Hi,

this is indeed a huge site and I have bookmarked it for future reading. Just a small comment though, I think you have mistaken what being a Humanist is all about.

You said,

Humanism to me seems to be a religion for those people who need to have the feel-right factor of the religiously inspired without the complication of belief in anything that could be proved or suspected to be wrong. Humanism need not be atheistic. Atheism need not be humanistic.

Humanism is not a religion. And there is such a thing as Secular humanism and religious humanism. To me Humanism is an attitude to life. The belief that the problems of humanity can be solved by human efforts without reliance on religion. Well there are many definitions out there (humanist.net) and of course I am not trying to convert you to anything.

You also said

Humanism does not seem to answer the problem of who we are and how we got here.

Well.... humanism does not pretend to offer such benefits (one of the reason why it is not a religion).... I believe humanism can coexist with your definition of the meaning of life. Humanism is a love for fellow humans perhaps. There are many definitions of Humanism. It really depends on the individual. (I feel a bit uneasy when you say something must be right or wrong...perhaps this is because i have a sociology background....it seems too ethnocentric in sociological terms.)

I need to go to school NOW. Hope to correspond with you next time. Its great to know Atheists from around the world. you are from england huh....I like your tabloid The Sun...we dont get such things here in Singapore.

Yours,

Winston Low

http://home4.pacific.net.sg/~shoresofstone

http://www.geocities.com/shoresofstone

Thank you for the message. My first from your part of the world.

I probably do misunderstand humanism, in some way, I hope so, because it simply seems fatuous and empty. I am not against humanism, secular humanism, I just see it as weak and anaemic. But I suppose that in order not to offend anybody it does tend to be too all-embracing. Perhaps what I don't like about it is the lack of a voice to condemn wrong behaviour. There is an optimum level of toleration for a society, and I suggest that it is probably to be found somewhere between the excessive liberalism of my country and the harshness of yours. The key is to have a liberal and tolerant government and a censoring and moralistic society, rather than the opposites.

Sociology has a tendency to strip a person of all values leading to a sense that nothing is important, nothing is right, nothing is wrong, everything is relative, and one point of view is as good as any other. That is a terribly corrosive attitude. It is important that people stand up for some core values, probably humanistic values.

The Sun is a terrible newspaper. Full of gossip, poor reporting standards, anti-intellectualism and a terribly hypocritical attitude to sex. It sells itself with sex, innuendo and appeals to reactionary attitudes within the working class. It reports stories of the sex lives of famous people (many of whom are famous only for being featured in such newspapers) and tries to make out that it is outraged at the "shocking" stories; stories that it has chosen, or magnified from the slightest hints of evidence. If your aim was to conspire to anaesthetize the British working class and to render them impotent as a political force it is difficult to know how better this aim could be achieved than through the current editorial policies of The Sun. The only good thing I can say about it is that it does not simply make up stories from nothing as some American "newspapers" do. But the worst thing about The Sun is the fact that it is so popular, people buy it, and buy into the warped sense of values that it portrays.

I have checked out your site after you had commented on mine.

I think you have done a really good job in airing the sociological explanations of religion. I had forgotten how insightful sociology was, probably because it was taught badly. I went to University when sociology was a trendy subject, cheap to teach, it attracted a lot of lightweight under-motivated students, a high proportion of women. There was a joke I remember quite clearly, "Why don't sociology students look out of the window in the morning? Because they would have nothing to do in the afternoon."

I studied sociology as a minor subject alongside politics. Perhaps if it was less of a trendy subject I would have managed to make more of it, and have a less jaundiced view of it. I gather that now it is not such a trendy subject, and so it is probably much more interesting, worthy and useful. I think I will spend some time on your site and refresh my memory about sociological explanations. Perhaps some kind of synthesis between evolutionary theories and sociological explanations can lead to a clearer view of reality.

To what extent do you (personally) use English? Your use of English is very good indeed. Is the use of English heavily correlated with higher class and education in Singapore? Is there a pro and anti-internationalist debate in Singapore? If so is it reactionary nationalism and tribalism masquerading as concern for older culture and values or is it more complicated than that?

And you are so right about being an intellectual. You are if you say you are. Like being gay, but with a bigger stigma. ;-)

Very impressed and thorough. If I have my way someday I will teach a university class on the philosophy of John Lennon.

I have a question about how you cannot see how animals can have any rights.

Why do women have the right to vote along with men? Because there is nothing inherent in the nature of a gender that says one will or wont have the capacity to vote and the need to express their desires. While individuals may vary, there is nothing about being male or female that makes one overwhelmingly more or less likely to share these capacities.

