hello, my name is jeff.

i am a seventeen year old student living in illinois just outside of chicago.

i am currently working on a paper in school regarding atheism. i am an atheist. this is how i came upon your site. but i am not writing the paper for school. i am writing it for myself.

first i would like to say you have an excellent site...i enjoyed reading as much of it as i could before i was forced to sign off.

i would also like to say i enjoyed your text regarding youth, i find myself in the midst of most of what you talked about. but i also think you have lost contact with much of the feelings and creativities that youth often insipres you to, mainly being music. i do realize what you are saying; we shouldn't merely base our individuality on a coporate manufactured melody produced to generate profits. but i can assure you that not all teens are like that. i, for one, like what i like. i enjoy everything from beethoven and samuel barber, to oscar peterson and louie armstrong, to nine inch nails and korn. i don't define myself in a social click like preppy, or goth, or geek. i am what i am....and there are others like me. also, i would like to know your feelings regarding philosophy or existential philosophy in general. how, if anyway, does that fit in for you. and finally i would like to thank you for being an incredibly open minded person.

thank you very much

jeff

Wow,

Nobody has ever thanked me like before. I am quite moved by it.

This message has come at a perfect time. I have had a bloody awful day. I have had an argument with a kid of your age. He is a kid, I take people as I find them, most 17 year olds are kids, but I have met 17 year old men too. My faith in the new generation was at a very low ebb. Thank you for restoring it. One awkward thing about age differences is the unavoidable fact that I have known what it is like to be your age, you have no direct knowledge of being my age. It is so easy to put differences in understanding down to either poor memory or lack of experience. I have found that as I have grown older I have become aware of a whole fresh order of magnitude of my own ignorance. The me of now always seems to know the best. But the me of "now, 1980" didn't know as much as the me of "now 2000", not by a long way. Perhaps it is for a good survival/self respect reason that you always think you know now most of what you will ever know. Maybe. I can remember being a very arrogant teenager, always thinking I knew best. I now know I was wrong, I know it all now!

Music. When I first wrote the main youth advice page I had a very heavy downer on music. I have softened a little with age, that is, in the last couple of months. You never stop learning or re-evaluating. Or if you do that is the time to wheel in the euthanasia trolley. Anyway, music, it is powerful and can be a force for good in your life. But keep some perspective. Have you read my The Day the Music Died page? I would welcome some comments. It is a very hard piece for me to read objectively. It is very hard to read at all sometimes with a face full of tears. It is about my only true music hero and how I lost him, when the rest of the world found him. I never know who I cry for most. I have been deliberately cryptic about the contents of the page in this post, please read the page. music_died.htm

You claim to like Beethoven and Korn. As if they produced one unitary quality of work. Don't. Like what you like, whoever provides it, and if a song stinks admit it. I liked Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters, but I wouldn't listen to an album. I liked She's Got Issues and Why Don't you Get a Job but I hated Pretty Fly for a White Guy. I don't like any artist's whole catalogue. I know that it is shorthand to say that you like a particular artist but try to avoid it, say you like good music. I like a bit of everything from Aerosmith to ZZ Top, alphabetically. But only the good stuff, the singles, the catchy arias, the best rock anthems. Most music is not worth the effort of listening to.

Existentialism? I never got into it at all. I found at University that most people start from a political platform of what they would like to see done and work back from that to find basic principles. I don't want to eat meat > so I will be a vegetarian >so I will value all forms of life. Quite the opposite of what most people claim or think they believe. The Existentialists that I came across started out with the desire to appear intelligent without doing anything taxing, to watch art films, wear black clothes and smoke French cigarettes; this they work back to not believing in anything.

I start out with a basic desire to propose changes to everything I encounter. That predilection requires me to believe in what I see. I use see in the widest sense. I try to understand what makes things the way they are, including the motivation that people claim. I am particularly interested in the divergence between the apparent and true motivations of people.

It is simple. The way I look at the Universe and the way I want to interact with the Universe requires me to believe in a fundamental reality. Matter exists. We exist. Whether we are "entitled" to such conclusions is neither here nor there. Anyway, if you ever come across an avowed existentialist just steal their drink, and watch them behave as if you, they and the drink existed.

I don't have a totally open mind, but I do like to use it. I find absorbing information like an amoeba only works when you are safe in the relatively clear waters of academia. The wider meme-pool is far too polluted, you have to be careful about the ideas you allow in your head. Your teachers will tell you to have an open mind, it simply makes their job easier. But resist, filter everything, most of what you are fed is not harmful per se but nothing that you are fed is given to you simply for your own good. Everybody has an agenda. Mine is about wanting to appear clever to people like you, it helps my ego, makes me feel better about myself. Your teachers want you to know things, they want you to pass your courses, they want you to be a credit to them, they want you to consume the services of other teachers. That agenda is broadly consistent with your own, but not identical, be aware of the slight divergence.

I had planned to write something for my page tonight perhaps I have. This correspondence will probably appear. Keep checking back to see how the site grows, I'm worth a bookmark.

Too fucking cool. Looks good. You're pretty damned good with webpublishing and graphics.

Concerning The Matrix, I get the gist of it, and I think you're idea is nothing short of brilliant. I happen to have a disgusting amount of free time on my hands and only two websites to run, so I'd love to help as much as you need or want me to.

I happen to be a regular in a group of online AOL members who frequent the chatroom AOL-members-life "God Is A Myth." I also run the GIAM Regs (God Is A Myth regulars) official homepage so I know about 150 AOL heathens pretty personnally. About four of them that I can think of off the top of my head have VERY impressive amateur atheist sites, so I may be able to boost our numbers quickly and with good quality as well. Not that it would shock you, but they are generally much more articulate than I and use profanity and fecitiousness a hell of a lot less. Hehehehhee There are some of these guys who make me look flat out stupid. I am accustomed in my cop work environment to being the smartest fuck in the room by about 50 or so IQ points. (Poor bastards locked up are mostly mildly retarded and run IQ's in the room temperature area. I mean we have had little get togethers offline and I was the most uneducated schmuck in the room every damned time. I'll hunt them down and send them to you if you want me to. Sad thing is, the three most amazingly impressive heathens I know don't have websites. I think you've got a hell of a good concept going here and I'm ready to go with whatever I can do to help.

