamentalism, something called “religious moderation” still enjoys immense prestige in our society, even in the ivory tower. This is ironic, as fundamentalists tend to make a more principled use of their brains than “moderates” do. While fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and arguments, at least they make an attempt at rational justification. Moderates, on the other hand, generally do nothing more than cite the good consequences of religious belief. Rather than say that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief “gives their lives meaning.” When a tsunami killed a few hundred thousand people on the day after Christmas, fundamentalists readily interpreted this cataclysm as evidence of God’s wrath. As it turns out, God was sending humanity another oblique message about the evils of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain (ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, refuse to draw any conclusions whatsoever about God from his works. God remains a perfect mystery, a mere source of consolation that is compatible with the most desolating evil. In the face of disasters like the Asian tsunami, liberal piety is apt to produce the most unctuous and stupefying nonsense imaginable. And yet, men and women of goodwill naturally prefer such vacuities to the odious moralizing and prophesizing of true believers. Between catastrophes, it is surely a virtue of liberal theology that it emphasizes mercy over wrath. It is worth noting, however, that it is human mercy on display--not God’s--when the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled from the sea. On days when thousands of children are simultaneously torn from their mothers’ arms and casually drowned, liberal theology must stand revealed for what it is--the sheerest of mortal pretenses. Even the theology of wrath has more intellectual merit. If God exists, his will is not inscrutable. The only thing inscrutable in these terrible events is that so many neurologically healthy men and women can believe the unbelievable and think this the height of moral wisdom.

It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, “This belief gives my life meaning,” or “My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,” or “I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator.” Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot.

Here we can see why Pascal’s wager, Kierkegaard’s leap of faith and other epistemological Ponzi schemes won’t do. To believe that God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one’s belief. There must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and a person’s acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other. For all their sins against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this; moderates--almost by definition--do not.

The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke “faith.” Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs (e.g. “the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy,” “I saw the face of Jesus in a window,” “We prayed, and our daughter’s cancer went into remission"). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable.

<<to be continued>>

Rather than say that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief “gives their lives meaning.”

I fail to see what is so abhorrent in the idea that God can give meaning to one's life. As I see it there are only two possible origins for your antipathy on this particular issue. Either you believe that life holds no meaning at all OR that life can hold meaning but that it is not to be found in God. If the former is the case, then you have my pity. If the latter is the case, then I question the validity of criticising people for claiming to find meaning in belief systems that were developped to provide meaning. That's like blaming the stove for being hot.

Clearly not everyone finds their own 'meaning of life' in religion. Fair enough. But the implication that those people who do find meaning in this fashion are simply moronic is an incredibly pompous position to take.

Welcome to the site Esoterica. Nice to see another Canuck.

You have picked quite the tread to wet your feet in. :D

If the latter is the case, then I question the validity of criticising people for claiming to find meaning in belief systems that were developped to provide meaning.
Maybe in the beginning, they existed to provide meaning, but scoundrels quickly perverted belief systems into disgusting means of control.

Maybe in the beginning, they existed to provide meaning, but scoundrels quickly perverted belief systems into disgusting means of control.


I don't entirely disagree with your statement (although I do think it's a bit overly general) but does that mean that no one can find meaning in God(s)? There are plenty of people who don't participate in organised religions for exactly the reason you bring up but they haven't all turned to atheism.




P.S. Thank-you ~Sal~ :)

I fail to see what is so abhorrent in the idea that God can give meaning to one's life. As I see it there are only two possible origins for your antipathy on this particular issue. Either you believe that life holds no meaning at all OR that life can hold meaning but that it is not to be found in God. If the former is the case, then you have my pity. If the latter is the case, then I question the validity of criticising people for claiming to find meaning in belief systems that were developped to provide meaning. That's like blaming the stove for being hot.

Clearly not everyone finds their own 'meaning of life' in religion. Fair enough. But the implication that those people who do find meaning in this fashion are simply moronic is an incredibly pompous position to take.
Wow. Excellent post. Welcome to Allforums. Stick around. :)

I don't entirely disagree with your statement (although I do think it's a bit overly general) but does that mean that no one can find meaning in God(s)?
Well, people will find meaning in whatever they do. That is the nature of us as humans. Dogs do not try to make meaning out of anything. It is only humans.