Why do sentient animals deserve to be free from pain and suffering. Because there is nothing inherent in the nature of species that says one will or wond have the capacity to feel pain. While individual animals may vary, there is nothing about being a member of Homo Sapiens as opposed to being a Chimpanzee, cow, pig, or chicken that makes one overwhelmingly more or less likely to share these capacities.

The same argument applies in both cases. A principle of equality demans that if we are going to treat to individuals different, be they men, woman, blacks, whites, Americans, Brits, Indians, Chinese, cows, birds, etc., then they must have some PERSONAL characteristic that is relevant to the situation we are regarding them for. Men and women should both vote because they both can and need to be represented. Educators and employers should not be discriminated against by race or nationality because no that has no relevance on those things. And species should not be a factor in the case of pain in any species that is capable of feeling pain.

You make a great point about how nationalism is a holdover, divisive, and pain-causing artefact of our past that should be eliminated. But speciesism follows the same arbetrary logic of nationalism. Lets eliminate the exploitive and divisive elements of our past and move on to a truly just world.

John Willits

I don't believe in human rights so why should I believe in rights for anything else?

Animals do not have rights because there is no power around to give them rights. If there was a god the question of animal rights might be worth considering. As there isn't it isn't.

Should we treat animals as if they had rights? Yes, in a limited way, I think this is reasonable. Men and women are equivalent (not the same but of similar value and type) treating them as equal makes sense. The same logic applies with people of different national, racial or ethnic identity (ignoring the question as to whether such distinctions are really meaningful). All people are intelligent, sentient and have the power to act and the potential to suffer. So all people deserve to be treated as if they have rights. But other animals are not equivalent. They do not have the same intelligence, sentience, empathy, ability to suffer in the same way. Animals are not all equal.

I think we should treat animals as important, worthy of respect and worthy of individual treatment. Animals can suffer, can fear, can appreciate that they are not being treated well. We should treat them with respect, but the respect should not be the same level as intelligent and sentient beings on our level.

Animals do not have any right not to be eaten. I have no problem with eating meat or treating animals well. I have shot for the pot and I have looked after animals and taken them for slaughter, and I have on several occasions known the name of the animal I was eating, and noticed how the well treated animal tastes much better than most supermarket meat. That experience should be more widely shared. We are mammals, our ancestors were omnivores who hunted, scavenged and gathered plant food. The co-operation that our species shows and values so highly comes from our hunting past, not the selfishness of our vegetarian gathering ancestors.

I would not like to see us become vegetarians. We would lose our moral edge if we abandoned our heritage. We should continue to use animals and to eat meat, but in a way that is sustainable and humane. Factory farming of animals is barbaric, no animal should be treated as a simple commodity or production unit. Pigs that are well looked after are happier, more fertile, better mothers and fathers and also taste better. Millions of farmers around the world know the truth of that. Good farmers wholehearted welcome the idea of higher standards of animal welfare, but these can only become a reality if we can eliminate the bogey of being undercut by foreign barbaric practices. If we can get a single world government there would be no need to put up with cruel farming practices, they could be eliminated. The biggest obstacle to better welfare standards is the fear of foreign competition and the need to maintain trade links and treaty obligations. Once we can get a uniform food market we can simply state that pigs and cattle must always be kept to these humane minimum standards, and if that makes meat and milk more expensive we will have to get used to the idea, or eat something else.

Martin,

you're a smart guy, much better conversation than I usually get here in Nebraska, the Evangelical hotbead of middle America. I think I am the only leftist within a two hour drive.

Your point on assigning arbitrary rights to animals is well put. What is important is the individual characteristics of an individual organism, and its personal ability to suffer, be intelligent, and so on. If we are going to treat two organisms differently in a particular case, we should make that decision based on the capacities of that organism that are relevant to that situation. It does seem to follow from this that if we think that causing pain is wrong, the relevant capacity is the ability to feel pain. It maybe be true that human pain can be compounded by a more thorough understanding of the situation, and this would be a reason to treat humans with more importance. (But also, sometimes it works the other way. We could handcuff a human during wartime and lead them away, telling them if they cooperate, they will not be hurt. This idea is something we could not communicate to many animals, so in a situation we were not going to hurt them, they would be just as scared).

I also do not have a problem with killing animals for food, if it needs to be done. The problem is not that it is done, but how it is done. When 10 chickens are crammed into a box the size they can barely move in, and their claws and beaks are chopped off so they don't kill each other, I think we cross the line into causing unnecessary suffering for some petty whim of palette. I am not a vegetarian in the sense that I think killing animals for food is by definition wrong. I just happen to be boycotting modern factory farming methods that put profit before suffering and health. In America (I am not sure about Britain) this means avoiding almost all available meat, egg, and dairy products; full vegetarianism is just a method of playing it safe.

