The Atheist Blogger

Today’s article was written by Luis Dias, a blog subscriber.

Christians and other religious people often use the moral argument not only as evidence of a deity, but also as a philosophical weapon against atheism, and the argument, though never made explicit, implicitly goes as follows:

• God is the Creator of Morals
• Atheists deny existence of God, therefore
• The atheists’ utopia is an amoral society

They obviously cite Stalin and Pol Pot’s example to strengthen this idiocy. Further more, they say, without a divine reference, an infinite guardian of values of right and wrong, atheists are left dumbfounded and such a godless society eventually recedes to the stone age, and this is where they even bring the 2nd law of thermodynamics and equate it to the theology of the original sin (!)

Apart from the implicit circular reasoning of it which could be teleported to any kind of silly argument, like for instance:

• God is the Creator of milk
• Atheists deny the existence of God, therefore
• There’s nothing stopping “milk” of degenerating to a poison. (remember the 2nd law!!)
• Milk isn’t poison, therefore God exists, QED.

It’s a very popular fallacy. I’ll generalize it to make the mistake even clearer:

• God is the sole structure of all things
• Atheists deny the existence of God
• Absent the sole structure, the cosmos collapses instantly

This would only be true if, and only if, there wouldn’t be any other structure lying around unknown or just plainly ignored by theists that make sure that things don’t fall apart, but rather, thrive and evolve. In fact, there is nothing but hearsay to prove that God is indeed such structure.

In the fairy tale world, morals would exist apart from humans, eternally defined by God, and humans would only discover (not invent) a few bits about it from now and then because of God’s good will. Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever to the existence of these morals outside of human existence. It’s only perfectly reasonable to affirm that morals are man’s made, just like potatoes, lemons and cows are. The key word to all this is of course Evolution. There’s a reason why Dawkins is constantly evoking Darwin’s work as the most extraordinary idea ever made, and that’s because it works on almost every process that has time to generate new iterations and death to kill the bad ones. This is true in life’s evolution, it’s true on the artificial selection of the animals and vegetables that were evolved to fit our own tastes and biological needs, but it is also true in the ideas that mankind evolved.

Morality is among these ideas. The only ingredients you’ll ever need to generate morals are:

• A somewhat intelligent species
• Time
• Death

Natural Selection does the rest. It probably begins when people realize other people’s death and suffering and are able to understand that it isn’t exactly the kind of thing they desire for themselves. If they see a murder or a theft, they are able to think “what if it was against me?”, and the Golden Rule begins to generate and evolve by itself. People don’t kill because they recognize other’s as equals to them and don’t like the idea of being killed. Same as theft, treating others well, lying, etc. A society that foster these ideas thrives, the ones who don’t end up collapsing on their own.

Usually, people admire how well the world is aligned according to our needs, but the real reason isn’t obvious, due to our limited lifespan, which is that We live upon the shoulders of our ancestors’ hard work and struggle to build the structures of our world, and upon the failures of those seeking destruction, greed, and malice.

Natural Selection isn’t perfect and it won’t always choose the best option. It will choose what survives. No wonder then that irrational beliefs are just as common as the Golden Rule. One common trait is to define a certain “characteristic” of the perpetrator and generalize that people who share these characteristics are certainly just as bad, as in “The murderer killed because he was black, let’s get rid of blacks”. We can all recognize this racism, “This society suffers in the hands of the Jews”, or more subtle examples, as in “That for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”, from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The underlying message is clear, either you people bow down to God or you are eventually bound to become manic psychopaths.

Fortunately though, there is another idea that tries to really discern what’s better and what’s worse faster than Natural Selection or Religion will ever do. It’s called Reason. It dispenses with all the fairy tales and all the myths of our history. It fuels itself out of reality, to observe what is going on, to measure it, to hypothesize, test and conclude. It fuels itself from debate, battle of ideas, and a passion to discover the truth, humility and patience.

As a bonus, I leave you with other very interesting lines from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which I am sure will provoke a healthy discussion ;).

• “We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
• “Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”
• “Thus the Greeks of classical times were in moral questions influenced rather by non-religious conceptions such as that of aidos (natural shame) than by fear of the gods; while one great religious system, namely Buddhism, explicitly taught the entire independence of the moral code from any belief in God. To these arguments we reply, first: that the savages of today are not primitives, but degenerates. It is the merest superstition to suppose that these degraded races can enlighten us as to what were the beliefs of man in his primitive state. It is among civilized races, where man has developed normally, that we must seek for knowledge as to what is natural to man.”
• “that for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”
• “We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
• “Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”

There are a few reasons why I think the death penalty (thankfully banned in the UK) is wrong and ridiculous. Other than the obvious ironic nature of “killing a killer”, the fact that it goes against all human rights, and it being the cheap way out for governments, there is the problem of miscarriages of justice.

Let me put you in the picture. You have recently turned 40, you have no qualifications, and an estimated IQ of 75, putting you in the bottom 5% of the country. Additionally, you are suffering from mental and personality problems. You have an interest in guns and because of previous charges of stalking, you are classed as an eccentric.

The police arrest you for the murder of a TV personality, who worked for the BBC, an organization you worked for in the past, but at a low level. You are tried and wrongly convicted of shooting her once in the head, even thought the only piece of physical evidence is a tiny portion of gun residue in your coat pocket. You are sentenced to life imprisonment.

An unlikely verdict, but one that happened 8 years ago to Barry George, now 48, who was accused of murdering popular TV presenter Jill Dando. Instead of looking at the evidence, the prosecutors simply pointed the finger at George and built the case up to suit his character. He never pled guilty, and has always protested his innocence from jail. Even his ex-wife vouched for him, saying she was “certain” he could never kill someone.

Circumstantial evidence and a lousy police investigation robbed this man of 8 years of his life. It could have been more. If the death penalty had still been in place, he might have been executed, and he would have lost everything. People like Barry George need care, not prison. Yes, he was a “messed up” individual, but not one that plans and commits murder. The £1,000,000 compensation he will get from the government won’t make him forget the last 8 years, and Jill Dandos murderer is still out there.

Now, in most cases it takes more than a simple murder to get you the death penalty, but this entire trial proves, if anything, that anyone can get it wrong. There is no need to kill people for their crimes. It doesn’t make things better, and it isn’t a deterrant.

I stumbled on this cartoon from Wellington Grey .net and I think it’s hilarious…and true of course. (click to enlarge)

The Seven Deadly Sins of Religion:

1. Ignorance
2. Stagnation
3. Proselytism
4. Anhedonia
5. Blindness
6. Intransigence
7. Hypocrisy

Well known atheist author Christopher Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded by the U.S Military in an effort to see if it constituted as torture or not. Waterboarding is used in interrogation and is effective because it “simulates” drowning and forces a gag reflex on the victim. It involves having layers of towel placed over the head, and the entire body restrained. The towel is held down firmly and water poured over it, which seeps through and enters the nasal passages of the victim.

Christopher Hitchens described the entire experience in his article for Vanity Fair:

The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting collection of articles showing that:

• “Abstinence Only” doesn’t work.
• Christianity corrupts good morals unlike their claim that they created them.
• Too much religion is dangerous.
• Christian divorce rates are much higher than Atheist ones.
• 75% of born again Christians are regular liars.
• People’s lives aren’t transformed by Christianity.