The question is not so much, "Can we find meaning in God?" but, "Is God a good thing to find meaning in?" A theist would answer yes, an atheist such as myself would answer no.

IMO, it doesn't really matter that much in what others find meaning. What matters to me is what I feel

IMO, it doesn't really matter that much in what others find meaning. What matters to me is what I feel
A very good and healthy way to think.

IMO, it doesn't really matter that much in what others find meaning. What matters to me is what I feel
Well, of course, what matters to you is what matters to you; that is a tautology, and I venture that it misses a lot.

We all can try to get outside ourselves from time to time--it requires some mental slight-of-hand--we have to set aside a compartment of ourselves that is defined as "outside."

No doubt this sounds confusing. The point is that nothing we think is ever "really" outside ourselves--it is always ourselves doing the thinking--but we need to somehow transcend that and get outside ourselves regardless. Otherwise we may as well watch our toenails grow.

Art can help--sitting in one's room listening to Mozart can carry you way outside yourself, although in an emotional but not intellectual way. Other art forms, being less abstract, can carry one outside oneself in a more obviously intellectual way, so that we can do more than just feel outside ourselves.

The point is to not be so wrapped up in oneself, and especially in one's opinions. I guess humility is something that grows on a man over time as he mellows, and that young men just have to go through their period of self-centered, arrogant, hormone-driven foolishness.

Well, of course, what matters to you is what matters to you; that is a tautology, and I venture that it misses a lot.

We all can try to get outside ourselves from time to time--it requires some mental slight-of-hand--we have to set aside a compartment of ourselves that is defined as "outside."

No doubt this sounds confusing. The point is that nothing we think is ever "really" outside ourselves--it is always ourselves doing the thinking--but we need to somehow transcend that and get outside ourselves regardless. Otherwise we may as well watch our toenails grow.

Art can help--sitting in one's room listening to Mozart can carry you way outside yourself, although in an emotional but not intellectual way. Other art forms, being less abstract, can carry one outside oneself in a more obviously intellectual way, so that we can do more than just feel outside ourselves.

The point is to not be so wrapped up in oneself, and especially in one's opinions. I guess humility is something that grows on a man over time as he mellows, and that young men just have to go through their period of self-centered, arrogant, hormone-driven foolishness.
What? This post doesn't make any sense. How do you transcend your own opinions? You always have them and you can't exactly escape them, only change them.

Dogs do not try to make meaning out of anything. It is only humans.

Speak for yourself, not for dogs.

The point is to not be so wrapped up in oneself, and especially in one's opinions. I guess humility is something that grows on a man over time as he mellows, and that young men just have to go through their period of self-centered, arrogant, hormone-driven foolishness.

I am not in the least "wrapped up" in myself or my opinions. What I was saying with my post is that I don't try to change people's minds and get them to believe what I believe in regards to religion and spirituality. I respect others' beliefs and I know that mine are really no more or less correct than theirs. I don't see how this could be construed as lack of humility.

Also, were you suggesting that I'm male? And not only that, self-centered and arrogant? I can assure you that I am none of these things, if you were not speaking in more general terms.

I am sorry you take things personally. Actually I had Napster in mind.

What difference is it that you swallow a few seeds as you enjoy your watemelon?

Ah, I apologize. I thought you were referring to me, since it was my post you quoted.

Heh, if you want to anthropomorphise dogs, be my guest, but don't expect your strange belief in a world-wise dog to be taken seriously by anyone. Hell, no one even tries to make cats out to be worldly...

What? This post doesn't make any sense. How do you transcend your own opinions? You always have them and you can't exactly escape them, only change them.
Well, you're too self-centered and arrogant and hormone-driven to know! Wait until you're older and you mellow out a bit! Yes, it even keeps you from knowing whether Thislin's post makes any sense or not! So get older, pronto!

I lost what I wanted to post to you, and second time around is never as good.

That you ask your question indicates that what I said is not as meaningless to you as you say it is.

My point is a bit trite, so I won't belabor it--even though people need to be reminded of it now and then. It is that we should not see our opinions as "ours" and others' opinions as "theirs." This way of thinking inserts our ego into things and thereby muddies up our thinking.

