For a well thought out article.

As an atheist it bugs the life out of me that I get attacked for stating my views. The fact that merely mentioning in a discussion revolving around religion my beliefs can cause an almighty storm.

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This is refreshing—to read someone who identifies as an atheist and also acknowledges that her position is a belief system that deserves the privileges of advocacy, as with any other belief system (except for advocating the overthrow of the government).

I am accustomed to being rebuked by outspoken atheists for pointing out that their views include a belief system. When the parallels between evangelical atheism and evangelical organized religion are mentioned, the response is usually a loud, “Atheism is not a kind of religion.”

I am annoyed by both brands of evangelism. In both cases, it is salesmanship, marketing, peddling that seems to me to always be motivated by insecurity. As if somehow signing up more members, getting more people to be just like me, will make the world a better place.

If I do not inquire about your beliefs, please keep them to yourself. As with opinions, everyone has one, as usually that is compared to another aspect of the human anatomy. So thank you for the admission that atheists can be True Believers, as with fundamentalist religious reactionaries.

And read Eric Hoffer’s wonderful study by the title “The True Believer.” He has a whole book to explain why I am annoyed.

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I think this article makes a lot of good points in defense of atheists. There is some measure of discrimination. I think another area of discrimination you missed was that most politicians are expected to be religious. Atheists holding public office are quite rare.

The discrimination issues aside, I am more deeply troubled by the response of the religious to atheism. They suggest we atheists will burn in hell for eternity: that's often their only argument. OK. Well here’s the troubling part. Why the disdain instead of deep concern. If I believed someone faced any danger, I would try to explain that danger in the best way I could. That might mean working to understanding where the other person is coming from. What are their beliefs.

So for a Christian, for example, that means I think they should try to understand the atheist. Try to share with them how they came to understand hell and Jesus and God with such certainty that they know their beliefs are so safe an that the atheist and everyone else’s beliefs and practices are doomed. Instead there’s almost a glee. A sense that they are on the side of an all powerful being and that all others be damned. Where’s the loyalty to other humans? It reminds me of the Simpson’s episode where the newscaster Kent Brockman mistakenly believes giant ants have invaded the space shuttle and quickly declares that “I'd like to be the first to welcome our ant overlords.”

I like to say that I'm an atheist who believes in god(s). In part I say that to underscore what this article says: that theisms / religions have supported some of the most heinous activities around. But also because I think knowledge and belief are cultural phenomena. We cannot prove a positive anymore than we can prove a negative. Knowledge is produced by human activity. Our understanding of everything is limited by our abilities. We produce knowledge and belief through logic, through our senses, through reference to authorities and so on. Each of us takes these knowledge inputs and produces a new unique, though interrelated, understanding of our Universe. So to know or believe a God or gods exists – perhaps with omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, or some combination of these – relies on the same paths to knowledge and belief: logic, senses, and authority.

So let us take the Christians at their word. To we atheists, the logic is severely lacking. To this they answer well the Lord works in mysterious ways. As for our senses, nothing we sense really reveals the presence of a god or gods: not in the manner that we can sense the trees, the soil, our beds or our friends. However, if an omnipotent being want to hide form our senses, there’s nothing to stop it. This leaves authority (and perhaps other paths to knowledge I've neglected to mention). However authorities clash: one authority says one thing and another says something else.

Given these paths to knowledge and belief, how does a Christian respond to the atheist? The important thing in this situation is to be sure that the authoritative source the Christian relies upon really promises eternity in hell for those who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior. On the other hand, how do we know that the jealous God of the old testament didn’t actually send Jesus as a test? That way following Jesus is turning our backs on Jehovah. To this they might answer that these epithets are the same God. OK then why would anyone need to convert from Judaism to Christianity? Or from Islam to Christianity. Why would a Muslim need to accept Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Saviour?

(continued)

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I have no personal god beliefs, but i would never call myself an atheist. "Atheism" is an analytical category in religious thinking; i don't participate in that discourse except as an outside observor. To me it's the same as the question, "Jew or Gentile"? The answer is "neither"; i don't consider the lens of Judaism to be universal.

"Cavaliers fan?"
"Is that a kind of car?"

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Regardless of my religious beliefs (or lack thereof - it really is irrelevant), in the same way I don't want to listen to some bible-thumper tell me about the one true path to eternal salvation, I don't want to hear you tell me how it's wrong.

It's like listening to two eight year olds arguing.

Keep your beliefs (or lack of beliefs) to yourself, unless someone asks you about them.

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there are several logical errors here. 1. you cannot prove a negative. "there are no pink martinis in my imagination." where do you begin to make a testable form of that "hypothesis"? 2. GOD isn't a hypothesis in any case. e.g. "I love coco puffs." 3. god per se by definition is not contingent. existence is contingent. therefore the existence or the nonexistence of god per se is equally absurd.

It's as if I asserted that atheism is not a belief. Such an assertion may make me feel superior, but even if it is true, it doesn't matter much sub specie aeternitatis. It's not an argument, but just argumentative. In other words, that god doesn't exist doesn't matter.

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And that right there is also what makes you no different that any of the Father/God Cultists.

All of us are biological specks living upon a dust mote at the far end of one arm of an entirely average galaxy. Yet each of the above camps claims to Know Absolute Truth about The Nature of All.

Yeah, right...

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An atheist doesn't believe in God? Whose God? Is it just semantics?

My atheist friend doesn't believe in God because he doesn't believe in the Christian God. He doesn't believe there is an old man living somewhere in a place called Heaven. To him, it is ridiculous to think God, being omnipotent, would need a human body, or need a place to live.

Did God make man in his own image, or did man make God in his own image?

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Some commenters here think atheists should keep their beliefs to themselves. That's like telling an African American to pipe down about a water fountain labeled Whites Only.

We atheists didn't start this fight. It's brought to us in a million different ways every day. Religion, especially the Christian religion, is not content to live and let live but insists on imposing its rules and silly beliefs on everyone else. Many stupid and cruel laws are founded on religious rules. Religion prevents our children from being taught the truth in many school districts and often results in them being taught total nonsense such as Creationism. Religion infringes on our liberties in countless other ways and is even glorified in sayings on public buildings -- paid for with atheists' tax money -- and is even printed on our money!

Adding insult to injury, this unfair system is subsidized by our government, which grants generous tax breaks to promoters of superstition while penalizing in many ways those who try to resist this stupidity.

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"Thinking you're right and trying to persuade other people you're right is not intolerant or close-minded -- it's a cornerstone of democracy"

OUCH!

But thinking and espousing that you have the only and ultimate "truth" is indeed poisonous and destructive.

Fervent atheists ARE as close minded as fundamentalist zealots in any organized religion in my observation.

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa

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The reason I have such an aversion to most religious doctrines is that they are predicated on the promise of a 'reward' or threat of punishment. I call it the "Big Cookie" payoff. If you adhere to all their rules, perform the correct rituals you will be rewarded with some ultimately payoff in the end- fail to do so an there will be "hell to pay". That's not faith, thats bribery and coercsion.How can you call yourself 'Moral' if the only reason you are behaving 'Morally' is to gain a reward or avoid punishment. Thus everything you do is not altruistic, but self serving. The Behavior may be 'moral' but the underlying motivation is not. You are Buying your way to a reward or buying your way out of a punishment.
Reason I always laugh when ever I hear a Holey (flawed Logic) Roller claim my conversion to their doctrine will guarantee eternal salvation and avoid eternal damnation. They are confessing that the only reason they may act in any way 'moral' is to assure they get the 'Big Cookie' in the End. That's not faith, that's hedging your bet, and more often just a salespitch.Nothing different than a commerical claiming that if you buy their product you will have an advantage over others - better body, whiter cltohes, better sex...And isn't getting more people to 'buy' your religion the same as getting more 'customers'- working off commission, are they?
This is why Atheist have the upper hand in the discussion over 'morals', they have no promise to offer of Pearly Gates and Harps or 72 virgins (or raisins) or even a Karmic step forward in your next life.
Atheist do what they do, act in a moral and ethical manner for it's own sake, just because it's the right thing to do. Ok maybe because doing a good deed just makes them feel good- so a small cookie. Or they get some adulation for the Deed-Ego stroke?- Yes. Butyou have to actually DO something, not merely claim you adhere to an idea or doctrine to get those strokes.
As for defining 'God'- I can't, I consider it to be everything we have yet to explain or understand. So my 'Atheistic' tendency is more related to Religion. I consider the Scientists search for knowledge as much a quest to understand 'God' as any scholar who buries his nose in some ancient text and certainly more than anyone preaching to me on my front porch (the Fuller Brushmen of Philosophical thought).

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I'll back her right to believe that there is no god, just as I'll back the rights of others to believe differently.

As the author herself points out, you can't prove a negative. It follows then that atheism is no more "right" than any other belief system.