The reason I think we should all be vegetarians does not rely on a "killing animals is wrong" defense. I do think the suffering we cause to do it is wrong, and were we to make practices more humane, the process would be so unproductive that the price would make meat-eating non-practical. Also, given that we feed up to 3 times the caloric content to most animals that we end up getting out of it, it's unproductivity as a method of food production and distribution should be abhorred given the amount of starvation in the world. Given your apparent interest in arranging society in a more productive matter, the amount of food that And there is the whole mad cow/foot in mouth thing. One can make quite a case that the mostly vegetarian diet is also much healthier and less of a risk, be it the aforementioned diseases, or heart disease or cancer in general.

The problem I have is that people will use a general attitude like its ok to kill animals in principle, and use it to justify all kinds of extreme acts of suffering. Due to our Aristotelian-Christian heritage, we have a long history of putting our own species on a pedestal, and even when the educated like yourself have shaken the Christian past, we have not let go of all of the other memes it brought with it. One needs only to spend on hour with a chimpanzee to see how eerily human they are. Many cat and dog owners have experience many shared emotions, and when we take the time to look, we find all kinds of evidence of intelligence, sentience, empathy, and the ability to suffer that we had been biased from seeing by our Christian past and our self-serving natures. Richard Dawkins and others have been fighting for human rights and human protection for the other apes for about 15 years, because of their similarity to us. They can be taught language, they grieve for the dead, and sit and watch sunsets with their observers with the same look of amazement in their eyes. Equal rights for all animals? Of course not. But don't let yourself use that as an excuse for ignoring the human-animal similarities when they are there.

There is a book I must recommend to you. Do not worry, it is not about vegetarianism. It is about memes and the evolution of human society. It is called Nonzero, by Robert Wright, and it is about how cultural evolution and biological evolution are taking advantage of rising complexity to allow replicators that cooperate in more and more productive ways. It also has a strong world government message, which doesn't go over well here in the USA. If you have not read it, it sounds like it would be a good read for you. Wright's book is the main reason I agree with you on most of the things you say.

Not to harass you on the subject, but here is a link to a review for the book I mentioned, Nonzero by Robert Wright. The review is titled: "Is Robert Wright a Marxist? (Not that there's anything wrong with that)" It does a good job summing up why the book would be worth your time.

I am a bit busy at the moment and not able to give a fuller reply, but I will. I think our disagreements are very minor. My job involves long shifts, I have little time to reply to email fully when I am working from 9am to 8pm. I have not read the book you mention, it seems interesting. The book I am currently reading is The Origin of Virtue by Matt Ridley, it is amazing, I may have to change large parts of my site as a result of the new perspectives it is giving me.

Ridley is indeed great. Take your time. I look forward to hearing back.

I suspect that you would be able to find another leftist within two hours drive if you knew where they were bunkered down. (Just curious, how fast does your car go?)

I seem to attract a lot of outsiders to my site. Atheists from Poland, gay Marines and leftists from Nebraska, what next? Vegetarian Eskimos? At least it makes for an interesting life.

Militant vegetarians often go on about the inefficiency of farming for meat. But this is a non-argument. When do we decide what to eat on the basis of simple crude economics or the efficiency of conversion of calories? Can you, off the top of your head, give me the relative efficiency of wheat versus potatoes or rice? Food is not about efficiencies. If we stopped farming for meat what would happen to the farms in areas where only grass is a reasonable return on the investment of farming? Huge tracts of land like the hills of Wales, most of New Zealand, the Argentine Pampas, the Australian outback and other parts of the world are tolerably efficient at growing grass and the only sensible human food crop to grow on such land is meat.

Ranching sheep and cattle does not lead to widespread cruelty, such animals exist in their modern form only by virtue of human farming and they live a life that is significantly less stress-filled than their wild ancestors, none of whom died of simple old age. Given the choice of meeting my end at the hands of a Texan rancher or a hyena I know which I would prefer.

There is no hard and fast reason to oppose eating meat or farming on the grounds of cruelty towards animals. However, there are many modern farming methods that should not be allowed. Poultry farming is largely done in ways that are degrading to our status. Pig farming is also often far removed from anything that would make a farmer proud. But it need not be. There is plenty of material that is not suitable for human consumption but which is quite suitable for feeding pigs, poultry and cattle. My mother feeds her highland cattle on grass supplemented by pelleted remains of sugar beet. The best food she serves up is a little oats for the pigs, a food that was in previous centuries considered fit only for horses and Scotsmen. The vast majority of their food is not anything we would fight over, grass, the spent grains from beer production and material that would otherwise go to the compost heap. The efficiency argument is largely bogus, only relevant when considering the feeding of edible grain, mostly as chicken feed.

I will keep my eyes open for Nonzero.

