I do not like the obvious conceit of “Brights”. (Why not just wear a shirt that says ‘superior’). I am partial to ‘freethinker’ ..it’s descriptive but innocuous enough to fly under the radar of the fundies.

WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY’S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?

Sam Harris’ answer:

By Ricky Gervais

Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless. People who believe in God don’t need proof of his existence, and they certainly don’t want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like “it’s true to me” and “it’s faith.” I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe,” comes across as both patronizing and impolite.

[UPDATE: For more from Gervais, go to Does God Exist? Ricky Gervais Takes Your Questions]

Arrogance is another accusation. Which seems particularly unfair. Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe,” this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me,” but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith.” If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”

This, is of course a spirituality issue, religion is a different matter. As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a god. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different god, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are. From what I can gather, pretty much the worst type of person you can be is an atheist. The first four commandments hammer this point home. There is a god, I’m him, no one else is, you’re not as good and don’t forget it. (Don’t murder anyone, doesn’t get a mention till number 6.)

When confronted with anyone who holds my lack of religious faith in such contempt, I say, “It’s the way God made me.”

But what are atheists really being accused of?

The dictionary definition of God is “a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe.” Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities.

So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say “Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…” If they say “Just God. I only believe in the one God,” I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.

I used to believe in God. The Christian one that is.

I loved Jesus. He was my hero. More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God. God was by definition omnipotent and perfect. Jesus was a man. He had to work at it. He had temptation but defeated sin. He had integrity and courage. But He was my hero because He was kind. And He was kind to everyone. He didn’t bow to peer pressure or tyranny or cruelty. He didn’t care who you were. He loved you. What a guy. I wanted to be just like Him.

One day when I was about 8 years old, I was drawing the crucifixion as part of my Bible studies homework. I loved art too. And nature. I loved how God made all the animals. They were also perfect. Unconditionally beautiful. It was an amazing world.

I lived in a very poor, working-class estate in an urban sprawl called Reading, about 40 miles west of London. My father was a laborer and my mother was a housewife. I was never ashamed of poverty. It was almost noble. Also, everyone I knew was in the same situation, and I had everything I needed. School was free. My clothes were cheap and always clean and ironed. And mum was always cooking. She was cooking the day I was drawing on the cross.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when my brother came home. He was 11 years older than me, so he would have been 19. He was as smart as anyone I knew, but he was too cheeky. He would answer back and get into trouble. I was a good boy. I went to church and believed in God -– what a relief for a working-class mother. You see, growing up where I did, mums didn’t hope as high as their kids growing up to be doctors; they just hoped their kids didn’t go to jail. So bring them up believing in God and they’ll be good and law abiding. It’s a perfect system. Well, nearly. 75 percent of Americans are God-­‐fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God-­‐fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists.

But anyway, there I was happily drawing my hero when my big brother Bob asked, “Why do you believe in God?” Just a simple question. But my mum panicked. “Bob,” she said in a tone that I knew meant, “Shut up.” Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a God and my faith was strong it didn’t matter what people said.

Oh…hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within an hour, I was an atheist.

Wow. No God. If mum had lied to me about God, had she also lied to me about Santa? Yes, of course, but who cares? The gifts kept coming. And so did the gifts of my new found atheism. The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. I learned of evolution -– a theory so simple that only England’s greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals and us –- with imagination, free will, love, humor. I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer and pizza are all good enough reasons for living.

But living an honest life -– for that you need the truth. That’s the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity.

So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, f— you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine.

“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is -­‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

We all like to think of ourselves as ‘tolerant’…tolerant in our actions (or lack of) if not in our thoughts and attitudes. But tolerance can be a two sided sword. It is at the point where thoughts and words become action that we must let go of religious ‘tolerance’ and instead assert the right to conscience and public good: secularism.

‘Religious Tolerance’ is a term most people view as favorable; a needed guidepost to navigate between the scary waters of dangerous religious fanaticism, and the party pooper skeptics.  However, on close examination the ‘moderation’ may appear instead  to be ‘enabling’.

Before I get all twelve steppy..let me quote those more learned than myself. Sam Harris writes extensively on this topic:

“The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God.”

This view is new for Liberal secularists..namely, that we should not tolerate religious fundamentalism. It is not enough to simply opt out: we must not capitulate to irrational religious dogma in the name of ‘tolerance’. To illustrate:  the recent Danish cartoon controversy, where Muslims were demanding ‘apologies’, and went on homicidal rampages to prove how peaceful their religion is.  Make no mistake: I want no ten commandments in public places, and No sharia law..I have an equal dislike for all types of religious fundamentalist intrusion on public life.  Religious moderates put us all in danger by pretending all these ideas are acceptable, and apologies should be made to angry imaginary friends.  Why pretend these are not all man-made interpretations and insanities? Would people take me equally as seriously if I insisted the pink horsies were sacred and the illustrator of my little pony should die for creating the image? Before you laugh off the comparison, the only real difference is not the available evidence, but the amount of people who believe it. Give me a few thousand years, and my pink horsey cult would grow….

Astoundingly, the first response of the secular and western community during the cartoon controversy  was to apologize the crazed, angry religious lunatics for “offending” them. This is roughly equivalent to me apologizing to the drunkard who has just broken down my door….for just being in the way.

If someone came into my house drunk, and started to tear the place up, should I give him a drink to calm him down? Just so he won’t be mad at me? Nope.

Both Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have gone far in pointing out that we give quarter to behavior done in the name of religion that we would think intolerable under any other circumstance.

We talk now as if it was ridiculous ever to suspect Roman Catholics of anything but the highest motives, yet by the time John F. Kennedy was breaking the unspoken taboo on the election of a Catholic as president, the Vatican had just begun to consider making public atonement for centuries of Jew-hatred and a more recent sympathy for fascism. Even today, many lay Catholics are appalled at the Vatican’s protection of men who are sought for questioning in one of the gravest of all crimes: the organized rape of children. It is generally agreed that the church’s behavior and autonomy need to be modified to take account both of American law and American moral outrage. So much for the naive invocation of “free exercise.”

Let’s stop enabling. Let’s not let perpetrators of great crime and hideous acts hide behind religion, and let’s make it impossible for them to do so.

“Religious moderates seem to believe that what we need is not radical insight and innovation in these areas but a mere dilution of Iron Age philosophy. Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standards of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world. In what other sphere of life is such subservience to tradition acceptable? Medicine? Engineering? Not even politics suffers the anachronism that still dominates our thinking about ethical values and spiritual experience.”

I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. (Margaret Atwood ~ The Handmaid’s Tale)

When I read Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s tale several years ago, I was still a believer. I was very struck by the desperate tone of the book and its religious over tones. For the uninitiated a quick synopsis:

In the future, infertility is widespread.The story is presented from the point of view of a woman called Offred ( The character is one of a class of individuals kept as a concubine (“handmaid”) for reproductive purposes by the ruling class. Abortion is strictly forbidden, and the novel is a powerful story of control and freedom.  For an American, it beings up the most divisive issue of my lifetime:

Abortion.
It’s where politics and religion merge and ugly divisiveness is born.

It’s the quintessential religious/political issue in America.

But if you think it is about LIFE, or children, you are mistaken. Children die from war, childhood disease, abuse, lack of healthcare, etc..yet where are the protests?  Where are those people to demand a minimally good quality of life for ALL children?  Unfortunately post-birth children and people die and suffer needlessly from a myriad of causes and these people aren’t in the streets to raise awareness of it…why?

Simple.
Because it is about CONTROL. Control over women.
Think I am just a super cynic?  Consider this:  In a country where babies and life were ‘sacred’ wouldn’t they offer free childcare? Women’s healthcare? Pre-natal care?  Children’s healthcare?
To the Catholic church (and Christianity in the U.S) QUANTITY of children simply means MORE money in the coffers and greater dependency on the church. Power over a mother and her reproduction is VERY powerful, and very sinister in the hands of those with the power to administer guilt. It is a little scary to think that to the Catholic church we are nothing but brood mares, HANDMAIDS, if you will.
The ability to plan your family and have control over quantity of children and quality of life is VERY new in the human experience, and a BIG threat to those who used to control religious fear and superstition. People who can plan a family, can plan a future, can provide themselves and their children with opportunity.
At the same time, of course people against abortion have a PERFECT right codified in the first amendment to express their views,  BUT  before you throw a little plastic fetus at someone here is the bottom line:
Getting an abortion is an awful experience. No woman WANTS to have an abortion. It is physically painful, emotionally devastating and most importantly…ABSOLUTELY NONE of your business. Are you willing to adopt every unwanted child born? Pay for their college tuition? No? Then as  crude as it may sound: please shut the fuck up. Because the first amendment allows ME to say that too.

And the flip side of the coin is as ugly: China’s one child policy that results in forced abortions is the same logic, namely control. It  has resulted in a sinister manifestation of misogyny: the selective abortion of the female fetus. China, forced into such a policy by an exploding birth rate has created a reverse handmaid’s tale universe, and may be  on the road to creating a real one since the policy has caused an artificial shortage of women.

I have often said cynically that if men got pregnant, abortions would be available at the 7-11. But worse still is the realization that men simply would not ASK permission, that would not be forced to beg for the right to their own body. As with all things the balance of extremes is the best: women must have access to safe effective birth control and legal safe abortions, and ABORTION or BIRTH is never a decision that should be coerced or forced upon any woman.

Life is too sacred for that.
Speaking of the sacredness of life….
I am a mother . My nine year old son is the sun around which I orbit..he is the center of my universe and I love him beyond description. My experience as a parent has been wonderful. Why? Because I was ready for him, I wanted him, and I had power over my choice. I had power.

Imagine each woman as her OWN handmaid.

If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine.  ~Michael Jay Tucker

Yeah.

OK enough serious crap! What would one of my posts be without poking fun at religious ‘logic’? I present the Libertyville abortion protests…notice that even though they believe abortion is ‘murder’ they aren’t willing to put those ‘murderers’ to death!

Why don’t they leave already?

Notice how the end times are always IMMINENT? But they never actually happen? Fear of ‘Rapture’ is what keeps people like Bush in power. Church leaders and political have been yanking at the choke collar of the ‘faithful’ (fearful), since the days of the Black Plague. Church used to be your only source of information, so naturally you believed what you were taught there. Perfect method of social control especially if you can’t read….but what of MODERN people many of whom can READ…how do you control them then?

Enter the LEFT BEHIND series of books….when reading real literature is just too fucking challenging…..

Fundamentally unsound
Left Behind, the bestselling series of paranoid, pro-Israel end-time thrillers, may sound kooky, but America’s right-wing leaders really believe this stuff.

(SALON.COM)

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Christians are so busy obsessing about a fictional rapture (just like their fictional war on christmas) while there are actual REAL problems we could be solving. So I am asking Jesus a personal favor to go ahead and speed it up please. Come get these irritating people and take them away so we can fix the planet…AND so I don’t have to see these fucktard movies and books about the rapture anymore. Sigh…and I will be LEFT BEHIND……yay. I am looking forward to all the free shoes.