Atheism is a theory. Even Darwin never ruled out the possibility of a creator.

Our beliefs about who we are, how we got here and where we might end up are personal and subject to doubt and even conversion.

The biggest problem in America is not the economy. People who lived through the Great Depression found meaning in sharing with one another.

The biggest problem in America today is hatred.

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evolve from the belief that there is a god, a supreme being. After that they begin to assemble all kinds of weird behaviors and dogma on top of their core belief. Frequently, it's the weird behaviors and dogma that they become most defensive about.

I don't know whether there is or is not a "god", and I can't imagine how anyone can, other than through direct contact. I believe that it's certainly posible that there is a god, and I just as strongly believe that it's possible that there is not.

It's equally possible that what many people believe is god, is simply another being, or population of beings, who is/are intellectually and technologically (in the sense of interacting with the universe) more developed than we are. It's also possible that "god" is a manifestation of collective conciousness, and that evil is simply the other side of that same collective.

I suggest a good place to start is, examine some of the photography taken by the Hubble telescope, and consider it's implications when listening to the arguments of one of your fellow creatures on this particular bit of space dust that we happen to live on. Of course the ancients didn't have that particular bit of technology when they developed their theories on cosmology, so they made a lot of shit up.

In my opinion, we've come a long way, and we have much further to go. The journey is, in fact, endless. Or, maybe you just die. I'm hoping for more of something myself.

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Religion is a global phenomenon, and when each of the religious beliefs and different figureheads are considered collectively, presents an impossible situation. Indeed, throughout the ages and depending on where people lived, multiple Gods have been worshipped and then abandoned depending on the prevailing politics of the time.

Religion is a human phenomenon borne out of ignorance and superstition and people’s desperate attempts to rationalise their fear of the unknown. Parents, State and schools reinforce their collective need to further indoctrinate and brainwash their children from day one, and it is perhaps more to good fortune than anything else that a minority of people have managed to rise above the slime of mass delusion and view the world in a completely different light.

All religious institutions have a definite agenda that is ultimately driven by the requirements of the State to send its citizens to War, and religious belief makes it easier for the Authorities to persuade the masses that going to war is justified.

With God on our Side, we can do any damn thing we please. ‘Allah is great’ can mesmerise and direct in ways that few other slogans can achieve.

Michael Crichton’s film ‘The Andromeda Strain’ is a good example of how one should view the phenomenon of belief in God. In the film, an especially virulent and lethal virus is set to pretty much wipe out the Human Race when a satellite containing strains of the virus is accidentally knocked off course and crashes in a remote part of Utah.

Is it alien, is it from another time, directed to our present via a wormhole in space? Did the designers wish to send a powerful message that only the best and brightest of our scientists would be capable of interpreting, with the antidote embedded in its atomic structure?

Well they discover what will kill it off – 326978 Bacillus Infernus, and so they spray the infected landscape and the human race is saved.

All except for 1 tiny little capsule – which is finally deposited in locker number 326978 in a space station that is orbiting the planet.

So, the truth is out – it was designed and developed by Man. But we can ask ourselves some questions – was the film really a depiction of reality? Are there in fact space stations up there containing vials of lethal virus? Should we believe it to be true?

But it’s only a film, made in a studio. Riveting stuff.

Should we continue to believe in God? We can do, but it is so much more interesting to dismiss the entire affair as a clever con trick which therefore it makes it easier to tell when you are being deceived and distracted.

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."- Bertrand Russell

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The are no "miracles." Nothing is "sacred." Nothing is "holy."

Gods, gardian angels, demons, devils, garden gnomes and benevolent fairies do not and never have existed. The natural, measurable world is all there is and ever was. Treat those who claim differently with great skepticism.

The nagging problems afflicting our species are nearly all our making and in most cases can be directly attributable to the acceptane of unreason.

Only when humankind begins to fully grasp this simple reality will the evolution of our species resume in earnest.
~Rev. El Mundo
Pastor, WVCSR

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http://ionparadox.homestead.com/files/evidence_for_god.htm

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I am not an atheist. The word itself -- a-theist -- is a linguistic trap, a word set up long ago as a polar opposite to theism, as if there are only two possible positions to take on the existence of god. Our language is oriented toward the believer. We say that a person goes from "believing in god" to "not believing in god." But if atheism is a belief, it is not atheism; it's just another form of religion. To talk about being "correct" is to fall into the same trap. The difference between religion and atheism is the difference between truth and meaning. Belief in god is a belief in an absolute taken on faith. Atheism is a hypothesis about the nature of reality based on the observations that there is no proof of god and that religion has had and continues to have very negative effects for human beings.

As a former Christian fundamentalist, I can say from experience that atheism is incomprehensible to believers, and I don't think any amount of argument, no matter how well-reasoned, makes much difference. Belief in god is a paradigm, just as atheism is a paradigm, and paradigms are incommensurable. What atheists need is to abandon the word atheist altogether, and develop a new language that better reflects what it is to hold the hypothesis that, as a humorist once said, "We are here. It is now. This is it."

In lieu of a better term, I am a "mootist." For me, the question of whether god exists is moot. It cannot be answered, but then, it doesn't have to be. I have found that I can live just as well without truth and certainty in my life.

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Idontknowism: a belief in the existence of stuff I don't know yet. Includes anything I think may be possible, but as yet unprovable. Members are welcome. Very few members as yet due to the lack of anything to argue about.

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In my own case, having been brought up a Christer and breaking away from that to explore Hinduism, Buddhism, paganism, wicca, ceremonial magic(k) and a variety of other isms and praxes, I can only say that reading Sam Harris's The End of Faith and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great were liberating experiences to say the least.

Finally, a heavy weight had been taken off my shoulders and my clouded over eyes were opened and made clear. I no longer had to follow any anachronistic laws dreamed up by men and attributed to a supernatural being, which I now realized was no more "real" than the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus. Finally, when I was a "good" person, I was good because of me, not because I feared ending up in some imaginary place called hell.

Of course we are evangelical. In fact, we are proselytic. Some bimbo wrote an op-ed in the L. A. Times about how we were "whiners." Seems to me it is the believers who whine the most. We don't have to whine. We have certainty, not speculation. But we do want everyone to convert to disbelief. It will make the world a whole lot better place for all.

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Imagine a closet.

Joe goes into the closet, closes the door and starts praying to Jesus. It fills him with a sense of meaning and value. When Joe comes out of the closet he's a good person. He doesn't lie. He goes out of his way to help strangers around him. He's open minded and not afraid to discuss with others their take on what matters in life. He works hard and pays his taxes and he isn't deathly afraid 24/7 about all the terrible things that are out to get him and his little herd.

Here's Achmed. He too goes into the closet and prays to Allah. Much like Joe he feels fulfilled and gratified. He too comes out of the closet a wonderful person because of it.

Jimbo doesn't believe in Jesus or Allah. He believes in Thor, Oden and all the rest of the pagan nordic gods. He goes in to the closet and starts praying for Thor's hammer to grant him strength and such. But alas, when Jimbo comes out of the closet he too handles himself life Joe and Achmed.

Finally we have Eric. Eric doesn't believe in any good. He's happy to accept the grandeur of life without a deity. When he goes into the closet he has no god to pray to so instead he calls his friends and family for moral guidance and support. He entertains himself with education and knowledge so as to better understand and appreciate the world around him. When Eric comes out of the closet he's a wonderful, tolerant person like the three gentlemen before him.

Nobody else knows what happens in the closet, and nobody needs to care about it either. This is the way religion or lack thereof should work. Just like sex you can have it in any way shape and form that works for you, I promise I won't get in your face about it. I just want you to respect me when I say that I don't want to know about you activities. I don't care about your reasons for letting your three girlfriends tape you to the wall and smear you with peanut butter every sunday, and I don't care about your reasons for praying to a mystery entity on sunday either. I don't care.

But if you come out of the closet a bigoted, angry fundamentalist unable and unwilling to treat people with respect? Yelling like a five year old? Ttrying to force your believes on the rest of us? Trying to legislate to give yourself special perks? Trying to crack down on dissenters? Trying to stifle free speech? Trying to change what MY future children learn in school? Trying with every breath in your body to sell to the world why YOUR thoughts matter most, and why YOUR lifestyle is the only valid one and why YOU should enjoy special treatment then you know what?

STAY THE FUCK IN THE CLOSET.

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What I've gleaned from this article is that atheists are as insufferable, boorish and self-righteous as any of the bible thumping types they disdain. Rigid, black and white "we are right" thinking does nothing to persuade people who don't believe the same way as you do. Like Republicanism is to Democratism, it seems to me that atheism is simply a self-defensive reaction to rigid religious ideology and a hatred for all the things they themselves seem to be practicing. How's that mirror looking now?