Hello Martin,

I have been browsing through your site (and links) for the last couple of day. An enjoyable and interesting read. I found your site during a search for 'meme' info. Like yourself I have an 'amateurs' interest in the 'big questions'.

I have one problem with Darwinism and evolutionary theory. Before there were any life-forms in the universe the universe contained the potential for life-forms. Woven into the fabric of the universe was the potential for human beings and more specifically the potential for Martin Willetts. You could imagine a universe with no potential for human beings, no matter how favourable the environment. Evolutionary theory explains the mechanisms for developing this potential. It doesn't explain why the universe should be structured in such a way. Any thoughts ?

Best Wishes

Ken Glenwright

Gateshead, England

Hi

Stumbled across your website its an interesting read. Haven't gotten round to a half of it yet of course :) But one of the first things I read was the section about your desire to give your children an athiest up bringing and I thought you might be interested to hear from someone who has had an athiest upbringing.

I am 18 years old and both my parents were athiests. That is athiest by the dictionary definition, they didn't belong to any of the athiest organisations and while my father certainly had very strong opinions and my mother was and still is not the slightest bit religious, they also never lectured me at length about the evils of religion. They simply didn't mention religion to me except in answer to my questions such as 'what are churches for?'. And of course I grew up and still live in north london which is about as secular and multi-cultural as you can get. It is interesting that when you get a load of religions and the church of england, which hardly counts, dumped together and left for a couple of generations no-one believes anything any more and religion becomes entirely divorced from any kind of actual belief.

But I agree that education is very important. My parents were both teachers and I was well educated and taught to think for my self. However in regard to myths such as the toothfairy and father christmas....these things are also important so long as you teach them as myths. Without my love of stories, which i never once considered to be fact, I would not be half the person I am today. The important thing is not to avoid them but simply never claim that they are fact. In fact now i think of it my love of stories was what made me treat religious stories as fiction in the same way. Things like father christmas never made me believe in myths.

Don't know if that's of interest to you, but there it is.

Tom Slatter

First point. Athiest, one of my best keywords. Coming late to the subject of atheism I have very little chance of getting a lot of hits from trying to use the correct spelling in my keywords, although I still try, for obvious reasons. While trying to avoid coming across as a teacher (I tried but failed the actual teaching bit) please bear with me. Atheism, think of the word and the meaning.

a- without, the-god, ism.

Just remember the heart of the word is the from the Greek for god, theos. I didn't have a classical education, I have had to teach myself these important things. I am coming to understand now that Latin and Greek would probably have been more use to me than French, seeing as I haven't enough fluency to read a French book or watch a French film and I have never been to France. Zut alors.

Another way to remember is to take the piss out of the common misspelling; I'm athy, he's athier, but she's the athiest! Athiest is silly, unless we can come up with a good definition for the word athy.

Of course a better strategy is to use a spell checker, teach it your special words and use it all the time.

I have a particularly jaundiced view of all fiction, a very puritanical view that basically fiction is a form of telling lies and therefore sinful. That is probably my problem. I suppose as long as all stories are clearly explained as being stories no harm is done, the problems come with the idea that revealing them as untrue "takes away the magic of childhood". People lose their jobs in US TV for saying Santa Claus isn't real, that is sick. I am teaching my children about cartoons, so they see them on two levels, as drawings and as fictional events forming an entertaining story. It is not easy, and some children of low intelligence would have problems with it, that is why any "You do believe in fairies, don't you?" stuff is so potentially harmful. No adult should ever say that a fictional story is true. Confusing fact and fiction is a big issue, nobody should do anything to make that line blurred. Have you read Jack Higgins's novel The Eagle has Landed, that kind of thing, saying that this is true, it happened to me, and going on to write a fictional story is obscene, is any of it true? When did the fiction start, when did it finish? Can any of it be regarded as true or is the whole thing fiction? I can't disentangle it, and I am bright, what chance do thickos have with it?

Since I wrote that article my son (age 6) has started to talk a lot more about God and heaven, but I detect my own "all or nothing" type approach, his Christianity is strong, like cast iron, and probably very brittle. I still have said nothing to him about my own beliefs. I have no worries about him. He is on the side of right. He has a couple of Thunderbirds dolls, at night his Scott Tracy doll keeps The Hood covered with his pistol, note, he doesn't shoot him, he has arrested the baddie. Thunderbirds is a good role model, very little violence and the good guys save lives and property, not destroy it. I hope he continues to have a good sense of right and wrong, it is vitally important. Belief in right and wrong does not require a god to fear, morality should come from within.

Martin

Hi

Thanks for the spelling tip. Its one of those things that you know you keep doing wrong but still you keep making the mistake. I have the same trouble with the word necessary you know. Still I'm sure I'll be getting atheism right more often now....