Is it anthropomorphizing to recognize that human beings are animals? You sound like the creationist trying to argue that humans are a special, separate type of being with a soul.

Now you're attacking me by claiming I sound like a creationist! It seems it wasn't enough for you to call me immature, now you must mix my words up purposefully!

Human beings are animals, yes. But they are thinking animals! Thinking is looking for meaning. Other animals do not do it. Only humans. Many human-like traits also exist in other animals, notably mammals. That would stand to reason, as we are all in the same family. But only humans look for meaning in their day to day dealings.

If a dog could speak, what do you think it would say, concerning the nature of life? "I'm a dog," would be the best it could come up with. It does doggie things, and doesn't get caught up in why it does anything. They don't come with the ginormous tool-using brain that we evolved.

We need the brain to get by in life, it would seem a dog does not.

I think dogs have a sense of purpose--they demonstrate it routinely. It amazes me you can't see that.

It is the creationist who has to set homo sapiens up as a separate special creation. The scientist should not be influenced by thinking that humans are special--we are animals and our specialization is a matter of degree, not of kind.

Scientists have forever thought of man as special. For centuries, that has been the only way to think about the different qualities man has from the other animals. Until the Enlightenment, western scientists mostly followed the Christian line of thought. Afterwards, other avenues opened up. The idea that man is but the same thing as an animal, represents a very, very new idea, one that only started to gain acceptance after Darwin.

The fallout from Darwin's legacy continues to be seen even today. Scientists still are not sure exactly how human beings differ from animals.

So you are saying, that scientists before Darwin weren't scientists?

And as for your sense that dogs have a purpose, sure. Their purpose is no more elaborate than I had just stated. That of being a dog. That is their purpose. No more, and no less. It is the main reason people are attracted to dogs and other animals. They represent a sort of freedom from caring about all our human troubles that is very appealing.

To say that a dog cares about anything other than being a dog, well, it's laughable.

Welcome aboard, Esoterica. So far I really like your posting style. You cut directly to the core of the situation being discussed with no b.s..

Just as there are religious people who feel it is their mission in life to lambaste and castigate atheists, there are atheists who think it is their mission in life to insult those who believe in God. Freethinker is one of those atheists. He feels it is somehow his life's mission to insult theists in general and Christians in particular.

After a while Freethinker's anti-religious rants become merely background noise, you know it's there but you really don't pay attention to it.

FT = Agenda to the 18th power....

I heard he shits out lightning bolts which fry christians who get in his path... my what a monster!

Thanks for the heads-up.

I fail to see what is so abhorrent in the idea that God can give meaning to one's life.

What I view as abhorrent is what religionists --throughout human history-- have done with their beliefs after they have been taught to believe that there is but one unseen supernatural entity, and that it is their entity and that it cares about them.

I view the 'true believer's devotion to supernaturalism very much as Robert Ingersoll did;

"To believe in signs and wonders, in amulets, charms and miracles, in gods and devils, in heavens and hells, makes the brain an insane ward, the world a madhouse, takes all certainty from the mind, makes experience a snare, destroys the kinship of effect and cause -- the unity of nature -- and makes man a trembling serf and slave. With this belief a knowledge of nature sheds no light upon the path to be pursued. Nature becomes a puppet of the unseen powers. The fairy, called the supernatural, touches with her wand a fact, it disappears. Causes are barren of effects, and effects are independent of all natural causes. Caprice is king. The foundation is gone. The great dome rests on air. There is no constancy in qualities, relations or results. Reason abdicates and superstition wears her crown.

The heart hardens and the brain softens.

The energies of man are wasted in a vain effort to secure the protection of the supernatural. Credulity, ceremony, worship, sacrifice and prayer take the place of honest work, of investigation, of intellectual effort, of observation, of experience. Progress becomes impossible.

Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the enemy of liberty.