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and harris wanted to nuke Iran, so there is such a thing as dogmatic atheist. That is what is really bad. Dogmatic people.

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I think that what most irritates atheist is the knee jerk in your face Christian Fundamentalist.

I list myself as “agnostic” instead of “atheist”. It is a softer word and does not cause Christian fundamentalist a huge knee jerk.

And by and by in their conversion conversation I ask them “if you grew up in India with devout Hindu parents and grand parents and great grand parents and brothers and sisters, etc. what religion would you be? You would honor your parents and share their religion, wouldn’t you?” They think hard about this usually don’t have much to say. Then I ask, “if you grew up Hindu, honoring your family and their religion, will you still go to hell because you did not say the magic Christian words…I believe that JC is my lord and savior? They think some more. It is a soft way of challenging them and making them THINK for THEMSELVES FOR ONCE IN THEIR FRICKIN LIVES!

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Are all atheists as stupid as Greta Christina, or is it only the vocal ones? http://tinyurl.com/mtvg4w

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Yeah, the article makes good points about the right atheists have to discuss their anti-religious opinions/belief systems... somewhere. But I sincerely hope Alternet steers clear of religious discussions generally! I surely don't want to start seeing Baptist v. Buddhist or (goddess forbid!) Christian v. Muslim BS on this wonderful, typically more-enlightened site.

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For clarity from wiki; Agnosticism (Greek: α- a-, without + γνώσις gnōsis, knowledge; after Gnosticism) is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, spiritual beings, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove. It is often put forth as a middle ground between theism and atheism,[1] though it is not a religious declaration in itself and the terms are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism refers to knowledge, while atheism and theism refer to belief.[2]

Why are so many of us so unwilling just to say the truth? Perhaps fear of the unknowable.

Believe what you will, but nevertheless, WE DO NOT KNOW.

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I like it when atheists try to convince me not to believe in God. It makes for a vigorous discussion which is good all around if it's respectful. It only gets irritating when I am told that I am an idiot because I am a Christian. It is this kind of strident, fundamentalist atheism which I find annoying and offensive - just as offensive as religious fundamentalism. I am disappointed at the intellectual vacuity of the recent crop of atheist authors. They draw a superficial, uninformed caricature of religious belief and then they bang holes in it. Any idiot can do that.

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And/or smug, superior, fascistic, simplistic, snotty. I wonder how soon religion will be illegal if atheists keep up their evangelistic movement. Maybe the vegans can join in and make normal food illegal at the same time. I'm not sure how the little political parties can make every party but theirs illegal, but pull off this big three, and all of you who are certain everyone unlike you is stupid can finally live in the comfort you're so certain you deserve. Would it be enough for everyone to just pretend to mirror your mindset? Would that be enough conformity for you? Is a "cornerstone of democracy" not being satisfied with plurality? It's hard to believe there are people who not only consider themselves smarter than everyone else, but at the same time think everyone else has to be just like them. Put a plug in it. I'm no more interested in this type of evangelism and superiority than I am in the religious right's mirror image that you seem to be so effectively imitating. I know, I know, none of us are allowed to describe what we observe in you thought police. That's one of the rules of the rigid.

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But I have more in common with the atheists than I do with the evangelicals. For one, I don't treat the gods as literal beings; to me, they're more in the nature of Jungian archetypes of human traits. For another, I try to maintain a mostly rational view of life; it may be tempting to lump NeoPagans along with flaky New Age crystal-huggers, but most of us are rather pragmatic.

The reason that I am not atheist is that I do feel that there is a spiritual component to my life that atheism excludes. I have experienced a few things that are beyond my ability to explain. But unlike the fundamentalist religionist, I simply pigeonhole these things into the slot labeled "supernatural" until a more rational explanation comes along. Furthermore, unlike the fundamentalist atheist, I acknowledge that pigeonhole instead of trying to convince myself that it doesn't exist.

By the way: shouldn't it be "closed-minded" instead of "close-minded"? (I think of "close-minded" as meaning keeping one's thoughts to one's self, not having a closed mind).

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I think this is a very well written article with all the facts. In reading the opening statements, I was about to prepare myself for an attack on the author, due to the sort of treatment I am used to getting, was pointed out but when I read on, I was very grateful for the corresponding statements that followed. thank you from an Atheist.

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Atheists go spread the word because they think they're right. Isn't that what EVERY religion does?
This article could have been retitled "Christians: Why we're right" and it would've sounded the same.

Just so you know what my background is, I have no religion.

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I agree with the premise that the explanation for origins given by mainstream Christianity is untenable if taken literally. I had to smile while reading as I got the impression that the same reaction to both atheism and religiosity occurred in those defending their positions.

I'm a recovered fundamentalist so I feel able to look at this with a little whimsy. I listened to an audio book recently by Richard Dawkins and felt him to be very 'religious' about the theory of evolution. Fundamentally so! That did turn me off even though I was in tune with what he was saying otherwise.

These distinctions are what the 'believer' possesses as a result of the very first programing of the individual by parents. That is what makes these beliefs so intrinsically a part of the individuals make-up. By challenging this core belief of an individual you threaten his whole understanding of reality which on a personal level is a portent of chaos. We, as individuals, have come to expect that our worldview works perfectly in explaining things, and when it is threatened our little world trembles.

A few years of silence in a Zen monastery would be helpful if this occurs.

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You guys can replace every instance of "atheist" and replace it with "Christian" and your article is valid. Waa waa, someone doesn't like the fact you believe in nothing.

Stop whining.

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I don't defend atheism. I just pour scorn on the Babylonian Sky God, which is what the Jewish, Christian and Muslim God is. I have no quarrel with mystical religion like the Quakers, or the Sufis. They don't make claims of omniscience. Most of the formal religions are rackets.

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Hatred is the natural way of responding to fear mongers. Hatred is the beginning of all thought and action. Republicans and other phonies use scare tactics. If you fall for them you will suffer from paranoia and megalomania - the payoffs of most formal religious life.

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...when discussing unproveable ideas.

There's nothing wrong with thinking that the likely scenario is a certain thing, but being all "I'm right, and you're wrong" never did anything good for anyone, and is NOT a cornerstone of democracy.

That's called closed-mindedness, actually. Being open-minded to possibilities is a much more realistic way to view the world, in my opinion. When you close yourself off to the possibility that you could be wrong, you do yourself a major disservice.

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stupid. Which is why know-it-alls from any religious persuasion or political party get right up my nose. This is why I do not repeat: "under god" when I say the pledge of allegiance. (It was added back in the 50s or 60s during some idiotic religious phase of our "do little or nothing" Congress.)My generation grew up perfectly well without saying that phrase--which excludes the atheist. I believe atheists have the right not to believe in any god. I believe Christians have the right to believe in whatever form of Christianity they believe in. I believe Muslims and Jews have the same right. But nobody has the right to force me to live under their dictates in the name of their religion or lack thereof. And too many crimes have been committed in the name of: "We're right, and this is how you've got to do it." I personally believe in a loving, caring being, neither male nor female called All That Is. I also believe there was a Jew called Joshua/Jesus whose philosophy was 180 degrees from Judaism (Christianity) I can't explain how such a "way of perfection" came out of a Jew's mouth 2,000 years ago, but if you read the New Testament carefully you will see that it is in opposition to nearly everything Judaic and would be "perfection." (unattainable for us humans though.) I do NOT believe that ATI is male or female but perhaps a little of both. I do not proselytize. I found my philosophy of life in the "Seth" books by Jane Roberts. It suits me fine and makes me feel that religion or the lack thereof is not important. Living a moral, ethical life is what's important. The golden rule applies to all: treat your neighbor the way you wish to be treated. In fact, you can measure the stature of a man/woman by the way they feel about their fellow humans. It's just good _logic_ to follow the "golden rule." That's as far as I go toward saying "I'm right." Because maybe I'm not. If I'm wrong--I'll take my lumps. If I'm right, then the universe is much better run than any man-made "god" would run it.

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The author repeatedly emphasizes that atheism is to be without a religion, or is opposition to religion.

This is wrong. It's not what the word means. Atheism is "disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods" or simply "Godlessness". There is no definition of atheism that means "being without a religion" or "opposition to religion".

For this reason, the article doesn't stand under scrutiny, and becomes a series of rhetorical flourishes on various ideas that don't pertain to atheism, such as the damage that religion is responsible for in the world.

It's this kind of "reasoning" that makes me no more consider myself to be an "atheist" than someone who "believes in God". Both involve a sense that there's a single word you can "attach" your ideology to - no different from attaching your ideology to the word "God" - and then making all kinds of rhetorical points based on that word. The points themselves may or may not be ones I agree with, but so often they have nothing to do with the word "God" - or here, the word "atheism". It's for this reason that I consider people who make a "point" to say that they "are" atheists to be no different from people who make a "point" to say they believe in "God".