You know I have no choice but to disagree with the idea that all fiction has to have big signposts on it saying 'this is not true, its just an entertaining lie, thats all....' Let Jack Higgins start off claiming the story's true, anyone with half a brain is gonna work out its fiction and if people don't get it well, pardon my french, but sod 'em. I think it was Pablo Picasso (i could be wrong) who said 'Art is the lie that reveals a truth'. And this is entirely true. If someone tells you an inspirational tale, perhaps the story of an innocent life being saved from the bloodshed of war or some such thing, and you can't be sure whether it is true or just something that was made up, surely if you get same level of inspiration it doesn't matter. Fiction is lying, but it is harmless, or should be, it is entertainment and if done right it is art. In fact some ideas and emotions can only be expressed through fiction.

Of course its stupid to fire someone for revealing the myth, but stories are an important and necessary part of growing up. They are a stretching of the wings of imagination, without which we'd be completely lost. And in a very important way stories are true. Not for the events and people they describe but for what they have to say about the human condition (if you'll forgive the use of such a cring-inducing phrase), the metaphorical truth. And yeah, metaphors are lies to, but they ain't inherently sinful...

As for the parts about your children......well I've no experience of children, apart from having been one and having had a secular upbringing I must admit the very concept of believing in God or similar ideas is one that I still do not comprehend. But I would be suprised if your son has a real belief in god, any more than kids have a belief in father christmas and all those other little lies we get told to prepare us for the big lies (things like love, honour, certainty safety......not too cynical a thing to say is it?). Its more likely to be just another evidence of him stretching his intellectual wings, to return to my earlier metaphor, don't you think?

Tom Slatter

Must admit I'm not the most computer literate person in the world, I'm only a lowly musician after all.... Anyhoo:

Fiction

I wonder if you have seen the film Interview with the Vampire or more to the point read the series of books that the film was taken from. This books are, with the occasional exception, each a fictional biography of one vampire or another. But in a similar way to how you described the Jack Higgins novel (I haven't actually read it) these books do not implicitly state that they are fiction and the also talk about the other books in the series as if they had been published, as if the fictional world were the same as the real world. Of course these books are of a different genre to Jack Higgins stuff, I would be suprised if anyone took them as fact, but that blurring of the lines is an aide to the suspension of disbelief. It is playful, as if the author is saying, with a half smile, 'of course its real, I saw all this' and both parties know that isn't the case, but still you go along with it. The mixing of reality and fiction is very important, and of course Jack Higgins may very well be a fictional character in himself, lots of authors create them. I guess its similar to musicians like David Bowie, where the whole media persona, not just the person onstage but the person being interviewed and appearing on radio and television, is a character played by the actor. A fictional creation used to portray a fictional creation, a layering of myth and misdirection.

Of course it should be pointed out that the examples I have given are very different to your examples in that they belong to the fantasy genre, both Ann Rices Vampire books and David Bowie's onstage creations are fantastical items that could not possiby happen in the real world. They do not need to state that they are placed 'over the hills and far away', because the audience already knows it. From what you've told me of Jack Higgins, his work is set in a fictional version of the real world and the events described could plausibly have happened. That kind of fiction is a very different thing.... maybe there should be health warnings, I'd certainly like to see them before every episode of Eastenders, but not because i consider them dangerous, merely very very dull.

The bottom line i guess is trying to decide who has the responsibility to point out the lines between fiction and reality. i don't see why that responsibility should lie with anyone but the audience. We should be able to work out for ourselves what is real and what is not. Maybe parents should be deciding for their children, but us adults should be bright enough to work this stuff out ourselves.

French

Why the phrase 'pardon my french'?... I think its just a bit of left over racism. The english people have never really like the french and the french have never really like us. Here's a section from the book The English: a portrait of a people by Jeremy Paxman

'Obscene drawing were 'french postcards'. Prostitutes were 'french consular Guard', who could well be wearing wide legged underwear - French knickers. If a man used their services, he would 'take French lessons'. If he caught syphilis as a result he contracted 'French pox', 'French marbles', 'French aches'......

The list goes on..... racist but I guess its harmless and apparently the french have just as many little terms about the english.

Myths, stories, lies and metaphor

I would disagree that blurring the lines is a cheap and tacky trick, sometimes it can be fun, cos no-one really believes, everyone knows its just for fun. What would be wrong i guess is if someone set out with the deliberate intention of decieving someone. If Fiction were deliberately presenting as Fact without the unspoken agreement between author and audience, something that i would suggest politicians do all the time, then there would be grounds for complaint. And indeed action, possibly involving whips and sharp prodding things.

Children's Belief in God

I may be only a few years away from childhood myself but I must admit that while i can get my head around the concept of god and an afterlife i really do not understand how one could believe them to be the truth. It baffles me. I have not encountered yet a sensible reason to consider them anything more than interesting fictions and (perhaps useful) metaphors and I could not contemplate accepting an concept as fact without being presented with good argument and/or corroborating evidence.