"The whole point of the web is to communicate. Man thinks in a way that does not have a language. Simply translating our thoughts into words loses more than half their meaning. I do not want to lose any more than that. The English language is the most powerful communication tool ever evolved, it will have to carry the burden of my message until something better comes along. " This is fucking beautiful. I don't know how many times I've told someone "a thought is pure. A verbal representation is just a pale representation of that thought, and a written presentation of the thought is often even more inacurate. Do we need any more proof of how antiquated language has become?"

"give me a convert any day. It would be a much more exciting dinner party with a Maoist from Arkansas and a Baptist from Beijing than vice versa. " I gotta tell ya, I haven't had time to read your whole site yet, but the parts I have read are really impressive. Sounds like you think about 99% the same way I do. You know the old saying "The truest measure of someone's intellect is how much they agree with you." Hehehehehe

I'm sorry that I've rattled on in such a prolonged letter, but I am sufficiently intoxicated and I am really enjoying your website. Your ideas are very familiar to me, and that is shockingly comforting. It's always nice to know that you're not the only one out there who has your points of view.

Great Australia quote that I can't remember the origin of:

"England sent you blokes the Puritans, and we got the convicts. We feel awfully sorry for you, mate."

Hi,

I have enjoyed what little I have read of your internet site it is colorful easy to use and virtually seamless. I'm sure over the next few weeks at work I shall continue to "Peruse the Views". I was born into a Christian ethic much the same as you. Church every sunday from the age of five( also in the choir, later). But by the time I was about 13 I began to see the hypocrisy that lines it's foundation. Personally I am neither atheist or God fearing. the closest you could call me would be to say I was Pantheist but even that doesn't cover it. What is it you don't believe in? God (...if he exists or doesn't...)is not a man and did not make man in his guise. God flows through everything. Thats why you may not see him forming glaciers. God is energy. His names are limitless as are his forms. There is no such thing as Pure Evil if there is a god, being omniscent he (for lack of a better word)would be pure evil. therfore if there is a devil he is in service of god. I think it's more likely that we are in a proverbial hell defined by pain and suffering (although not all the time...I'm not a pessimist)and that we are the "playthings", with a certain degree of autonomy, of something we can't and won't ever realise. Anyway.... I tend to ramble...

Yours FAITHfully!!! P.

Thanks for the visit and the feedback about my site. I try to please. I don't agree with your ideas of spirits moving through things. It is all there on my site, I think. Why can't you just admire the garden, without believing there are fairies at the bottom of it?

If you fancy a debate on anything I have given you a lot to respond to. I am not doing this like a shock-jock, I don't come out with stuff just to start a debate but I do try to give the visitor something to shout at the screen at if I can without prostituting myself with deliberately provocative views. So if you fancy a debate I have set out my stall.

> Quote from Martin Willett...

> > "I never use the word creature when I can help it, that word implies a creator"

Excellent! I shall remember this, and pass it on...

Is this a Meme? :) Dr AC

As far as I know this is original. I have lots of original thoughts, some of them are good. That one is one of my best, if it is mine.

I suppose that now it has been copied it is a meme. I am fairly confident that I put something about not using CREATURE on my website a few months ago, although I cannot remember which page it was on. It is such a twee word isn't it? What could we put in its place? Evolute? No, that is terrible. I will just stick to accurate terms like animal.

I just came across your site (via The War Against Faith and then the Meme Machine), and so far ("Atheist Sects"), so good. But I wonder why you "respect the truly religious, and disagree with them." What does "truly religious" mean? Believers in supernaturalism are weak-minded, at best; and anyone who claims to know what God (the great mystery and self-concealer) wants is a blasphemer. Why do you respect them? Or do you mean, pretend to respect them while arguing with them?

I suppose what I mean is that I respect that they are true believers, and I respect their right to have such beliefs. Naturally I think they are wrong. Belief in God is respectable to me, belief in Satanism is not, because I cannot believe that they truly believe it. That is a real distinction between a respectable religion and pure bullshit.

I know that all supernatural explanations are wrong. You could say that was a belief or a faith. Really the distinction between something you believe in and are prepared to defend and things you are prepared to yield to better evidence and things that you will never yield regardless of any evidence is the measure of faith. I believe that Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. If you tell me that actually another city is bigger I could change my mind in an instant, I believe it but I don't have faith in it. I believe there is no God. If you simply tell me otherwise I will not yield. If you show me that there is a God in a way that I can understand I would change my mind. My atheism is a strong belief but it is still open to disproof.

Belief is not simply on or off, black or white. I believe that there is no God, there could be no God. To prove otherwise to me would require more than a magic trick, but a really big miracle would change my mind, say, resurrecting all four of my grandparents bodily in front of me and them reminding me of something I had forgotten but could then recall, something of that scale would make me believe. But not a weeping statue or the indistinct shape of letters in a slice of tomato.

That was a bit of a tangent, anyway, I do respect many religious people. My wife is a Christian, most of my family is. I respect their beliefs, but the Satanists and their ilk don't generate any feelings of respect. I detest their silly views and their posturing. If I had the power to end all unfounded beliefs I would use it. But there is no way to do it that I know of. But I'm still looking...

1. We're talking about something in principle that cannot be known. There seems to be an obvious problem with attempting to prove, much less even talk about, a being which by the theists' own admission is unknowable. How can you talk about, conceptualize, or demonstrate, the existence of such a thing? It is, in principle, impossible. This, basically, is why all of the alleged proofs must ultimately fail. There is one passage from the famous eighteenth century materialist and atheist Baron D'Holbach that is quite good in this regard.