This article skirts around this central point by getting the definition of atheism completely wrong. By never discussing what atheism actually is - a belief that there is no God - it's easy for the article to conflate "atheism" with resistance against religious intolerance. That's not what atheism is.

Dan Nissenbaum

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and while you may not like it people who have religion mean it.

If you belive atheism is correct then good for you. I say you have the same rules as everyone else. As long as you don't push your beliefs on everyone else and out of my life I'll stay out of yours.

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"Thinking you're right and trying to persuade other people you're right is not intolerant or close-minded -- it's a cornerstone of democracy." Exactly. Pluralism is the essence of American religious history by any thorough reading, the ranting universalist fundies are by far the exception. There is a roughly equal proportion of open engagement with ideas, or of narrow zealotry, in each area of American life, including religion, politics, academia, music, art, business. I am quite comfortable with people calling themselves "new atheists, or whatever they like, and advocating for a point of view. What are far less useful, whether practiced by atheists or religious people, are universalist notions of what is appropriate for human beings to believe. When atheists say: "religion is a mental illness," or "religious people are less evolved," (or other variations of these sentiments so easily found in posts here, and even in more clever ways in books and articles), they are doing damage both to their own argument (that humanism is a better foundation for ethical behavior than religious belief), and to progressive polity in the United States (by assisting in the long-standing, highly successful strategy of driving a wedge between religious and secular progressives begun by Nixon in the early 70's).

You may well be right about the universe. That does not mean that proving or your rightness about the universe is the most important thing you can do. I would apply this equally to religious people who believe that changing other people's minds is their job (weak theology, and bad tactics). What is much more important than either endeavour is justice and mercy and love. Are we capable of respecting each other long enough to accomplish some of that, as we were in eras past?

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For arguments to use see that chapter in the book
Our Almost Impossible Universe:
Why the laws of nature make the existence of humans extraordinarily unlikely
An exploration of the precise conditions required for the existence of humans in the universe. ... the author does an admirable job delineating the laws of physics without becoming too bogged down in complicated jargon, and he maintains a sense of wonder about the unique and random nature of the universe. He repeatedly celebrates our highly improbable achievements as a species, marveling at our ability to use the language of abstract mathematics to unravel the mysteries of existence. ... the prevailing tone of the narrative is clear and confident, marked by a meticulous attention to detail. A[n] ... often fascinating journey through the history of the universe and mankind. --- Kirkus Discoveries

Existence, of the universe, structure, life, intelligence, is unthinkable, really impossible. Incredibly, intriguingly, we are here. From the universe itself to humans, that we are, what we are, what we have accomplished, we find implausibility upon implausibility making us as reasoning beings (at least almost) unique in the universe, quite fortunate, but quite dangerous. SETI is nonsense. Reasons range from mathematically rigorous --- unavoidable --- to extremely strong to highly likely. These force the question: does the word God exist?

This discussion is aimed at all interested in not only science, but in the world in which we (strangely can and do) live, the laws of nature, in what humanity is and why. It has in addition much material of value to specialists, and because of its breadth and coherence, its attempts to provoke thought, it, besides being a popularization, should be an excellent text for courses in science for non-scientists and as a (perhaps necessary) supplement for science courses.

I. IS OUR UNIVERSE REALLY POSSIBLE?
Existence is the greatest mystery, not only that it is but that it can be. Conditions are too many, too strict, too conflicting. Outlandishly we are, yet that we are impose upon us the responsibilities of loneliness. Horrendously our most basic need is to hate, hurt and kill, to horribly misuse that awesome, and likely unique, gift of intelligence --- destroying, dishonoring, the most magnificent constituent of nature.
XII. DOES THE WORD GOD EXIST?
The vast implausibility, yet actuality, of nature and of humans seem to have implications. Can there be any? To study this we must consider not science, not religion, but language. That is definitive. Inability and refusal to accept reality, to accept what humans are and our place in nature, and our egomania, megalomania, helping to cause these, has led to vast evil. Science is rejected, since it shows that evolution leads to morality, and because people cannot tolerate the truth about reality, about themselves, causing great suffering, much abominations.
XII. DOES THE WORD GOD EXIST?
The vast implausibility, yet actuality, of nature and of humans seem to have implications. Can there be any? To study this we must consider not science, not religion, but language. That is definitive. Inability and refusal to accept reality, to accept what humans are and our place in nature, and our egomania, megalomania, helping to cause these, has led to vast evil. Science is rejected, since it shows that evolution leads to morality, and because people cannot tolerate the truth about reality, about themselves, causing great suffering, much abominations.

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We wouldn't even be having this discussion if religion wasn't rammed down our throats.

This theist/atheist conundrum is more blowback of the Cold War: The United States set itself up as the theist-free market-republic in opposition to the atheist-Marxist-dictatorships of the Soviet Union and China. Our domestic slide into theocracy began when the great deceiver Billy Graham was warmly received in both Republican and Democratic White Houses.

During the Cold War it was policy for the State Department and the CIA to back religious fundamentalists in emerging nations to thwart nascent nationalist moments. Our government surreptitiously backed the Muslim Brotherhood, the prototype Islamist political opposition group, to undermine Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser and his influence in the Non-Aligned Movement after the relationships between Egypt and the USSR warmed after the Suez Crisis.

And, of course, by now everyone should recall that it was unofficial US policy to supply the fundamentalist movement which became the Taliban in Afghanistan in order to give the old soviet Union its own Vietnam.

I won't even go into the religiously inspired lunacy which keeps the Israel-Palestinian pot boiling.

So religion, especially the three so-called "great" Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in my opinion has fucked up the the latter half of the Twentieth Century and the first decade of the Twenty-first worse than air and water pollution, nuclear weapons and Swine flu. I just wish it would go back to being a minor annoyance. I don't merely want to be tolerant of religion, I want to be indifferent to it. And I would hope that indifference would be reciprocal toward my atheism.

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We religious people get the same thing. "Believe in that stuff all you want, but don't tell me about it." I've always considered it about the most idiotic statement imaginable. If you believe something, whatever it is, why on earth shouldn't you tell others about it? The exchange of ideas is essential to all enlightened, civilized life. Only a complete knucklehead thinks he has a "right" never to hear of ideas that contradict his own. So by all means let atheists preach atheism. Why shouldn't they?

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rats ass one way or the other. If you believe, fine...if you don't believe...fine. Why can't we just go back to the 60's where life is beautiful all the time!

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"Because we're right." My stepdad was an atheist - and an alcoholic. Did that make him "right"?

Hardline atheism is as illogical as religious fundamentalism. Agnosticism, where we admit that we don't know and that we may never know, is the only honest approach to all matters metaphysical.

There are all kinds of people in the world and most of them don't go door-to-door to bludgeon you with their beliefs. The zealots of either stripe are the problem. Fanaticism and nihilism are two sides of the same coin.

Yes, public worship of the "approved deity" for personal gain is the sort of hypocrisy that the bible (small b) talks about. Yes, we are all entitled to our own belief. Yes, untold millions have died throughout history for their beliefs. Including - very recently - christians and buddhists in China and Tibet. Because the chinese government is officially atheist and officially, they are always "right".

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This is, supposedly, a scientific age. Advocacy of any belief, whether it is a presumed scientific belief, a religious belief or an antheist belief, remains an agenda - it reasons to a foregone conclusion. If I already have my "belief" and then construct an argument in favor of it, I am not really being scientific or rigorously making a logical argument. I am simply justifying a conclusion I've already arrived at.

This is not a search for the truth, but its opposite. If I search for the truth, I don't have a belief at all or a need to construct a justification for one.

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...Well, maybe not an old man with a white beard, but I do believe in something much larger that myself... call it what you will.

This God/No God arguement is tired and pointless. And as I read through the comments.. I find myself frightened... OF ATHEISTS! The intolerance that seeps through some of these comments is just as scary as anything James Dobson or John Hagee says.

Beware of those who are in sole possession of the truth.

My faith is one based on compassion, doing my best by my fellow human, and seeing the magic and wonder that is our world, and making this world a better place. Lakotas call it The Great Mystery. I would hate to live in the type of world that is devoid of that mystery and spirit. It seems as if that's the world that Ms. Christina would prefer. I could be wrong, please don't beliveve in God, that's fine with me, and many other spiritual people out there. We're fine with the disagreement. But remember that intolerance is intolerance, it's distasteful coming from Fred Phelps...or Richard Dawkins.

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...During the Seventh Crusade, led by St. Louis, Yves le Breton reported how he once encountered an old woman who wandered down the street with a dish full of fire in her right hand and a bowl full of water in her left hand. Asked why she carried the two bowls, she answered that with the fire she would burn up Paradise until nothing remained of it, and with the water she would put out the fires of Hell until nothing remained of them: "Because I want no one to do good in order to receive the reward of Paradise, or from fear of Hell; but solely out of love for God." Today, this properly Christian ethical stance survives mostly in atheism.

Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence....

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One of the large problems with this idea that atheists can unite under some "atheist banner" is that atheism is not a belief system. There's no real commonality beyond the lack of a particular sort of component to our belief systems.

The best "political strategy" to deal with discrimination against atheism is probably to align with minority religious groups and generalized secularists to promote secularism.

Another is that atheists have something to be right about. Again, since atheism is the lack of a particular sort of component to belief systems, there is no assertion to be right about. One could say it's possible to advocate against theistic belief with no particular alternative proposed belief system; however, there's still quite a bit of a shortfall in terms of something compelling to promote.

Perhaps developing atheistic belief systems so that there is something to subscribe to would address that, but perhaps there are structural difficulties devising such things which would attract substantial followings. It's also somewhat difficult to describe what the scope of such belief systems would be, since many of the traditional topics of religion such as cosmogony and theosophy would be irrelevant to it. I suspect they would be more like combinations of philosophy and ideology. Regardless, little or no progress has been made in this area, and it may not even be possible.

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"Thinking you're right and trying to persuade other people you're right is not intolerant or close-minded -- it's a cornerstone of democracy."

So, if we use this logic, then Christians, or Muslims, are being democratic by trying to convince other faiths or Atheist that they are right!

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An "ism" is a belief system and Atheists have no belief system in regards to theism other than to reject it.

My "atheism" amounts to this: I have no belief in deities. None of them. Not yours or his or hers.

I also have no belief in unicorns. Does that mean I'm an aunicornist and my religion is aunicornism? Well, only if one dilutes the meaning of the word "religion" to mean whatever fits one's agenda...go ahead be disingenuous and obfuscatory, it's your right and role as a human being to fully misunderstand and misrepresent anything that you oppose.

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it's a STORY about a time when wanton paganism was running amock. Out of this rape,pillage and plunder chaos, came a man who was a simple carpenter, who wanted a simple life. He beleived he should LOVE HIS FELLOW MAN/WOMAN and that truth and honesty and respect were a better way of life. Soon, he had a "following" of like minded HUMANS...a large following. Well, when the pharoh's (supreme leaders) caught wind of this. They saw it as a great TOOL to keep the masses controlled and sedate. That's when politics and religion jumped into bed with each other and it has been MUTATING ever since.
And really, if i go to hell for simply cussing...where do ALL those pedophile preists go?????
And how about those roman catholics....do what ever you want...steel, kill, comit fraud, cheat on your spouse, abuse children..what ever you want, then stroll into confession and share your indiscretions with a protected pedophile...and everything is HUNKY DORY.

by that process...any criminal should just admit that they are guilty...and they will be exonerated and forgiven....

i am an athiest....and i am RIGHT!
michele,canada

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People who can admit their disbelief are very brave. I am a coward in that I have agnostic views, but masquerade as a Christian due to family and friends and society.

I'd like to believe in a loving Christ, but the whole blood sacrifice for my sins thing just never was explained sufficiently for me. I don't see how a loving God could act like the one in the Old Testament and punish us for what he knew was going to happen anyways... And yes, I have heard all the explanations and they still do not appeal to my sense of logic.

"Oh we were like children, and God had to punish us to make us stronger and love him." Oh please.....

Just saying I believe in a divine creator is not enough, because without Jesus, I'm going to Hell.

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How many places on our planet are experiencing violence and war in the name of religion?

How peaceful our planet would be if it was occuppied entirely of secular humanists?

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Would there be any need for Atheism if there weren't any religions?

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was put in place for a reason. The problem with the premise of this article, though the author claims to be openminded to "evangelicals", is that in her overzealous atheistic heart she really feels that outlawing religion would be better for society and the world as a whole. When she equates her work as an atheist with other political activities that follow a particular paradigm of how the world could be a better place -- no war, no violence, free healthcare... oh... and no religion -- she seems to want to justify an act of persecution.

Religion is not the cause of world violence and other problems. Human inclination toward zealotry and domination is at the root. Embracing compassion, which has a shared space among the religious and the non-religious, would be a better approach than fighting religion.

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I see atheism as resistance to authority. The belief in an all powerfull deity is imposed on developing minds and the frame is built around any empirical observation of reality. The "will of god" is given as a reason for both past and future events as if we have no real control in the processes of our lives. This is very handy for the few people that are in charge of the commonwealth. When you are told, basically, that you exist by permission of some unseen force then you better shut up and obey the rules. Once the frame is constructed any experience of actual reality will be seen through that context. It is very difficult to step outside and see from a new perspective. Religion is the armour that is attached to you to protect you from awareness and a filter for viewing true reality. If humans were actually aware of their connection with the universe they would be impossible to control and exploit, fear and therefore anger,violence and greed could not exist and what kind of would would that be to live in? Atheism is just one step towards a free mind. A free mind can be made quiet enough so that the self can be felt. The jouney begins...

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Greta, if you have to keep hollering, "We're right," something already fails the sniff test.

Your statement that you can't prove you are right "100%" is probably your most honest and most telling.

In matters ontological and theological, no one can ultimately prove his or her position. The simple answer is, the question is bigger than any of our answers.

Persons of faith posit a power or consciousness beyond themselves. Atheists deny that power.

We will die not knowing the answer "100%" but I'll wager with Pascal (and what empirical data we have) and side with those who acknowledge (and worship) God.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you are. But there's a whole lot riding on the wager, and in the meantime, the transcendance of ego, greed, pain and hatred offered by faith is a wonderful freedom that anyone is free to accept.

Or reject.

Peace.

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One issue that the author makes, is how people refuse (or are unable) to put themselves in other people's shoes. The non-atheist having lived in a world that is 24/7 "godish", feels someone pointing out mildly that they are atheist as "constantly pushing atheism in their face."
In a world where the default is white, male, christian, heterosexual, moneyed, any experience outside of that is perceived as being confrontational.
You can't have a discussion about gender or sexuality without male heterosexuals asking why "you" are always talking about gender or sexuality. They do not even realize that every story, conversation, movie, tv show is a discussion about gender and sexuality.
Same with religion. No one says stop "always" talking about religion, when its 2 months of Christmas, or a holiday/sunday/gospel music, etc.
So thanks for a great article.

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"science": the identification and classification of "facts"

"Facts": the data derived from the use of the 'senses' (hearing, seeing, etc.). The experimental method is used to add to the data (called "facts"--not "truth": a philosophical term.
Note that 'philosophy' uses logic to speculatively propose definitions of 'truth'. It has only the use of reason as a relationship with science.)
Science's speculations are about the relationships of the various facts (usually these speculations are called theories).
Scientists recognize that a given theory will be abandoned or modified upon the discovery of new facts. Both facts and theories are understood to be tentative.
The descriptions in Genesis chapters one and two of facts and speculations about their origin is an example of scientific theories.
Those particular theories have been displaced by current theories because those in Genesis are thought to be inadequate.
[I think it would be wise to describe the Genesis theories ["creationism"] in courses on the history of science.

"Intelligent Design" is a modern term representing the "Argument from Design" anciently used to philosophically 'prove' the existence of "God".
It should be taught in a philosophy course. Its only connection to "Creationism" is in its use to demonstrate the authority of the Bible.
Note that 'creationism'is supported by those who are concerned only to protect a 'theological' (a subdivision of philosophy)[theology is not a synonym for 'religion'] theory about the accuracy and authority of the Bible.

'agnosticism': whether there is a 'supernatural' or not is 'unknowable' [not a synonym for 'ignorant']

'theism': the supernatural IS anthropomorphic.

'atheism': the supernatural is NOT anthropomorphic

NOTE: both terms are philosophical: not to be confused with scientific fact and not synonyms for 'religion'.

'religion': used of the systems of behavior,
organization [formal or informal] and belief which claim to have ultimate (supernatural)authority.

[Note: much of that to be found in many religious practices is 'magic' [a primitive form of science] (e.g.: petitionary prayer such as "Oh God, cure my cancer")

'atheism' is not a synonym for 'anti- or 'non- religious'

'non-believer' should be avoided unless accompanied by a description or label for that which is not believed.

A personal note: I define "God" as "that entity without which there would be nothing"

"Mores" (from clasical Latin "mos" ["custom"] and "Ethos" from classical Greek' are synonyms. Ethics and Morals describe what a particular culture of subculture calls acceptable behavior (and, of course) what is not acceptable. They are not necessarily related to any religion.

Personal note: I would strongly urge you to become acqainted with the work of Bishop John Shelby Spong

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Religion is The Curse of The Human Race.