I have always been very troubled with people involving children in religion without letting them decide for themselves. I have always considered the Jewish practise of circumsion a barbaric and disgusting thing to do to someone who can't understand what happening let alone object, and even taking a child to church and telling them 'this is true, this is the way the world is', is simply wrong. It is the sort of thing that should remain a personal decision for a mature person, just like sexuality, political leaning and all those other 'adult' concepts.

I think we have done fiction and myth to death, we do not agree completely but the difference is slight.

On the subject of racism pickled into the language what about that other maligned nation, the Dutch?

Dutch bargain-Dutch courage- Dutch treat

There is a strong hint there that the Dutch are a nation of drunks. You missed French leave, the kind of leave a Frenchman takes when visiting his whore when he should be on guard duty. I suppose it beats being a sheep shagger who leaves town when he loses a bet. But then the French think of us as homosexuals who enjoy spanking. Syphilis was always known by some foreign name, the pox was always spread largely by foreigners, if the lexicographers of the whole of Europe are to be believed.

Circumcision is truly barbaric, as you say.

Is teaching children about religion an evil thing in itself? An interesting idea. Is indoctrination a form of child abuse? It is difficult to say. It would be hard to draw a distinct line between religion, culture and other learning, so that we could tell for sure where passing on information shades into socialization and where that shades into indoctrination and where that shades into psychological abuse. We can see the difference between the extremes of that scale but the adjacent concepts are very blurry. It makes it very difficult to be able to stand up and say that people are wrong to terrify their children with the prospect of devils toasting them if they masturbate or say "bloody" because the parents can play it as simply teaching a moral example from a legitimate religious belief. I don't suppose we will ever be able to make a clear stand against religion until we can get the idea widely accepted that religion and morality can and should be separate.

Maybe we will be able to sort it all out by the end of the current millennium.

Hi Martin,

I'm a fellow atheist/rationalist, and I am glad I happend upon your site. So far, I have ready many of the articles in the 'Atheism Meme' section, and I find some of your arguments and anaologies hilarious! You have a great way of pointing out thesitc blunders, and you actually keep your cool with the fundies, which is not always easy to do. I have formulated my own intresting argument against the Christian god (actually, I have several), and I was hoping to get the input of a fellow non-believer. It's only a few paragraphs, though if you like this one, I have a few others. Here it is:

Argument #7 Hell Bound

Another problem with most Gods and theists alike (but certainly not all) is that they seem to have a view of mankind that is negative and regressive. We are all evil, horrible sinners, slaves of the almighty, we exist on very thin ice, and at any moment we could be sent to hell. We are to live in a perpetual state of fear.

Many theists argue that the aforementioned is NOT the case.I have heard many Christians say (to my amusement) that 'their God' or 'the Jesus they know' would never be so malicious and cruel, that I am misinformed. From my own readings of the bible, there is nothing to completely contradict or destroy the view stated in the first paragraph, and many fundamentalists would agree.

So, here is another argument, very similar to #2 (from another essay), but not exactly the same:

1. A condition for God's existence is that he is all knowing (past, present, future)

2. Therefore, he knew there would be those that by his own standards would be sent to the hell that he created

3. God either enjoys watching people suffer, or God is not all knowing

4. If God is not all knowing, then God does not exist

Does this argument sound unfair? Any more or less unfair than being pre-damned to eternal suffering? When I first heard of John Calvin's 'predestination' belief, I thought it was absurd. But then I realized.it is the only logical belief a Christian can have. How can there be 'free will' when God already knows where you'll end up? My thanks to Calvin, he did more for the atheistic cause then he'll ever know. But let's say that the moderate Catholic or Protestant apologist doesn't agree with Calvin, that there really is free will. They still have to acknowledge that God is all knowing. Here is the problem when the theist states that God is all knowing but still allows us to choose our destiny:

1. A condition for God's existence is that he is incapable of error

2. Another condition for God's existence is that he knows the fate and/or destiny of every person that has ever lived. (Omnipotence, all knowing)

3. Another condition for God's existence is that he has given us free will

4. If God knows a man is going to hell, but by the man's free will he goes to heaven (via faith, works, or fufilling all requirements needed to enter heaven), then God is in err.

5. Therefore, God does not exist.

Theists may respond with 'but he's GOD, if He wants to change someone's destiny, He can.' I don't think so! The man, by making choices with his free will, changed his destiny, not God. In essence, he defied God's omnipotence, rendering God non-existent. To summarize, free will and omnipotence cannot co-exist; yet they are both conditions for God's existence. It's a shame that the authors of the Bible or whoever constructed the concept of free will didn't allow for a little bit of error.they basically screwed themselves on that one.