After noting that theology has "for its object only incomprehensible things," D'Holbach argues that "it is a continual insult to human reason." He continues as follows: "No religious system can be founded otherwise than upon the nature of God and of man and upon the relations they bear to each other. But in order to judge of the reality of these relations, we must have some idea of the divine nature. But everybody tells us that the essence of God is incomprehensible to man. At the same time, they do not hesitate to assign attributes to this incomprehensible god and assure us that man cannot dispense with the knowledge of this god, so impossible to conceive of. The most important thing for man is that which is the most impossible for him to comprehend. If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of him at all. But religion concludes that man is criminal if he ceases for a moment to revere Him." D'Holbach concludes, quite well I may add, that "religion is the art of occupying limited minds with that which it is impossible to conceive or to comprehend." You simply cannot intelligibly discuss, much less prove, the existence of an unknowable creature. It's philosophical nonsense. The concept itself is meaningless. [Sorry, I don't know where this whole passage came from.]

2. "When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect."¯Sigmund Freud, "The Future of an Illusion," 1927

3. "I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods you will understand why I dismiss yours."¯Stephen F. Roberts.

Thanks for your prompt reply¯what a nice surprise. My problem with respecting believers' faith is that while I'm being polite and agreeable I'm thinking, What a moron. New Agers are fruitcakes, too, but who's worse, Christians or Muslims? Intolerance is built in to these monotheistic doctrines; the faithful know they're right and everyone else is wrong (and for eternity, no less); and when they can't explain suffering and evil (theodicy: God + idiocy), they fall back on His Mysterious Ways. People who'd believe this would believe anything. It must feel great to have a powerful invisible friend who takes a personal interest in you, but the capricious, unfeeling gods of the Ancient Greeks make more sense.

I respect people who try to be good, but not for believing.

Even to myself, I sound like a crank, but it's hard to just leave it be when the whole country's on a piety kick.

I don't understand how obviously bright people can believe in such transparent crap. I do give grudging outward respect to the genuinely religious but really I cannot understand how they can believe such stuff. The brighter they are the more annoyed I get with them. I can understand a lot of ordinary people being taken in by religion but when people who are obviously bright and well educated fall for it I despair.

Understanding why it is all nonsense is not hard. I had grasped it all unaided by the age of 12, including the idea of evolution and the nature of consciousness being an illusion running on the hardware of the brain. I KNEW this at the age of 12. Since then all I have done is fill in the gaps. I have learned how evolution works. I have learned how and why religions spread. I have learned how man has gained in civilization and has come to believe what he believes. But still the mystery remains; how can people as bright as me, or brighter, fall for this religious and spiritual stuff?

The eternal mysteries -sigh-

[To Martin Burn, The English Atheist]

I think I understand your motivation to ridicule Christians. It is a manifestation of what I call The Screwdriver Principle.

When faced with a problem that has no obvious solution people will always pick up whatever tool they enjoy using and have a crack at it with that. You and I enjoy publishing, so we publish, you enjoy satire and music, so you use them. Other people faced with a problem would use their favourite strategy: terrorism, fund raising by doing their own thing (e.g. Live Aid) hooliganism; getting drunk; ignoring it and watching Neighbours; whatever. So what if it doesn't work, you're busy and you feel like you are doing something (unless you're watching Neighbours).

I fear that simply doing our thing will not be enough. Science proved the Earth moved around the Sun. The church still thrived. Science proved the Earth was ancient beyond previous imagining, the Church took it on board. Science proved that man evolved, the Church has accepted it. There is nowhere for the God of the Gaps to be hiding. Nowhere meaningful. We can explain the existence of the Universe and the origin of our species and still the bloody Church can adjust and emerge as strong as ever. What else can we do to disprove God?

The next stage is to prove that the brain is the seat of all consciousness, all thoughts and the seat of our personality. But that will not shake the Church either. It won't shake it here on Earth or anywhere else. Religion is unstoppable. Faith will conquer all. I am not sure what we could do to defeat it so I'll pick up my screwdriver and write my website.

Possibilities:-

1] Persecution. It hasn't had a good record, to say the least.

2] Logic. It is like hammering a puddle, they always reform their argument.

3] Ridicule. I suppose it doesn't do any harm...

4] Combination strategy. This is probably the best way, no persecution as such, that makes them stronger, but take away their privileges and level the playing field. Demand atheist Thoughts for the day on Radio Four at least twice a week. Repeal all discriminatory acts in favour or against them, end blasphemy laws, repeal the no-Catholic succession, kick the bishops out of the Lords, end prayers in Parliament(s) and schools. End state support of Church schools. End charitable status and tax exemptions for churches and missionaries. Throw bibles out of courts. Institute an end to discrimination on the grounds of religion, or none, in work. Get nurses to throw priests out of hospitals with as much vigour as they do to the police and journalists.

 

I appreciate your taking the time to read the items on my site. Am I sure religion screwed me up? By the way, I added more to the story at about 2:00 this morning our time. I don't know if what you read included that addition. I mentioned at the beginning of the piece that I am skeptical about my own ability to recall and recognize my own motivations. Those events were a long time ago, and I had much less capacity for understanding what was happening to me then than now. Every memory is, in part, a creative reconstruction. I realize that. Also, I mentioned that I think my brain was hard wired for being scared and sad. My reasons for thinking that become more apparent in the second installment. When I got into my mid-twenties I developed a full blown anxiety disorder with social phobias, panic attacks, the works. So, my guess is that if I had gone to a public school (I think you call "public" schools what we call "private" schools) instead of a private parochial school, I may have found something else to get stomach aches about. The stomach aches were real enough. Were they as bad as I remember them? Hell, I don't know. I suppose if I had the same stomach ache right now I would not consider it to be quite so debilitating. I certainly was looking for any excuse I could use to get a day off from school. But, as I indicated, my experience in kindergaten was OK. I was shy. I found it difficult to make connections with other students and develop friendships. But I didn't get stomach aches. I didn't hate school. I didn't have a problem with absenteeism. That all started in parochial school. I do think that Roman Catholicism, and the way I was taught it, made me feel sick. But it wasn't *just* the Catholicism. It was the Catholicism *and* me together. In the second grade, for instance, Sister Gualbert told us that we should always carry around our rosary beads, because we never knew when we might die. Apparently, there is some advantage to dying while in posession of one's rosary beads. Imagine telling shit like that to seven year olds! I remeber sitting on my bed one Saturday morning, refusing to move and crying to my mother that I didn't want to die. At seven!! My younger sister, who had the same indoctrination, but who has a different temperament, just never quite took it so seriously. Of course she believed it, like any little kid would, but she never bought into it like I did, and it didn't intimidate her. She agrees with me now, more or less, that it was lies and bullshit, but she is not angry and resentful about it. I, on the other hand, feel terribly ripped off.