But you can't convince people that God does not exist - because most People - throughout human history have Personal Experience of God / Spirituality / Altered States of Mind / Pure Goodness / The Most Amazing Joy / Series of Co-incidences that Cannot be Logically Explained / Just Being Happy / Apparent Telepathy / Out of Body Experiences / Pure Meditation to a Higher Plane / Working as a Team to Make The Almost Impossible Work / Apparent Miracles / Prayer Actually Working...

I could go on - and whilst all these experiences can be explained as Mental Illness/ The Manic Side of Manic Depression/ Schizophrenia / Psychosis / Delusion...

Its much more fun and healthy to believe in God. It also allows you to communicate much more easily with complete Nutters (spiritual People) like Born Again Christians - or Hindus who go off to a mountain to Mediatate for 8 weeks every couple of Years and People who do stuff like LSD and extremely strong Cannabis.

For example - why are literally Hundreds of Thousands / Probably Millions of People going to Music Festivals This Summer in the UK.

They can listen to all the Music at Home - and Watch it on TV

But they are doing it For The God experience - of Being a Part of The Live Experience.

Atheists meanwhile are too busy analysing and rationalising other people's God like experience - and laughing at the nutters having a good time sliding in the mud.

Give up being an atheist - and have a God time instead

Tony

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.

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Personally I dislike anyone who 'pushes' their specific belief system. In fact, I think if you have to 'push' or 'sell' your beliefs you are weak and unsure. How one treats others day to day speaks volumes to me.

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are the two roots of all evil. More wars have been fought over these matters than anything else I can think of. It's long past time for humanity to outgrow this need for some sort of "god", just as kids outgrow their belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

I am personally offended when anyone tries to "sell' me on some religious belief. It's an insult to my intelligence as far as I'm concerned. The minute someone comes up to me and says. "You ought to be in church!" (usually meaning THEIR church), I'm done with them. Don't tell me WHAT I should "believe" because it's none of your damned business!

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I believe Jesus exists, and was on the Earth.
I believe he was a pacifist. AND a socialist. And the original hippee :)
I believe the Bible has only one fault, it was written by humans! Imperfect beasts that we are...
I believe Athiests have as much right to their opinion as I do to mine, as Muslims and all others do to theirs.
I would love to attend church, but the hypocracy and smugness throughout the ones I attended over the years made me feel unwelcome and unaccepted because I didn't think just like the followers I met.
I try to live my life as close as I can to how Jesus told us to in the first 4 books of the new Testament; the poor, weak and ill were more important to him then any of the leaders, rich people or other higher ups in their society in his time on earth.

But what do I know? I am politically a Green Party member who loves to get into political discussions with hard core Republicans.

You learn more from listening than talking, but most heavily religious people rarely give themselves a chance to listen to and consider opposing opinions of others who don't think like they do, which is kinda like talking to yourself, isn't it?

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I’m appalled at the level ignorance and assumption on both sides of this argument. How can religionists or atheists ever expect to make compelling cases for their side of this issue without understanding at least the most basic facts about the foundations of religious belief and the reasons such beliefs were threaded into the fabric of early life? In fact, they would probably be appalled at how one simple little word--god--has generated so much divisiveness and misunderstanding in our era. The fact that nobody seems to be even in the right ballpark is why little headway will be made on this topic in our lifetimes.

Most very early indigenous belief systems understood reality (rightly or wrongly) as a homogenous unit with multitudinous aspects which were merely reflections of a singular truth. For example, the many Hindu gods we know today were originally considered to be aspects of man's fractured psyche, not physical, separately defined gods, and in fact those gods were not considered "real" at all in the way modern religionists think of god as an actual provable being. The closest thing one could say that would truly reflect mid-era Vedantic beliefs would be that they thought of reality as an unchanging energy that permeates the whole of the universe; that by virtue of the fact that all phenomenally manifested objects (in other words, all things that break through the barrier from energy to matter) are part and parcel of that one thing, and so all we see can be considered “god” (‘Tat tvam asi,’ Thou art that).

So is that an expression of religious belief? Is it a metaphysical construct? Or, if you read some of the first quantum physicists like Niels Bohr, is it just a more lyrical way of explaining how the universe works (the transformation of energy to matter)? Bohr wrote things in his early career about the nature of quantum reality that he was shocked to find had already been expressed, albeit somewhat differently, 3,000 years before him in India.

And again, many early indigenous peoples who worshipped rivers or rocks or trees as “gods” would be disgusted by an outsider’s interpretation in which it was assumed that they worshipped many distinct divine beings. They would have thought it patently absurd. They understood that when they worshipped a tree, they were in fact paying respect and homage to the mystery of creation and the spark of life that gave shape to the reality of the tree, not that there was some god inside that or any tree to which they could ask for divine guidance and from which they could expect an answer.

One can find countless books and essays that discuss religious belief systems not in terms of right or wrong, real or fake, reality or delusion, but as metaphors for helping man to understand his biology and his mind. And these aren’t books giving post-modern spins on religious belief systems, but instead they explain what the very people who developed these systems said about god and religion itself. The originators of most of these belief systems (yes, even early Gnostic Christians) understood their beliefs to be metaphors employed to help them understand themselves, not as literally being true.

In the end, it’s the overwhelmingly arrogant assumption of dogmatic religionists that they are right and the shrill reactionary bleating of atheists falling into the trap of discussing religion as real or not real (as opposed to it’s being an expression of metaphor helpful to man in his life, in which case the question of belief systems being “real” is rendered moot) that keeps this debate at the deplorably juvenile level we see it today. Given the kind of people both sides elevate as poster children for their causes, this isn’t going to change any time soon.

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I find each to be intolerant of the other and to only see the evil in the other, which is never hard to do when dealing in human behaviour. The only rational thing is to be is to be agnostic. IOW, to admit it is impossible to rationally make a case for or against the existence of some sort of other worldly supreme being. Otherwise it just boils down to pointing fingers at the flaws in each sides argument, which again isn't that hard to do, since neither viewpoint is entirely rational.
The other problem is that there are so many more important things to persuade people of than their views on religion, pro or con. There are people being oppressed, declining standards in our standard of life and well being and other problems that should concern us far more than this. I find the whole thing rather trivial and unimportant.

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is that this topic creates so much polarity? Is it because the commenters have invested such a huge part of their personality into something that carries a huge amount of doubt. We tend to defend that which we strongly believe but are ultimately unsure of it's truth. Everyone is terrified that they might be wrong , so we surround ourselves with like minds and if that doesn't quell the fear then we start recruiting. Of course some people get lucky when grace descends upon them with waves of inexplicable love and then want to sincerely share that new found joy. However, a problem arises when mental co opting of the experience occurs, fear returns and the wanting of company because of doubt and fear becomes the motivator for sharing.

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If Buddhism qualifies as a religion, then the linking of religion and god begs the question, for atheism does not disqualify a Buddhist from the doctrine. The Buddha held that the issue of delusion would affect a god as much as any person, a position that was in effect endorsed by Kant in Critique of Pure Reason.
God or no god is a common debate in Buddhist circles and neither side considers the other strident.

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Google "The Ganesha Milk Miracle". It was a world-wide phenomena.

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We were staying in a Very Rural Part of India - where there were very few Western Tourists

So we went walking and found a Man with a Tuk-Tuk

Hardly anyone spoke much English - but we asked if he could take us to see the local Temple

Instead he took us to see his home and introduced us to his wife and children and his brother - and showed us his little traditional machine where he made coir carpets - totally human driven and still working and functional and making carpets...

He then took us on a drive in his Tuk-Tuk (we were expecting 5 minutes)

Nearly an hour later - we arrived in the Middle of an Enormous Hindu Festival - where there were about 10,000 People.

We were the only white people there.

Both myself and my wife have long blonde hair and white skins.

We were walking round with the bloke who took us their and soon an enormous crowd was following us.

All the children wanted to shake our hands and talk to us. The women started passing their babies to us to Bless. There was absolutely no begging. It was just a giving thing. They didn't want anything from us - except to talk to us and touch us as if we were some form of Gods that had arrived from another planet.

It simply does not matter what you personally believe in.

Faced with that situation - we just had to play the roles we found ourselves in.

It was completely AMAZING.

It was like Being Rock Stars x 100

Neither of us can sing for Toffee - but we can't ignore the complete Loveliness of People in a very Remote Rural Village who have Nothing of Financial Value - But the True Love of Humanity

Tony

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Not that this is likely to be read 279 comments into the thread...

... but I did not put the phrase "Because We're Right" into the title of this piece. The title I gave this piece was simply, "Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism?" "Because We're Right" was added by AlterNet. I have asked them to change it, as it sets a tone for the piece that I absolutely did not intend.

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IF you are a religionist, answer these ancient questions first asked by Epicuris of Samos about 350 years before Jesus. If you reply that God has given man Free Will you will be asked to leave the room:

IF God is willing but not able to prevent evil in the world then he is not omnipotent.