So, what do you think? I like to try and formulate arguments from morality and basic logic/reason rather than pure science and history. Many Christians will not accept science and history, they see it as either lies, flawed, or they have thier own version of the two subjects, heavily biased in thier faith. I think the argument I have put forth is pretty rock solid even to the average person, but I have yet to test it on a devout Christian. I hope you write back with a response soon.

Keep up the excellent work on your site,

Joe Hargrave

To summarize, free will and omnipotence cannot co-exist; yet they are both conditions for God's existence.

To sum up, God is the condition for your existence!!!! Satan is laughing at the sound of your futile argument, Ha! his argument! And stoking up the fires of Hell for you.

It sometimes helps to understand your enemy to allow yourself to think like he thinks. If think is the right word.

Bible thumpers distrust logic. They distrust anything "of the head", of the intellect, of reason. They only trust ideas that supposedly arise between the groin and the neck. The guts, the heart and the soul are the seat of a fundie's religion. You could never box their God into a corner by stating conditions that are required for his existence. God exists, Jesus lives, they feel it in their (insert name of non-comical abdominal internal organ here).

For a fundie God does not exist because there has to be a universal positive force or anything of the sort, God's existence is the fundamental reality, the laws of physics and basic logic are created by him (sorry, by Him). If the basic laws of logic do not allow for the existence of a Omni-present Omni-benevolent force for good then that is because such so-called laws (blasphemous! only His laws are real laws!) are the works of Satan. You can't outflank God, sneak up on his blind-side or attack his logically soft under-belly. In the end it comes down to faith. As long as these people want to believe that their God is the most important reality then they will do so and if that defies logic then they are being more pious and deserving of a richer reward in heaven.

To use such an argument against a Christian would require him to state that his God is scientific, logical and rational. The stupidly clever and the cleverly stupid ones will never make things that easy for you. I couldn't fault the logic of the arguments, only the idea of using logic on the immune. Nice try. If you want to develop this into a piece for the Guest Zone please feel free.

I have a great suggestion for a book to add to your list. It is called 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors' by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, published in 1992. Check it out, I promise it would be a great addition to your book list.

Hey Martin,

I was just wondering about your thoughts on Rastafarianism. A lot of their ideals seem a little more favorable than other religions'. Marijuana is a holy sacrament, which, to me at least, shows that they're all for personal enjoyment. For them its a meditational aid which brings them closer to their god, Jah (same as Hebrew god. In fact many references are made to the 12 Tribes of Israel, and other tie-ins to Judaism.) On a separate note, I was just wondering about your thoughts on those extremely religious anti-marijuana people. I believe it says in their bible that "laws should be made to serve men, men should not serve laws."(I dont remember it exactly, but this is close to it.) What gives them the right to put their "lousy human" laws in conflict with god's creation. I'm just curious as to their reasoning. I've heard a response that it says in the Bible "people should follow the law of the land." But what if the law prohibits prayer, or similar things. As you might have guessed by now, Im a pot smoker and live in the US. Im just ticked off. Thats all. Also, I'm just agreeing with the notion of god just for discussion's sake, I'm agnostic.

Thanks for your time.

Peace, George

I don't agree with religion. That is more fundamental than my non-belief in gods.

Rastafarianism is a cobbled together religion in a similar way to Mormonism, Scientology, the Hocus Pocus behind the Masonic movement and the "revivals" of Druidism and Wicca. Some idiots sat down and cobbled together a pile of crap and sold it to the gullible. The idea that ganga is a sacrament is a nice touch but it is based on three wrong-headed ideas:-

1] there was a creation

2] everything has a purpose

3] that purpose is a purpose for man

Those ideas are all wrong, in every detail. The treatment of ganga as a sacrament makes the spreading of this line of bunkum very easy among the poor of Jamaica, the religion tells them they are the chosen people and god tells them to get stoned, quite a cute combination. Many cynical people use Rastafarianism as a cover to sell drugs and avoid doing anything they don't feel like doing, such as paying tax, supporting their children or getting a job. You might almost imagine that the whole religion was invented by white racists to help discredit black people.

If you want a justification to smoke you will have to do better than this. I suggest you campaign for legalization and avoid any contact with criminals. If you have to smoke, grow your own.

Martin

Sometimes it is a necessary evil to use something like religion on a group of people. Namely the ethiopians in the few years before WW2, when their land was being taken away by Mussolini. The man who came into power then was Haile Sellasie I, whom the rastafarians believed was the living incarnation of god. Now me and you know they were bullshitting themselves, but some good came out of it, as they were able to unite and put up some resistance to the Italians, even though they eventually gave up. Its quite helpful in pacifying the poor of Jamaica. Im not sure whether thats good or bad, whats the state down there, are they being opressed by someone, or is it just the plight of the many other poor countries around? But if the poor are going to stay poor, smoking pot and being chosen people seems like a good way of giving them something. It just seems like Rastafarianism isn't as imposing as many religions, in that they preach peace and don't proselytize. Its like a nonviolent black panthers thing, a way for Africans to unite.