Move ahead to high school. If I had been raised an atheist I would still have had the problems adjusting socially to high school. And in 1971 I would not have thought that being gay was any great thing. By I was horrified by the realization that I was gay, and the fear of disclosure exacerbated my inherent difficulties with shyness and social akwardness. And my horror at realizing I was gay was exacerbated by my religious upbringing. If the story as I am writing it givies the impression that I think life would have been smooth and easy for me in those years were it not for Roman Catholicism, then I need to rewrite it. But I do think that having been raised a Roman Catholic made matters worse. It sounds from what I have read on your website that in some respects you were more like my sister. You just didn't quite buy it. You went along with it, did what was expected of you, but it just didn't take. It seems that there are more than a few atheists on the web who, like me, feel damaged by religion. (I wonder if there is a cultural factor -- American atheists feeling damaged by religion, with European atheists just finding the thing unbelievable. After all, the great and mighty USA is a coutnry where we still debate whether evolution should be taught in public high schools. Now, that's fucking unbelievable!) For religionists who refuse to think carefully, we are the evidence that atheism is an emotional reaction against religion rather than an honest intellectual rejection of it. A story like yours provides some balance to a story like mine. If you had been sodomized by a priest then you could be dismissed as just more damaged goods-- a victim of the fact that the dear Christians "aren't perfect, just forgiven."

I have often thought about Catholic upbringing and speculted what would have happened to me, no firm conclusions. I have to admit that I hate Catholicism a little too much. Nuns in particular. Whoever invented nuns started something big. Women are far more fanatical. When the SAS are training they are told whenever they storm a into a hostage situation that should always shoot the female terrorists first. The women are far more likely to kill the hostages and the men are likely to surrender when they see the women shot. It won't do them any good, the SAS do not arrest terrorists, the handcuffs they carry are for the hostages.

If it ever comes to armed aggression between the Catholics and us, remember, SHOOT THE NUNS FIRST. [Note to GCHQ, MI5 and CIA: this is humour]

Keep up the good work

Some time ago, T-shirts appeared with a quote from someone, I forget who, that said something like, "First, shoot all the lawyers." I think you have hit upon a goldmine - atheist T-shirts that read, "First, shoot all the nuns." :) And if the CIA is reading my e-mail - go fuck yourself. (But I am just joking, too, about shooting nuns.)

Martin, I must say you slay me man, you just slay me... This is the first website I've come across where I can at once laugh my ass off and be shocked into a new paradigm!!! Amazing work!! You should really consider writting a book and getting it published!

I myself wish I could be as adamant an Atheist as yourself. I've tried believe me I've tried but the memeset has a strong, pernicious hold on me it seems. I seem to be stuck in a sesspool of Duality screaming to get out....but....its not always that easy for everyone. Some are in it much deeper than others. But, hey, I'm working on it. And with writers like you and Dawkins, I'm getting a strong handed boost. ( I'm refering to the idea of 'God' in general, less Religion.... Religions I find preety easy to fend off. But God....thats a whole different ballgame. No, I'm not American) Anyhow, thanks for the great contribution to inspiring thought. Will visit often. I also keep an eye on the posts at the memetics Newsgroup... keep up the good work.

SD PS.: loved your thoughts on Alien Religion, and responses... :-)

Thank you very much for the compliments. I am not sure which I appreciated most, probably being included in the same sentence as Dawkins.

I am very committed to the concept of the free amateur internet. I don't want to feel to restrained in what I write. If I was trying to write a book I would have to make a lot more compromises and be a lot more disciplined. I do this for fun. I want to change people's ideas and plant new ideas in fertile minds. I am certain that I will never find a fully worked out philosophy or strategy for making the world a better place but I have the arrogance to believe that I hold more of the key pieces of the jigsaw than most people so I want to attract in others who hold some of the same pieces and hope that eventually somebody will get a full set. That was rather a long sentence and rather self-important but it is a reasonable summing up of my motives.

Ideally I would use search engine listings and newsgroup postings to attract in people interested in one strand, such as atheism, politics or memetics who will start to read the bits of direct interest and then they might go elsewhere within the site to pick up new ideas. But in other ways I just love to publish and the web is the purest and simplest way to do it. It works across boundaries of nation and time. People are responding to stuff I wrote last year and last week, and they are doing it from different countries.

As for your beliefs in God just continue the course of treatment. This is a particularly nasty virus that resists your own natural defences, it can lay dormant in your system waiting for a time of stress when it can flare up again. The attacks can be mild or severe in different patients, in some they can be disabling. It is contagious so if you do experience a flare up please keep it to yourself. Reason, taken as a preventative measure can be useful. Some patients also benefit from positive imaging, just imagine your body's own defence mechanisms (logic and reason) fighting back against the virus. If the symptoms persist come back for extra medication. Massive does of satire have been known to be efficacious.

I'd like to thank you for sharing your views with me. I'm only a teenager, but I've been fluctuated between being an agnostic and being atheist for some time now. I've been charged with asking too many questions and not having enough faith. I don't agree with this, and I assume you do not, either. Once again, thank you for providing me with another resource to satiate my inquiring mind.