IF God is able but not willing to prevent evil in the world then he is malevolent.

IF God is both able and willing to prevent evil in the world then from whence comes evil?

IF God is neither willing nor able able to prevent evil in the world, then why call him God?

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and both benefit from the encounter. Neither need defend their views if both are truly free.

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If you worship mallard ducks. Just keep your silliness away from me and stay out of my road. I'll do the same for you.

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I had one friend that was a bible thumper in school. All of the rest were atheists whether or not they were forced to attend church. In the intervening years since graduation(almost 25) even that person is a dyed in the wool atheist that plays guitar in a metal band. I don't know if we were just born smarter in the northwest or what but out of the 30 or so churches in this town only one is full on sunday.

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Hmm. Greta writes:

"But for many of us, religion is, above all else, a hypothesis about how the world works and why it is the way it is."

I doubt that is how many people who believe in God would define faith.

Certainly faith regards terrestrial experience. But it does so in light of the transcendent.

Do atheists believe in the transcendent?

If so, what is your hypothesis about how THAT works?

Because that is, principally, what most religions aim toward.

How "this" works is the better province of science and math.

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The last twenty years of his life's work were actually rendered worthless by his religious faith. His idea that "God does not play dice with the universe" caused him to reject the conclusions of both Shroedinger and Heisenberg that the microcosm was ruled by probability and actual energy states/positions of elementary particles were intrinsically incalculable. Which of course also means that the future of any larger complexity is also incalculable. This is backed up by modern chaos theory.

The only computer complex enough to work out an answer to the future is the universe itself, and it can only grind out one answer in real time of thousands of trillions of possible answers that are presented to it in every second. Nor is it even complex enough to remember where it has been a moment before, which is also intrinsically incalculable and if some hypothetical computer like the 'mind of god' existed that could remember then it would have to be orders of magnitude more complex than the universe itself, which would make creation a relatively trivial exercise that such a deity would hardly have bothered with.

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I am an Ancient Bloke Probably With a Walking Stick - Are Walking Sticks Allowed?

I Am Just Trying To Get Through The Gates

I am Not Allowed To Bring Any Camera Equipment

I am Not Allowed To Bring Any Food

I am Not Allowed To Bring Any Liquids

I am Just Allowed ONE Bottle of Water

I am just Trying to See Neil Young and The Fleet Foxes and The Pretenders

In Hyde Park

In Central London

Tony

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Proving the existence or non-existence of any God is impossible. A person's conscience should be their spiritual guide, that's why everyone has one. For those that ignore their conscience, "The Rules", that are written in "The Book", are not strong enough to reprogram that defunction. There are many serious, but resolvable issues within this global society. Religion is the obstacle much too often.

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It is a tragedy that fear-based religious doctrines, including the depiction of God as jealous, vengeful, and prone to violence, continue to stunt the spiritual growth of both believers and non-believers alike.

Atheists, however, should be advised that what they tell themselves will have much more impact on their lives than anything they will ever hear from someone else.

If, for instance, a person convinces himself that there is no God and no possibility of re-birth into God's Greater Kingdom, this thought process will install a set of subliminal instructions in the non-believer that will attempt to shut down his whole being at the termination of his mortal career.

By denying the existence of an "after life," the atheist effectively sets in motion a self-destructive internal program that, barring devine intervention, will cause the mind and soul of such a misguided individual to die simultaneously with his body.

"As a man believeth, so is he."

I would, therefore, encourage every atheist to, if nothing else, update his or her mental software to include the possibility of survival after death.

And I would counsel them to make a sincere request for God's guidance and deliverance from spiritual darkness. "Ask and it shall be given."

There is so much to gain if you simply ask for God's help, and absolutely everything to lose if you don't.

Blessed shall be the blind who pray for clear sight.

Paul Howard Nicholas
Natural Light Network

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They are afraid the word will get out there that atheists don't start wars by claiming "No one told me to." They don't hear ghostly, invisible voices in their heads telling THEM to kill, bomb, shoot, burn, torture, cheat, lie, cya. Nuff Said.

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There are several problems with this author's claims. First, the author equates belief in God with religion, as if Pat Robertson, Plato, Albert Schweitzer, Jesus and Einstein all represent badly mistaken people of the same "religion" because they believed in God.

Second, like most atheists, this author claims that belief in God (i.e., religion, in the view of this author) is harmful, while the author fails to point out that belief in science and education resulted in the Manhattan Project, the American, French and Russian revolutions, British, French, American, Soviet and other imperialism, atomic, nuclear, space-ray and God only knows what worse weaponry science and education will produce in the future, global pollution and global pharmecutical addiction.

Now, atheists are quick to point out this is not the fault of science, that science can be used for either good or harm, but they never do the same thing regarding belief in God. For example, this article fails to mention the billions of people who have helped other people because of their faith in God, nor does it mention the homeless people who have been helped, orphanages and hospitals that have been built and similar.

It is fair to conclude that neither belief in God or belief in science is bad unto itself. When it becomes a lie is when atheists pretend one is harmful and the other is "good", as the obvious EVIDENCE, a concept foreign to atheists in general, indicates that either religion or science can be used for harm or for good.

Quite obviously, this article is no more fair regarding the known evidence than the most conservative of religious fundamentalists.

Who Would Jesus Bomb?
www.FreedomTracks.com

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Religion is a medium. Getting mad at religion or having ideas against "religion" per se is like seeing NBC air a TV show you don't like and criticizing the idiot box itself over the network.

Religions are systems of media - they are not just some thing that you can point at and make a "good" or "bad" assessment of. You can make that of individual behaviors that (ab)use these media, but blaming the media themselves misses the point. Like so many other things, it lets people who do bad things off the hook if you're really so naïve as to think the media by which bad people justify and mutate (or don't justify and block) their actions are at fault instead of those people themselves.

And just to point it out to you - "evangelical" and "evangelize" are terms that mean to go around arguing and trying to spread the Gospel. Arguing your atheism is evangelical - you just wrote a whole blog defending that. Why then would you tie it up into the danger-language used against progress? It's an accurate assessment, and if you don't like that that's what you're doing, then by all means, stop blogging about it.

So give it a bone, please.

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If atheists did not speak out no one would know there are 14 million of us who are American citizens and object to the government using public funds to support theism. Atheists do not work to pass laws requiring the Humanist Manifesto be displayed in courts and schools and in public buildings, but much time and money is wasted by Christians to have crosses and the ten commandments in these common places. There is no atheist literature in hotels and motels to accompany the Bible. There is no program of tax support for atheist administered social services like the faith based initiative which also permits discrimination in employment and receipt of services. If Christians were allowed to establish public policy based on what they considered "moral" unopposed we would not have access to contraception, abortion. stem cell research, vacination against sexually transmitted disease, and other scientific and medical benefits. I would not have felt it necessary to write a book, [Decoding the Language of God], arguing that a scientific worldview and Christianity cannot be rationally reconciled if Francis Collins did not write a book [The Language of God] claiming that they can. People who are annoyed by the debate can opt out but the real world consequences will be felt like they are on people who opt out of the political debate.

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A good many people on this forum jump about from referencing country to country as suits their point of argument -- I'm glad to see you doing the opposite and illustrating what you personally know.

The US and the UK, while misleadingly similar in some areas (such as, having the same language...), have vast differences in others -- most notably, in that the UK has had a much longer time, historically and politically, to get through and over the storms and stresses of heterodox religion, sexuality, ethnic relations and other such issues of human life. Even with the ethically-troublesome CoE bond to the Crown and upper government levels, there's a good deal more open political tolerance for differing beliefs on your side of the pond than in the adolescently-extremist US, where true believers and true disbelievers alike tend to consider it their religious/antireligious duty to be as dismissive and unaccommodating of each other's side as possible.

There are definitely prejudices and enabled discriminations against atheists in the US -- and I think that they should be done away with, because they are unsubstantiated and intrinsically unfair. But for either side to prefer and anticipate the eradication of the other point of view does not support its own validity or desirability.

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rest of us.

As a Christian I naturally disagree with the overlying philosophical base of atheists, that there is no Creator God. But I defend their right to believe what they wish. That's in the Constitution.

One one point I even agree with them. I don't like religion either. Even the OT religion of Israel did not work. It was never intended to. The OT Law was intended to show us how inadequate we are to get our selves back to the garden, so to speak. It was intended to show us we need some one who could cleanse us from sin & introduce us to Heavenly Father.

I believe Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God. This is not a religious statement. Jesus did not come to start a new religion.In fact He set Israel's religion aside as He fulfilled it & fulfills it in & for us. He came to show us how we could have a relationship with Creator God. He came to give us the ability to walk with Heavenly Father, how to allow Him into our lives, the opportunity to meet Him for ourselves. As I see it, God no longer makes 'religious' demands. He does ask us to abide by the 10 commandments, which Christ summed up as love God fully & love your neighbor as yourself. He asks this of us not to keep us from having fun, but to protect us from the destructive power of sin. That is one power I know quite well. I sinned a lot.