Superstition created all the gods and angels, all the devils and ghosts, all the witches, demons and goblins, gave us all the augurs, soothsayers and prophets, filled the heavens with signs and wonders, broke the chain of cause and effect, and wrote the history of man in miracles and lies. Superstition made all the popes, cardinals, bishops and priests, all the monks and nuns, the begging friars and the filthy saints, all the preachers and exhorters, all the "called" and "set apart." Superstition made men fall upon their knees before beasts and stones, caused them to worship snakes and trees and insane phantoms of the air, beguiled them of their gold and toil, and made them shed their children's blood and give their babes to flames. Superstition built the cathedrals and temples, all the altars, mosques and churches, filled the world with amulets and charms, with images and idols, with sacred bones and holy hairs, with martyrs' blood and rags, with bits of wood that frighten devils from the breasts of men. Superstition invented and used the instruments of torture, flayed men and women alive, loaded millions with chains and destroyed hundreds of thousands with fire. Superstition mistook insanity for inspiration and the ravings of maniacs for prophesy, for the wisdom of God. Superstition imprisoned the virtuous, tortured the thoughtful, killed the heroic, put chains on the body, manacles on the brain, and utterly destroyed the liberty of speech.

Superstition taught that human love is degrading, low and vile; taught that monks are purer than fathers, that nuns are holier than mothers, that faith is superior to fact, that credulity leads to heaven, that doubt is the road to hell, that belief is better than knowledge, and that to ask for evidence is to insult God. Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.".



As I see it there are only two possible origins for your antipathy on this particular issue. Either you believe that life holds no meaning at all OR that life can hold meaning but that it is not to be found in God.

The former.

<<<continued from above>>>


Faith and the Good Society


People of faith regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Although it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more than litanies of delusion--delusions about race, economics, national identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: The anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, religious Germans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, the religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914.)

Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every religion has more than its fair share. There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

While most Americans believe that getting rid of religion is an impossible goal, much of the developed world has already accomplished it. Any account of a ”god gene” that causes the majority of Americans to helplessly organize their lives around ancient works of religious fiction must explain why so many inhabitants of other First World societies apparently lack such a gene. The level of atheism throughout the rest of the developed world refutes any argument that religion is somehow a moral necessity. Countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on Earth. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest in terms of human development are unwaveringly religious. Other analyses paint the same picture: The United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious literalism and opposition to evolutionary theory; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, STD infection and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious superstition and hostility to evolutionary theory, are especially plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causality--belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing to ensure a society’s health.

Countries with high levels of atheism also are the most charitable in terms of giving foreign aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is also belied by other indices of charity. Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.

<<to be continued>>

The question of purpose is an interesting one, since in the end all our purposes--our cities, our monuments, our empires, our literatre and art, all come to dust--if the cosmologists have it right, even the dust disintegrates.

For the most part the purpose a dog has is to serve the interests of the pack. They also seem capable of giving unquestioning love. These can be happy and meaningful purposes.

What is your purpose? More than likely it is to serve the pack (family, community, employer, country, ideology, church, humanity, whatever). Are we, then, so much better?

The point you make, that we are different, is obvious. Most of the points you make are obvious like that. The problem is that you do not see beyond your nose and realize that human differences may not be all that important in the cosmic scheme of things. I suspect there are life forms in existence that make the difference between us and a dog a mere triviality in comparison.

Esoterica, do not write FT off just yet. Occasionally, he can be hilarious, and does make good points.

For the most part the purpose a dog has is to serve the interests of the pack. They also seem capable of giving unquestioning love. These can be happy and meaningful purposes.

You have now moved into arguing against something that wasn't suggested.

What Napster specifically said was --"Dogs do not try to make meaning out of anything".

Now, you may be of the belief that dogs "try to make meaning out of things"..... but I can't imagine how you'd go about proving that, nor can I imagine why you'd honestly think it.

I suspect there are life forms in existence that make the difference between us and a dog a mere triviality in comparison.

I would join you in that supposition.

But that still does not mean that --"dogs try to make meaning out of things".

What is your purpose? More than likely it is to serve the pack (family, community, employer, country, ideology, church, humanity, whatever). Are we, then, so much better?
Man, ostensibly, makes his own purpose. Realistically, we're all here to survive and replicate. It's not as easy to sum up what it means to be human, as it is to be a dog, simply because we are human, and have difficulties seeing the forest for the trees. (SMW notwithstanding) This lack of objectivity is what causes a majority of the internal suffering felt by people in western society, and led to the first Noble Truth of Buddhism. The line of thinking goes, only through practice at mindfulness, can we overcome our suffering. I just happen to think it's a load of crap.