Thank you for the acknowledgement. I love receiving messages like this. As long as they are good questions that have potentially enlightening answers I cannot see how anybody could ever ask too many questions.

Think about the fundamental differences between us and other animals. We are not unique in posture, language or tool use, but we are the only animal that asks questions. Keep questioning, keep thinking. Enjoy learning. But be aware that not every question has a worthwhile answer and not every insight is equal. Also try to work out why everybody does what they do, be aware of their different agenda, nobody wants what is best for you just because it is best for you. (Probably including you).

My agenda is clear; I have given up on changing the world directly but I want to do it by proxy, by inspiring others. That is why I enjoyed your e mail so much.

Hi, my name is Ted and I am a 14 year old 8th grade student from Connecticut. My entire family are Christians and my two sisters were recently confirmed. I am on my studies to get confirmed as well.

For a couple months now I have been questioning gods existence and feel that it is a load of crap. God did not create man, man created god. I have confronted my father with my beliefs but have been returned with nothing but words trying to convince me to be a Christian. I feel like I am a loner in my beliefs and have nobody to talk to. I feel that if I turn towards being an atheist then I will be "bad" some how. I need advice. I don't know what to do. Is it wrong not to believe in god? Will I be a bad person? I have come across your web page and I hope that you could please give me some advice because I don't have anyone else to talk to about this.

I have visited your state, but before you were born. I suddenly feel very, very old.

I went to help out the Democrats in the 1984 election. I stayed in New Britain and Hartford. I was obviously there at the best time of year, the countryside in Connecticut is beautiful. The English countryside is good, but you have far more trees. I aim to go back one day (to visit) and take my family, but not until I have a lot more money. Connecticut is no place to be poor.

To the main point of your posting. Hypocrisy is bad. If you can see through religion and see that there is no God then to be a Christian is a sin. A humanist sin, a sin against yourself. If you have read my site you will know that I have been an atheist for a long time, in some senses I have always been an atheist. You are very young. Too young to be making complete lifelong commitments about your beliefs. Don't try to force the issue. Being an atheist in a family of Christians is like being gay, you have to decide when to "come out." If you do not feel ready to do this irrevocably then don't.

The problem you seem to have is that you are about to be confirmed as a Christian. I was confirmed. At the time of confirmation I had brought myself around to belief. I was confirmed very young, I must have been about 11, maybe even 10. I went through the training, the brainwashing, the self delusion therapy sessions. They worked. But within a few months I switched and I never looked back.

I suggest that you talk this out with your parents. Show them this e mail. Show them some of the websites you have looked up. They should respect your views. Atheism is not evil. Atheists can be every bit as moral as any religious people. I have a faithful marriage, I don't steal, I am the most honest man I know.

There are lots of atheists who give atheism a bad name. But remember the crusades, the Inquisition, the witch burnings, the heretic burnings and all the conflicts that still grumble on today in the name of religion in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and "The Holy Land". A belief in a god is one thing, a healthy personal morality is another, they are quite separable.

I suggest that the best way forward for you is to postpone a formal decision. To be a full church member as an adult may require confirmation , I don't know the rules of your church, but you are not an adult. Neither are you the property of your parents. If you are feeling that you are an atheist you probably are an atheist. Ask your parents if your church wants hypocrites as members. If you are an atheist and pretend that you believe in God then you are committing a sin in the Christian framework of morality. I also think that to be confirmed when you are at the very least in doubt would be wrong.

Ask your family to give you the time and space you need to develop your own beliefs. I suggest that they should agree to let you cease all indoctrination, confirmation preparations and compulsory church attendance. In return you should respect their views and keep your atheism discrete. Associating atheism with "teenage rebellion" does no good for atheists or Christians.

In the next five or six years you will probably get your views fixed one way or the other. You are too young to force the issue now. If you tried to force yourself to believe against your better judgement you might later react strongly against Christianity. The internet is littered with sites that are rabidly anti-Christian, these are usually the later converts. I am a cool atheist. My parents knew that I was bright enough to know my own mind. They didn't fight my atheism. I didn't escalate the fight. I have never spat on a cross or anything as childish as that. I am an atheist; my wife, mother, father and sister are all Christians. There is no conflict. They believe one thing, I believe another. They sometimes go to church, I often write about atheism. We are all good people, we all sometimes do things that are wrong, there is little link between belief and behaviour.

Tell your parents that you want to be true to yourself. I hope they do the right thing, give you the space to grow and be yourself. The prodigal son will always be welcome home at the church. You don't need to shout that you are an atheist from the hilltops, just withdraw, with respect. Religious freedom is a constitutional right for you. Withdraw from the church, shake hands with your preacher and make your own way in the world.

Becoming a man is a many stage process, taking responsibility for your beliefs is one stage. To stand up in church and lie in front of your family and community is not the action of a man.

Martin

Hello Martin,

Found your website (Via Yahoo search on Richard Dawkins) interesting and original - I've just read your "taboo " piece. I do disagree with the following; "there is no mechanism in place that limits the use of oil in the light of known reserves..." "suddenly, probably in the space of a year or two, the world will realize that all the wells will run dry at once..." -

If I have a barrel of oil to sell, the factors affecting it's price include not just "How much is a similar barrel available for?"- But Also, crucially "How much is its value likely to increase/ decrease in future?" (Question B very much influences The answer to Question A anyway). - The price of oil constantly fluctuates, and actually decreases when a large deposit is found. - so the price is highly influenced by future availibility, which we can estimate (at least crudely)- As oil gradually becomes more scarce, the price will gradually increase - So we will gradually be weaned off larger cars to smaller cars/ buses and other energy sources - It seems unlikely that "all the wells will run dry at once...".