Im also not using this as justification to smoke, although many Rastas have succesfully lobbied their governments for their religious right. Lobbying for legalization is negligibly effective in this country. Have you heard about that new Supreme Court ruling. They said pot has no medicinal value that they know of, and no research will be funded to find medicinal value. This is a political statement, not a scientific one, since many journals have published articles supporting medicinal use. I'm really disenchanted with this whole system!

Haile Selasie was no Rastafarian, he was a little man born to be king of a very small backwater. When Rastafarians arrived from Jamaica (where the religion was invented) he was deeply embarassed, as anybody would be if a bunch of weirdos turned up calling you a god. Similar things happen to Prince Philip when he visits New Guinea, where his known as "Number One big-pella bilong missus Queen" or something of the sort.

The Rastas fixated on Ethiopia because it was the only part of Africa not colonized by whites, and therefore the spiritual home of all black men. Silly logic, Ethiopians are no more closely related to the blacks of the west coast of Africa than they are to any other people on the planet, just look at any picture of Haile Selassie and you will see what I mean. There is also the Coptic Christian connection and the links between the Jews and Ethiopia, mixed up with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, probably as much based on true history as the legend of King Arthur or Robin Hood, i.e. 1% history, 99% myth. The whole religion is spurious, as they all are, but also demonstrably so.

As for legalizing drugs I suggest we are in for a long haul, but do not discount the political approach, after all millions of voter have used drugs and very few have had cause to regret it. The breakthrough will come.

We shall overcome.

Martin

Wow thats a real eye opener. I guess most of the info I got was off Rastafarian websites so was biased. Thanks for educating me. With the drug thing, I just hope you're right.

Hi Martin,

just a note to say I posted a reply to your posting on the Christian Newsgroup. I would say more here but I've got to get my goldfish a new bicycle! Check out the posting...

Cheers! Tim.

Sorry, but evil spammer that I am "The Christian Newsgroup" doesn't help pin it down much. Care to be more specific?

the Newsgroup's called

england.religion.christian

Hope that helps. I'd much rather talk to an atheist with at least some sense of humour, than some of those Christadelphian fire-and-brimstone maniacs on there anyday! They all want to convince everyone else that only they are right and everyone else is wrong! Some of 'em should go out, get pissed and let their hair down a bit.... Ooops, shouldn't say that, should I ? I'm a Christian... All the best mate. Be happy.

Tim.

[Below from england.religion.christian]

Thanks for that, I certainly enjoyed reading it!! We could do with more humour on this constantly bickering newsgroup. I enjoy films like 'The Life of Brian', 'The Meaning of Life', the 'Holy Grail' and so on. They don't affect my beliefs (which are not the same as yours...) but they do make me laugh! Some of the other Christians I know are able to have a laugh, but many on here err on the side of chronic and excessive incurable seriousness. Unlike you I do believe in God, and I believe He made us with a sense of humour, and we're meant to be able to laugh at ourselves as well.

Unlike many, I don't come on here to change peoples' views, only exchange them..... It's the right of each individual to listen to the views of others if they so wish, and come to their own conclusions. I actually tried to be an atheist, but found I didn't have enough faith! (That's tongue-in-cheek, I know, but it's also actually true - I tried to STOP believing in God at one stage).

I won't say "God bless", or even "good luck", since you probably don't believe in luck either! So how about "Have a nice day", or even "Have a great life"!

Anyway, all the best mate!

Tim.

What about "I hope the lifestyle comes together." It has an interesting meaning, and yet will not offend anybody, well, nobody in this dimension...

Hi again Martin,

Just writing to complement you on a well written and produced website. (I'm not saying I hold the same views as you, of course!). You've clearly thought it through and examined the message of faith and then made your decision. I wish everyone would do as much... So many just reject out of hand without even bothering to hear what others have to say. I do agree, in part, on some of your ideas. I've always said I consider myself to be a citizen of the World, rather than English. I used to work in a scientific environment, and I am very keen on Mankind's endeavours to explore outer space. It has always been my wish to witness a manned Mars landing before I die, but I guess the chance of that is only about 50:50. The main thing is not to panic, and always know where your towel is... (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, if I remember correctly...).

I will take the time to read through the rest of your site, bit by bit. In the meantime,

"I hope the lifestyle comes together"!!

Tim.

(Received the day before Douglas Adams died)