Man, ostensibly, makes his own purpose. Realistically, we're all here to survive and replicate. It's not as easy to sum up what it means to be human, as it is to be a dog, simply because we are human, and have difficulties seeing the forest for the trees. (SMW notwithstanding) This lack of objectivity is what causes a majority of the internal suffering felt by people in western society, and led to the first Noble Truth of Buddhism. The line of thinking goes, only through practice at mindfulness, can we overcome our suffering. I just happen to think it's a load of crap.
So you hang your argument on my inability to "prove" that dogs make purpose?

You cannot even prove that I make purpose: in other words your argument is solipsistic.

You can only infer from what you observe. I infer that dogs are sensate, feeling, purposeful beings.

Descartes formalized the idea that animals are just complicated machines. He did this in support of his contention that they do not have souls (he was defending his support of Christian dualism).

Voltaire, I think, demolished this by describing the public vivisection of a dog, and his remark that he would like to see they guy who did this subjected to the same thing and see if he behaved any differently.

WTF? Are you just going to turn into a dharmabum and demand proof for everything you don't like?

To be totally honest with you, I don't give a pink rat's ass about proof. I am a rhetorician, not a logician. You seem to me to be a mystic. I would agree with you that dogs are sensate, feeling, and purposeful. I disagree with you in that they make their own purpose. The idea is completely absurd, and your holding on to it, seems to me to be a curious lack of what you call mindfulness. Like you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you.

I do not seek to prove or disprove. I only seek to make you look silly, that is my chosen method of argument. You can be right all you want, but if I have made you look silly, all of your logic and reason and effort will have been for naught.

Darn those people who call you out on your unsubstantiated claims. It is so unreasonable to want to see evidence, isn't it? :rolleyes:

Well, when you pull out the proof demand against the argumentative equivalent of "Water is wet," it gets old quick.

Well, when you pull out the proof demand against the argumentative equivalent of "Water is wet," it gets old quick.

Too bad for you I have never asked for proof of anything like that.

To paraphrase someone's sig, if you have to exaggerate what I say to make your point then you have admitted defeat.

The only people who have a problem with me asking for evidence to a specious claim are those who know that they routinely make stuff up.

:lolhit:

Pfft, quit misusing Brooks' sig, thank you very much.

You are about as good of a logician as Hitler was a soldier. But that will never stop you from wanting to push your ugly tripe on to everyone else, just like Hitler did.

Sometimes, I wish the people that wanted proof all the time (dharma and OD) would ask for it when someone rattles off something they actually agree with. It seems strange that the need for proof in these cases is always absent.

A newly discovered chapter in the Book of Genesis has provided the answer to "Where do pets come from?"

Adam and Eve said, "Lord, when we were in the garden, you walked with us every day Now we do not see you any more. We are lonesome here, and it is difficult for us to remember how much you love us."

And God said, "I will create a companion for you that will be with you and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will love me even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how selfish or childish or unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourselves."

And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam and Eve.

And it was a good animal. And God was pleased.
And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and Eve and he wagged his tail.

And Adam said, "Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and I cannot think of a name for this new animal."

And God said, "I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG."

And Dog lived with Adam and Eve and was a companion to them and loved them. And they were comforted.

And God was pleased. And Dog was content and wagged his tail.

After a while, it came to pass that an angel came to the Lord and said, "Lord, Adam and Eve have become filled with pride. They strut and preen like peacocks and they believe they are worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught them that they are loved, but perhaps too well."

And God said, I will create for them a companion who will be with them and who will see them as they are. The companion will remind them of their limitations, so they will know that they are not always worthy of adoration."

And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam and Eve.

And Cat would not obey them. And when Adam and Eve gazed into Cat's eyes, they were reminded that they were not the supreme beings.

And Adam and Eve learned humility. And they were greatly improved. And God was pleased. And Dog was happy.


And Cat didn't give a shit one way or the other.

Thanks for your new scriptures; they were well done.

As a person who has a menagerie of both cats and dogs (and a bunch of other animals about), I would say that dogs, being pack animals, are almost embarrassing in their slavish devotion (except every now and then when they test your dominance).

Cats, as you say, could not care less. Still, cats do love you--but you have to earn it.