I do know that when I prayed in '69, asking Christ to forgive my sin & come into my heart (innermost being), that something good happened in me. I was not made perfect, but I did know that for sure there is a God/Creator.
He put the witness of His reality in me.

I backslid from my baby relationship a couple of times. When I repented He forgave me & set me back on course. My former 'religion' in the 60's was sex, drugs & rock 'n roll. I still listen to old time rock as well as Christian music.

I even, as a citizen activist, advocate for the RE-legalization of MJ & hemp. But I no longer get drunk, have unmarried sex (can't wait for my honey moon next June :-D&) so on as listed in the NT. I like sex,a lot, but have learned the hard way to control myself.

I know by experience that God is real. That the claims of Christ are true. The Bible has a 100% accuracy rate regarding prophecy. On the day Jesus died He completed some 30 of them.

This is not meant as a slam against any one. I just want to share that the reason I follow Jesus & read the Bible is because it works! He is real! I do not HAVE to go to church on any given day. I do not have to believe every thing any preacher says. I am free to make up my own mind. Any church that says 'you gotta do every thing THIS WAY' should be left ASAP. I am free to read the Bible & pray when I want. His 'burden' is light...

I am not some kind of super saint, just a regular person who has experienced the love of God.

And I am free to use MJ for my back disease. Just because a bunch of liars made MJ & hemp illegal does NOT mean using it is a crime.

I know there are phony 'Christians' out there. But underneath the coverage they get there are many of us who do our best to live as Christ lived. He loved people, He helped them, He lifted up broken human spirits, like mine. I try to do the same. I try to live by "Neither do I condemn you. Go & sin no more".

SamFox

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An agnostic is a person who has doubt about whether god exists or not. A "mootist" does not have this doubt. Such doubt is contingent on the idea of religious faith and so is still hopelessly entangled in the language of religion. This is what I mean by incommensurable paradigms. In my world view, belief, non-belief, and doubt are irrelevant. We are here. It is now. This is it. There is no doubt.

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wish jews ,evangelists,episcopalians and white and black southern babtists would keep what they are to themselves as well,I wish moonies and hari -krishnas,jahovas witness's and those born-again freaks would stop trying to convert,I wish mormans and moslems would just give it up already!!....FAIRS-FAIR!

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for aptly stating my viewpoint exactly and much better than I ever could. I have saved this and thank you for perfectly reasonable thoughtfully written viewpoints I feel I can use as a basis for my own feelings about religion. And for a new book to read :)

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I can definitely understand why atheists are pissed off! Patriotic religiosity is the rule of the day in politics, and insufferable conservative Christians are trying to turn the country into a theocracy. If they can't "convert" the government, they're "hell-bent" on converting all of you. I can't stand those people, either, and I'm a Christian -- of the radical/progressive, black-lesbian-feminist-with-a-heavy-dose-of-paganism variety.

From what I've read in these discussions it seems that I (like God/dess?) probably don't exist, but I do. As many folks have responded, all Christians don't believe the standard dogma that's being described here. In fact, all religious/spiritual people are not what many of you seem to think we are!

That's the problem I have with the arguments I've been hearing from atheists lately. Of course it's fine for you to talk about atheism and express your experience. However (in your pent-up anger about being stifled for so long?) many of you seem to be saying that not only is institutionalized religion the veritable "root of all evil," but that anybody who claims to believe in God/dess -- or to have any kind of spiritual life, for that matter -- is a dangerous psychotic and a threat to society. Come now! I don't think that not being religious is a symptom of mental illness ... it's not even bad manners!

The other thing I find frustrating about discussing these issues with the progressive atheists I know is that so many people, while denouncing the lack of "science" and "facts" on the religious side, are utterly unaware of contemporary interpretations of Christianity (or any other faith). Sometimes I feel like I'm arguing with people's internalized Sunday School teachers, not the intelligent adults I know my friends to be ... well-informed on a wide range of subjects, but still citing some screwed-up version of 16th Century Calvinism that they can easily knock down with 18th Century Rationalism. That's just not adequate for a 21st Century understanding of spirituality and the impact of religion in the world we live in!

So please, let's talk! I will admit that I don't expect my mind to be changed based on this kind of debate, because I can't really see how any amount of intellectual analysis could convince me that I haven't personally experienced what I would call The Divine. Like if you were in love (an intangible, subjective state experienced by people of faith and atheists alike) with someone I found profoundly unattractive, could my careful, objective, critical deconstruction convince you that you were not in love? That's not how it works, is it?

Rather than belabor why I believe I have a relationship with something transcendent that you think is bunk, I'd like to find out just what it is that turns you on. What animates you? What gives you a smile that warms your heart? What gives you comfort? How do you tap into that strength that comes from deep inside you and from somewhere else less tired than you are, that keeps you going to that peace vigil even though there's little "evidence" to prove it makes a difference? Do you got soul???

If we could restart the conversation there, I think it'd be a lot more constructive. We might even find out we're not so different after all!

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Pete Stark

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Thank you, Greta, it's refreshing to read something written with intelligence and clarity.
My only complaint is that, like many atheist writers, you concede that the existence of God (or magic, or whatever other stupid thing) is only extremely improbable, and thus an irrational thing to believe or assume.
By definition, the supernatural is not "unlikely" but impossible, every bit as much as three-sided squares.
To be super-natural (above, or outside of nature), is to be outside of reality, and outside of the possible (literally, "outside of what is real").

As for the cosmological argument, there is of course, something that has the property of "self-existence" by it's nature, namely, existence.
Existence would have to exist before any god or fairy or anything else. It logically could never not exist.
Of course that doesn't explain every specific object that exists, but as you've pointed out, the "God of the gaps" is always shrinking.

If there was a powerful being that went around calling itself "God" it would:

1. still be bound by the laws of logic, and so, could not do the impossible, but only the possible (like everyone else).

2. not have created existence, but could only exist within it.

3. have no claim to arbitrarily define morality, which is based on life and it's natural values.

And so it's only reason left for being called "God" would be that it's name happened to be "God".

I cannot promise that there is no giant dinosaur at the bottom of the ocean, but I can promise that if there is, he doesn't have magic powers.

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Why not parade as an agnostic and support mother earth as a living being?

then at the very least you are subscribing to a cause that can really use the lift while supporting the cause of sustainability.

but I do agree with most atheists thoughts on the dangers of most organized religions

Especially religious wolves that will kill you for not following the herds beliefs mechanisms as is done in Afghanistan where people are sentenced to death for converting to Christianity... and other like minded places...

unfortunately most of these narrowed minded societies that I've found are followers of the Islamic faith and with extreme secular beliefs and little to no real education to support their belief systems... diversification and education should be embraced as it actually tend to enforce real religious substance and enforces a healthy vitality that individual faith brings to an individual.

forcing ones belief onto another like the Spanish Inquisition in this day and age just buggers my mind with questions like why, and why here?

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Someone is not a they.

And it's good to be intolerant, so shh.

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Go antitheist... A smart one can disvert anyone without backtalk.

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I do hope it gives a boost to every atheist to realize that each and every damn one of us is born an atheist. It is only after some con artist gets a hold on your young mind that you become acquainted with insane myths about sky kings and such. It's called indoctrination not education!
That's why all religions require some rite of passage where they name, dub, christen, baptize, or whatever they call it and without which you'd live perfectly normal lives.

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I'm trying not to take up too much space, since there are many who want to comment on this subject. Sorry it's hard to read.

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quite a while. I seldom comment on a persons religious beliefs because I am am agnostic, though some would describe be as an atheist. Frankly I just do not believe in any religion or gods that I have observed or read about. I do however oppose all efforts by any religion to impose their beliefs on me or any one else. It is dangerous to humanity I think when one group of believers decides that they should take over others and impose their religion on them. We have had enough of that.

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Atheism is a belief system just like all of the other religions.
And who ever heard a catholic, muslim or jew say that they think they are wrong.
Simple really.
They can not all be right, in fact it is plainly obvious that all but one must be wrong at least in areas of difference.

The best idea is to drop all the crap, grow up and take responsibility for your relationship with whatever or whomsoever is out there.

Wisegalah

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I am in favor of atheists having every right to state their views, and if they wish to try to persuade others to think the same, to do that as well.

However, a clear line must be drawn between "persuasion" and "imposition", between conviction and condescension: "You poor ignorant religious person, I the in-the-know atheist, am going to enlighten you" is just as bad as "You poor lost sinning godless soul, I, a godly person, have come to save you from hell".

Being, or saying you are, an atheist, does not automatically mean you are a critical thinker who is for open dialogue and respects other people's opinions. This is something that must be demonstrated.

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