From the views on your website, I would imagine that P.J. O'Rourke is anathema to you, but he has written an interesting piece on this topic, (I think in "Eat the Rich") comparing the long-predicted oil crisis to the panic in the 19th century over the future shortage of Whale oil for lighting homes - The point being that when a thing becomes too expensive, or something better is developed, we will use something else. Of course, the market as such doesn't (yet) take any account of the cost of pollution etc. from oil in determing price...

Anyway, A very interesting website, some of which I agree with.

Cheers

It might seem unlikely that all the wells will run dry at once but I am sure the King of Lebanon thought that it was unlikely that all the cedars would be felled at once. There are only a few left of what were once trees of almost the same stature of the sequoias of California (very similar climate). Classical literature is full of references to their majestic size and beauty. They formed parts of the temples of Jerusalem and the finest ships ever to carry a pharoh. Do you think we are missing something? I am sure the last few specimens fetched a good price, but that is not exactly the point, is it? I cannot think about the biblical tales of lands of milk and honey and picture the eroded, deforested and denuded moonscape that is now there, around the cradle of civilization without feeling an enormous anger. I don't want our great granchildren to think the same when they hear strange stories about the fabulous lifestyle we lived.

It was also pretty near impossible that all the passenger pigeons of the world would be killed at once. After all the passenger pigeon was the most populous bird on the face of the planet. The impossible happened. Think of all those cities in deserts. When the price of wood goes up they will just use something else.... But what, when the wood ran out the civilizations fell, the people dispersed or starved. Look into the faces of the Easter Island monoliths, they will tell you all you need to know. Their desert was an expanse of sea they couldn't cross when they had used up the last tree.

Sorry to have a go. Thank you very much for the visit and the comments. It just set me off. Maybe check out my site again and see if that cedars of Lebanon bit is the start of a whole new page. That thought has been gnawing away in my head for twenty years since I first read about it in The Human Situation by Aldous Huxley. It gives me a real sense of anger that helps me stay focused on the real issues of this planet. Yes, I will e mail you the link when I post it. I disagree about the price of oil. Nobody is going to refrain from selling their oil today by the thought that they could sell it for more in five years time. Five months time possibly. Certainly nobody is going to leave it in the ground because they are thinking about the price their children could sell it for. The price of oil fluctuates because speculators are second-guessing each other about what will happen to the price in this financial year. Cars are getting more powerful, using more oil. Cars are getting more common, using more oil. How is this trend to smaller cars, which is not happening, going to increase the supply of oil?

Aldous Huxley, a frighteningly brilliant author and thinker.

The day will come when US politicians will see the truth. If you are the Governor of Kansas or somewhere similar your voters need oil. What would Kansas be like without it? A wasteland with too few horses and men to till the ground, all the farms owned by banks who had to foreclose on farmers and seize their machinery. Like I said, just like Afghanistan but with more guns and more religious extremists. It would be your Christian duty to secure the oil supply your people needed and nuke anybody who stood in your way.

How can you compare the current dependence on energy to nineteenth century consumption of lamp oil? Our entire western economy is dependent on fossil fuel energy. Electrical power in Britain costs £0.0685 per kilowatt hour. The minimum wage is £3.60 per hour. If you put people on treadmills you would be very lucky to get a kilowatt out of them every hour. Energy is dirt cheap. Life as we know it depends on cheap energy that must run out. Sorry if that disturbs you, but it is the point behind me writing the page in the first place!

Thank you again for fresh inspiration.

Hello Martin, Interesting reply, good point well made. Don't want to flog this one to death but- I'm sure we will soon have major man-made catastrophes, which we can mitigate but that we cannot now avert. However, there will be technological advances that will change radically the way we live, travel etc. and we don't yet know what these will be - I don't think its all bad news (That said, there is of course PLENTY of bad news on the way). Anyway, thanks for the reply. I await your Cedars of Lebanon piece with great interest.

Thank you for the reply. I am now really buzzing with enthusiasm for everything I can do on the web. Every bit of praise helps fuel me to tackle more. I just got four positive e mails and no spam. Life doesn't get any better than this. The Meme Machine is rolling!

I know what you mean about technological advances, we really cannot predict what the future may bring. But we can use our brains and try. E commerce for example is not going to help traffic or pollution. Instead of carefully driving your car, with catalytic converter, to the shopping mall you get a man in a dirty van to deliver your goods from a depot ten times further away. I want to believe that the future of man is a future of progress, I am a science and technology fan, I am no faggoty vegetarian tree hugger, but when I use my logical and analytical brain to ponder the future I see plenty of problems.

I want to see a future of lower energy use. A world of high efficiency. A world in which knowledge travels and people largely stay put. A sustainable world in which men do not get into their BMWs to drive to the gym in order to use electrically powered jogging machines.

Whatever happens we will get it wrong. Our grandchildren will mock us, pity us and be angry for the mistakes we will make. I just want to put on record that some of us wanted to get it right.

Martin.

As promised the link to the new page. It didn't turn out like I expected. It might change in later drafts. Sometimes a page writes itself. This one did. I may have to write it myself later.

cedars

That book I keep talking about, The Human Situation by Aldous Huxley, it has changed my whole life. It has shaped huge areas of my thinking.

When I was fourteen I was very mixed up inside, my head was full of ideas. I went to my sister and asked her for help, I don't know what to think about! She didn't understand but she gave me her copy of Brave New World. I read it and enjoyed it. A couple of years later I saw the name Aldous Huxley again on a book cover and I bought the book. That is the only copy of the book I have ever seen. I still read it like a Christian reads his Bible. It is totally dog-eared and falling apart. My most prized possession. You might say that was a recommendation.

Read the Cedars of Lebanon piece. Stirring stuff. You say it wrote itself - I think I know what you mean - quite an out-pouring, I mean that respectfully.

I will certainly look out for the Huxley book you refer to - I have read some of his stuff, a collection of essays particularly - forgotten the title now. I find him a very variable writer - some quite poor, particularly fiction, some magnificent.