Continued: Religion as a Source of Violence




One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns--about ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of human suffering--in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities--Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.--and these divisions have become a continuous source of human conflict. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

In a world riven by ignorance, only the atheist refuses to deny the obvious: Religious faith promotes human violence to an astonishing degree. Religion inspires violence in at least two senses: (1) People often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it (the inevitable psychopathic corollary being that the act will ensure them an eternity of happiness after death). Examples of this sort of behavior are practically innumerable, jihadist suicide bombing being the most prominent. (2) Larger numbers of people are inclined toward religious conflict simply because their religion constitutes the core of their moral identities. One of the enduring pathologies of human culture is the tendency to raise children to fear and demonize other human beings on the basis of religion. Many religious conflicts that seem driven by terrestrial concerns, therefore, are religious in origin. (Just ask the Irish.)

These facts notwithstanding, religious moderates tend to imagine that human conflict is always reducible to a lack of education, to poverty or to political grievances. This is one of the many delusions of liberal piety. To dispel it, we need only reflect on the fact that the Sept. 11 hijackers (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801315_pf.html) were college educated and middle class and had no discernable history of political oppression. They did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time at their local mosque talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise. How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not a matter of education, poverty or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion. Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.

Why is religion such a potent source of human violence?

* Our religions are intrinsically incompatible with one another. Either Jesus rose from the dead and will be returning to Earth like a superhero (http://www.raptureready.com/index.php) or not; either the Koran is the infallible word of God or it isn’t. Every religion makes explicit claims about the way the world is, and the sheer profusion of these incompatible claims creates an enduring basis for conflict.
* There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us-them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If a person really believes that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. It may even be reasonable to kill them. If a person thinks there is something that another person can say to his children that could put their souls in jeopardy for all eternity, then the heretic next door is actually far more dangerous than the child molester. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism or politics.
* Religious faith is a conversation-stopper. Religion is only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, and--all too often--what they will kill for. This is a problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple choice between conversation and violence. Only a fundamental willingness to be reasonable--to have our beliefs about the world revised by new evidence and new arguments--can guarantee that we will keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing. While there is no guarantee that rational people will always agree, the irrational are certain to be divided by their dogmas.


It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our world simply by multiplying the opportunities for interfaith dialogue. The endgame for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent irrationality. While all parties to liberal religious discourse have agreed to tread lightly over those points where their worldviews would otherwise collide, these very points remain perpetual sources of conflict for their coreligionists. Political correctness, therefore, does not offer an enduring basis for human cooperation. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.

When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another. Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn’t--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to make them his own.

Pfft, quit misusing Brooks' sig, thank you very much.

ROFL!!! You are such a little drama queen.



But that will never stop you from wanting to push your ugly tripe on to everyone else, just like Hitler did.

Since when is Liberty, Truth, Justice and Fairness "Ugly tripe"?

Oh yes, when a snotty little brat gets called out for not being able to backup any of his bullshit.

*chuckles*

"Liberty, Truth, Fairness, Justice"

That's what Hitler called his ugly tripe too! I guess that just goes to show you how easily such virtues are corrupted, especially when co-opted by the vain and foolish.

"Liberty, Truth, Fairness, Justice"

That's what Hitler called his ugly tripe too!

ROFL!! Get back in school Junior! You desperately need to finish an education.

ROFL!! Get back in school Junior! You desperately need to finish an education.
What for? I'm already schooling you!

I'm already schooling you!

In what, the failure of our educational system? ROFL!!!

The failure of your education system. You actually went, remember?

The ultimate failure is quitting, for which you seem to be the proud poster child.

I see. So tell me, dharma, what do you actually have to show for all your years in college, and the expense you went to?

Because where I'm sitting from, and a good many of the people here, the only thing you seem good at is arrogance and bitterness. I guess that's what they really teach at, Stanford, was it? Did that liberal arts education just teach you how to be one?

It sounds to me like you're trying to justify it in your own mind by pushing it onto others. Quite common, actually.

And please, if you can't answer my questions, feel free to just call me an ignorant, immature kid.

Child, you mistake cynicism for anger and sarcasm for bitterness.

You are indeed an ignorant, immature kid but you didn't need me to tell you that.

:corn: