The Atheist Blogger

A simple philosophy that is so mindbogglingly easy to follow, yet the religious seem to be up in arms about gay marriage, and they get worse every year. Somehow the religious seem to think that they came up with this great idea called “marriage” and that is has been violated by homosexuals. The truth, as it so often is in these cases, is completely the opposite.

Marriage predates verifiable recorded history, essentially a social extension of the mating procedure for reproduction. The Greeks and Romans had marriages, both opposite sex and same sex. There were no civil ceremonies, only an “agreement” for husband and wife, or husband and husband, wife and wife accordingly.

So what violated this traditional standard of marriage? Oh that’s right…it was the Christians.^[1] In 342, the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans banned same-sex marriage. In 390, three other Christian emperors, Valentinian II, Theodoisus, and Arcadius, made homosexual sex a crime punishable by death (burned alive because Christians are so merciful).

As I write this, religious fundamentalists across several different religions are rallying together to support a California proposal that effectively bans homosexual marriage. Marriage, they reckon, should be up to the religions, not the state. I ask, why can’t you have it both ways?

It would be simple. Define a state marriage that has all the perks of “regular” marriage, allowing anyone to marry anyone. Let the religions decide what they want to do about marriage within religion. There would be no difference in opinion either way. Religions would still reckon that state marriages weren’t governed by God, whilst the religious homosexuals forced to take a state marriage as their only option would argue that they were.

It has worked in the UK for the last few years, and there is no reason why it couldn’t work anywhere else. Secularisation is the only sufficient train of thought that respects the wishes of all groups. It calls for a separation of church and state. The state cannot control the church and the church cannot control the state. A very simple relationship that allows people to either align with one or both, depending on what they want to do.

So yes, let’s be traditionalists. Let’s take marriage back to its original status: An agreement between two people to be loyal and faithful to each other for the rest of their lives.

Ray Comfort tried very hard to show that atheists are unreasonable but inadvertently highlighted the same method Creationists use to try and disprove Evolution. Ray claimed that atheists simply do not like the idea of Hell and therefore do not believe in it. He then goes on to say that we use this kind of logic on God as well. We (apparently) don’t like the idea of God and so choose not to believe in it.

You could carry this further if you didn’t like gravity, history, the wind or love. Those things can’t be seen, and therefore wouldn’t exist if you didn’t believe in them either. Anything that you don’t like will not exist if you just say that you don’t believe in it.

Before I continue it should be stated quite clearly that the reason atheists do not believe in God or Hell has nothing to do with not liking either. In fact, my disbelief in Hell came as a direct consequence of my disbelief in God. I do not believe in God for multiple reasons, none of which are simply because I “don’t like the idea”.

Secondly, whilst Ray is quite correct that gravity, history, wind, and love cannot be seen (although given his past allusions about sight I have no idea how he came to this correct conclusion), he fails to mention that such things can be observed and tested based on their interactions with the rest of the universe. History is the one exception because it is simply the human expression for what has happened in the past, but this can too be observed by its affect on the present.

What is really striking is Ray’s last sentence. Anything that you don’t like will not exist if you just say that you don’t believe in it. Ray reckons this is exactly how atheists live their life. I wasn’t too concerned with his ridiculous argument though. I was more wrapped up in the obvious irony of such a statement.

As a Creationist, Ray Comfort subscribes to the same idiotic idea that he is trying to oppose above. Namely, that they do not like Evolution (it goes against the Bible) so they say they don’t believe it in, and they reckon that is a good enough argument to refute it. They don’t look at the evidence, and simply use the same arguments over and over, even though they have been refuted so many times by science.

The subject of existence, belief, and reality can be summed up very easily.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick

Angelpuriran recently posted a few questions in a comment to an old post about Questions for God.

Why you decided to become an atheist..? WHAT gives you benefits to become an atheist? does it makes sense? what if you died and you proved that there is hell, eternal death in hell and the only way to go to heaven is to believe to Jesus, what would you do? will you repent?

I don’t know if “decided” is the correct word to use. I would have said it was more that I “realised” I was an atheist. I did so because I saw that whilst I had believed in God and Jesus for many years, I didn’t have a valid reason for believing in them. There was no evidence for God existing apart from in a book which is claimed to have been inspired by him. Such circular evidence went against how I came to know reason. I also saw problems with the whole form of a God that created the universe, because it doesn’t answer the questions about what created God. Why did something so natural like the universe have to be created by a non-natural phenomenon, especially when there have never been any recorded supernatural phenominon in science.

I guess the major benefit to being an atheist is the freedom from the constant worries about death. I believe that when I die, that will be it. My mind will cease to function and I will become a non-concious entity. This is actually one of the hardest things to wrap your mind around, and I think it might be why some people have problems with atheism. Trying to imagine no life after death is akin to trying to think what “not thinking” would be like. It is a mental impossiblity to do because such an action is a contradiction of itself.

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A few weeks ago I debunked a Christian’s view of Evolution and started a poll to see what percentage of readers believed Evolution. I predicted that the vast majority of atheists would believe in Evolution, although some might not for various reasons. I also predicted that the majority of theists would believe in Evolution, although not quite as much as atheists.

The results pretty much matched my expectations.

• A total of 203 people have voted so far; 182 were atheists, 21 were theists.
• 94.6% of those people (192) believe in Evolution.
• 97.8% of atheists believe in Evolution.
• 66.7% (13) of theists also believe in Evolution.

It is good to see a healthy number of theists believing in (and presumably understanding) Evolution, but what I’d really like to research more is the number of atheists who do not believe. If you are such an atheist, please leave a comment outlining what you believe, or why you don’t believe Evolution.

Matt posted a comment on the poll

I actually don’t like to say I believe in evolution. I accept it.

I agree with Matt, saying “I believe” often seems to imply that it isn’t a fact and could be wrong. However every knowledge implies a belief, and likewise, everything we “accept” implies that we believe it as well. You cannot accept gravity without already believing that it exists, and the same goes for Evolution. I doubt the results of the poll would have differed anyway.

As reported earlier this week, 41 year old Brazilian Roman Catholic priest Adelir Antonio di Carli was confirmed dead after his ballooning attempt when badly wrong. The priest was trying to beat a record 19 hour flight, attached only to helium balloons. A day after he made an emergency call to say he was crashing into the ocean, a mass of balloons were found in shark infested water.

Now, the priest has been entered into the 2008 Darwin Awards for removing himself from the gene pool. The great thing is, since Roman Catholic priests enter vows of celibacy, he had already removed himself from the gene pool, resulting in the first “double Darwin” award.

A lesson should be learnt from all this. If you are attempting to do some kind of world record balloon trip, at least learn to use your GPS before you set off!