In a similar vein, have you read a book called "Cabbages and Kings" by an American Anthropologist? - forgotten the name again - A collection of essays covering topics like the foundation of agriculture, and the effects of agricultural practice on social organisation - Eg. that irrigation- based societies, like Japan, tend to have Centralised and Heirarchical Social Structures, because that's what they originally needed to organise the irrigation system - good stuff. Also, the tendency of societies to expand to absorb the whole of their food resources, and what happens when they do - Technological and Social changes, or disintegration and strife.

2 things struck me about the "Cedars of Lebanon" piece - 1. You draw attention to the fact that ecological devastation has been caused as much by "noble savages" - American Indians or Australian aborigines - As by technologically advanced societies. This is an unfashionable truth, as though recognition of it undermines the present day political claims of these groups (or those who claim to represent them).

2. The interesting point about generally malnourished runtish farmers overcoming hunter-gatherer societies by weight of numbers. - This links to one of my own interests, the whole gigantic topic of "work" Eg. you can support yourself as a hunter-gatherer with 2-3 hours work a day (typically) or support a much larger population on the same area of land, at the price that most people have to work pretty much all the time (at least in the days before combine harvesters). The world is ready for a gigantic 1000 page book about "work" - In every society, how is it viewed, who does it, who decides who does what - Is it a burden or a great privelege? Fancy sitting down and writing it? just an idea. I will if noone else does. er.. eventually.

Anyway, you've given me plenty to think about. As I said, I don't agree with all of it, but it'd be much less interesting if I did. May the best meme win. Keep it coming.

Thank you for the message. As they say in those old technicolor films "You have the advantage of me....Sir? We have not been introduced."

You can at least look up my web page and get a few details about me. I don't even know which continent you live on, I am hazarding a guess that you are over 16 and under 90 and you seem to be using English spellings. I don't know whether you are a secret service agent an academic or a taxi driver. Not that it matters, but I'm curious.

I know what you mean about Huxley being variable. I don't rate him as a fiction writer. But he was a brilliant thinker and the nearest thing to a Renaissance man that the mid twentieth century could produce.

Noble savages. What a load of twaddle. The problems come with the ethos of the pioneer. Africa has had man since the earliest days, and has lost hardly any animals. Australia lost loads when man arrived, both times. Asia has done fairly well. America was very badly hit by the Clovis people 11,000 ybp. Put yourself in their moccasins; you walk over a mountain and see a valley with no fires, then another, and another, the world is empty and goes on for ever! Here is all the meat you can throw a sharp stick at! Four or five generations of this and you have a culture that knows there is always fresh game half a days walk away. Paint your face, carve that stick, raise as many children as you want, life is wonderful.

You don't need to be white or protestant to think you own the land and all that walks across it. You just need to be in virgin land.

The same thing has happened everywhere man has set foot. Harmony with nature is an ethos that builds up when populations meet boundaries. I have got to admit that I enjoyed sniping at the noble savages. I hate the sanctimonious left wing posers who support every cause that is against their own nation. White Anglo Saxon Protestants have done most to screw up the world because they had the biggest toys, not because they/we are bad people. I am not proud of being from that culture, neither am I ashamed, I have not oppressed anybody and I try to tread gently on the earth.

I would be interested in a work on work. I have too much of the stuff. I feel I was born to work no more than 20 hours a week. I work at a shop that is open 9am to 8pm every weekday, 9 to 6 on Saturday and 11 to 5 on Sunday; from that I typically get Tuesday off and sometimes one 6pm finish in the week. When I get home most evenings I have little energy left to do much other than eat, drink and watch TV. My private life suffers. My family life suffers. Most Catholic priests get more sex than me.

I think I gave Huxley too much credit for the Cedars piece. Much of the credit should go to the other Great Book in my library. (After The Selfish Gene and The Human Situation) which is The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. One of two library books I loved so much I got my wife to buy a copy. I walk past a first class library every day when I walk to work and back, but it is has similar opening hours to the shop, I rarely get a chance to go in. I must see if I can get a copy of Jared Diamond's or Richard Dawkin's latest books. Or Cabbages and Kings by whoever.

Thanks again for the tonic. I enjoy writing but it is nice to be read.

The simplest put way of describing my chains of thought on your site would be "wow" , simple, yet effective. You not only believe in many of the things that I do, but you rationalize, conceptualize, and put your thoughts in the same manners that I do. There is no god. At least, not in my brain. My name is "Daemon Opus", I was raised by mother that had the catechisms practically shoved down her throat, and by a father that was a backwoods methodist hick who believes all life was created from the earths primordial cesspool of chemicals. I am 20 years old, and have just moved away from California, in the United States due to my unfoundering loathe of the self-righteous moneygrubbing fools to be found there. I think your site is utterly brilliant. I am a lover of machine logic, tempered by the human brain. I am a generalist, and refuse to submit to any one specialty nor area of expertise. I have always loved tracking particular sayings, expressions, thoughts, and ideals through my network of friends. I have been on computers and the internet since i was about 4 years old, and have watched many of my own sayings, dialects, and even spellings spread across the electronic medium. I am a lover of intellectual thought, and of life, in all its many shapes, sizes, forms. Right now im actually playing with a spider i introduced into the ecosystem of my household to get rid of other pests without using pesticides or any of the other quick-fix earth-poisoning solutions available on the market. But enough about me, just wanted to provide a little background into how I came about thinking what i do, and why i do. I find your thoughts riveting and very well-thought out, even if they were written on the fly, they came from a mind i deeply respect just by reading a few lines. I concur wholeheartedly with your One World view, and, im sure you'll be pleased to know, "That is one of the main purposes of this web site, I want to inspire some young mind to take the next step, to begin the journey to a united world. Or at least keep the idea alive for another generation." that your website and your ideals prolly wont die for a long time. "Most growth does not lead in any way to happiness, we are not happier because all the things in our home are now designed to last no more than five years, and our cars last as long as the loans required to buy them." I believe in this quite fervently. I have never had a bank account, nor will i ever, I dont like jobs, but dont like hunger. I only enjoy working to feed and clothe myself, and to provide ways to quest for knowledge, and human thought. I personally love human thought, in all of its forms, from the ramblings of the schizophrenic, to the principles of heisenberg, einstein, and hawkins. I believe in capitalism, however, to a certain extent, that money IS energy. I do not, however, like the fact that a morally corrupt individual can make it more often and faster than I can, while i struggle to make my own ends meet while being a law-abiding, life-loving person. I would love to see a utopian society without need of money, based on free-will, free-thought, and free-love, but, alas, I doubt that i will be privvy to such an event.

"Many rednecks in the USA see a world government as the greatest threat to freedom in the world today. "Evil socialist atheists" trying to take over the good old USA in the name of the United Nations. I often wonder what these people think they are defending. The right to keep automatic weapons in the home? The right to pollute the planet as they see fit, hell they can afford the gas! The right to be ignorant and loud while more than half the world lives in abject poverty. The right to worship Jesus. Whether the ruling class conspired to feed these people such ideas or not I am sure they are glad they have swallowed them."

Now, this is extremely humorous to me, seeing as i am currently residing within the state of Kentucky, in the US. I saw the other day as i was driving down the road, the local pastor in front of his church spraying pesticides upon the church parking lot in order to make it look nicer, when 20 feet down the slope of the hill, there is a small creek and a small childrens Playground. I almost screamed at him "what are you doing?!?" Polluting his own "children of god" all in the name of aesthetics while perpetuating the pollution that is contaminating local drinking water ? Just a week ago, you could not get sodas from the local subway due to river contamination, and here he was, smiling and spraying away. I cannot believe the absolute ignorance of this man, and that he believed he was going to heaven for doing good for god and making HIS church look good for GOD.

"I look forward to the day when every person on the planet is properly fed, housed and clothed. When all work and wealth is fairly distributed. When no man has to work more than a third of the day unless he chooses, and his choice is not at the expense of another man's poverty. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

That is the only reason why i work, for food, for clothing, and for shelter. No, your not a dreamer. Your intelligent. And with that sir, i would like to comment on but a couple of things within your sight/site ;) . Seeing as it is nearly 2am in the morning here now, i will leave you with a thought that came to me on June 11th, 2000. Believe it or not, this train of thought came to me unbidden, in the middle of the night while watching tv, I suddenly had the urge to write, and when I had finished, and read it aloud to myself, I actually spoke it in one of my british accents (I used to be an actor in california, and i have a knack for dialects/accents). I hope that you enjoy this, and I would like to keep in correspondence with you.

"The SENSE Of Being" Written 06-01-00 By: "Daemon Opus"

For sometimes, there are no answers. The Universe is always one step ahead of logic. Even if one were to compile enough data upon every subject, every language, every nuance of technology, one would still not be able to harness the secret to life. The secret of life is simple. The secret is to live. I think, therefore, I am, that ancient credo fills us with a sense of being, the sense of being, fills us then with the Universe. We become one, mingled in a strange placation of mind, body, and soul. Happiness. True happiness cannout be found, it can only be experienced. Our experiences are the summation of our beliefs. We believe, therefore we think, therefore we are. We experience birth, therefore we were born. We experience life, in its gaiety, and variety, and therefore we live. We experience death, and therefore we die. The human consciousness has a harness of awareness. The awareness is what we find ourselves bathed in daily. Our sense of taste, sight, touch, sounds, and time. We seep in the awareness of our senses, without truly knowing what we do, what we are. We are human, we live, we eat, we drink, and we are merry. Be it as it may, we live. We create our world, we share each others experiences, and we create our life. The extension of our consciousness drifts vastly beneath the changing planes of our world. The ever-shifting, ever vibrating, rythmical sense of self-being that pervades into the very fabric of the Universe. We think, therefore, all is. We created an idol to seek after within life. Our god. But we misplaced our trust, our trust should be within each other, not a false idol. For we are the true gods, the true entitites of being that unite under one racial consciousness that permeates the very boundaries of space and time. We propagate ourselves across this timeless stratum of being. We are the people of free-will. Manifest Destiny. We have an obligation to uphold. To live, to experience, to love, to hate, to regret, to FEEL. Our deepest corners of insight are only as deep as we wish to see. Those of us who wish to see all, find themselves blinded by the pure fury of the maelstrom of being. We are the chaotic winds whipping about the sands of time and being, comprising the atmosphere in which we live. Life imitates art. Art imitates Life. The never-ending cycle of Life, of energy, of free-moving, free-thinking particles. Do the branes know that they are quarks ? Do the quarks know they are atoms ? Do the Atoms know they are Molecules ? Do we know we are a part of our land ? Does the land know it is part of the Earth ? Does the Earth know it is a Solar System ? Does the Solar System know it is The Universe ? From whence did the circle start ? Where is the beginning of the Circle ? And where does it end ? Our sense of time, is it not merely a sense ? But what are the origins of emotions ? Does the rock feel the pick as its ore is churned out ? Does it feel hate, love, compassion, and regret ? What are emotions ? What is love ? Truth ? What is truth ? We base truth on what our senses convery, we base truth upon correlation of our senses and each other. We base love upon correlation of our senses and each other. Why must we hate ? Is it merely the clinging fascination with pride that we so disdainfully make for ourselves ? Or is it purely blind ignorance to love, to truth. The truth is, I do not know. We hate, we seek vengeance, and carry out violence in the name of something that we wish to ignore, we wish to ignore our own hand had its part in the ways of the world. That only ourselves are to blame for that which we wish to experience. Experiences are ours. They can only be a part of the Experience that is life. To experience being, the ultimate test of truth, and love.

ooo000ooo

By the way sir, I would appreciate not using my name if you choose to post my feedback to you, (as I have just read the feedback section) , more rather, I would appreciate the use of my alias/handle in its stead, I thank you wholeheartedly sir. -Daemon Opus-