A clever video… maybe too clever?

Here’s a video that’s pretty subtle in its criticism of Christians, but really made me laugh. Disappointing thing is, if you believe the sequel, a lot of people that should’ve gotten the joke, didn’t.

Another sad truth about humanity…

My answers to Friendly Atheist’s questions

In http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/07/20/keep-them-short-and-sweet/, he asks for our answers to some questions commonly asked of atheists. I decided to post my answers on my blog rather than as comments on his.

• Why do you not believe in God? I see a natural universe that functions exactly as I would expect it to function without any deities. I think all religions are primitive, tribal attempts to understand the universe, provide comfort in the face of the “big questions”, enforce morality and reinforce tribal beahviour.
• Where do your morals come from? They are just as built-in with me as they are with everybody else.
• What is the meaning of life? We’re here, we have a duty to ourselves, our families, our communities and to the world in general to do the best we can.
• Is atheism a religion? No. Religion is first and foremost about worshipping a deity.
• If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times? I try to find rational ways to deal with the situation.
• Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God? No. I don’t think the world would be any better off if all religion ceased to exist today. However, I do think we need to do what we can to stop fundamentalists of all stripes. I think Creationism is a bigger threat to America than Al Qaeda, because of the dumbing down of its people.
• Weren’t some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists? I suppose, but I don’t think atheism acted in any way as a motivator. Besides, most of the worst atrocities before the 20th century were committed by religious people.
• How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God? We have an instinct for faith (based on the glory of nature), it’s reinforced by the culture we’re raised in, and the human brain is so complicated that many people can’t distinguish what’s real from what’s not. Anyway, religious people think that everyone who believes in a different god, or gods, is wrong, what’s the difference?
• Why does the universe exist? There’s no answer to this, that’s just the way it is.
• How did life originate? In some natural way that science hasn’t been able to explain yet. Just because some guys sitting around a campfire made up a story doesn’t make it real. Every culture on Earth has probably had their own creation myth.
• Is all religion harmful? Of course not. Religion is a human institution, and is capable of both good and evil, but on balance it’s more good than evil, just as most people are.
• What’s so bad about religious moderates? Nothing, if moderation includes real tolerance of others’ differences. However, I’m with Sam Harris
• Is there anything redeeming about religion? Of course. Religion is a positive force in many people’s lives. It doesn’t have to be real.
• What if you’re wrong about God (and He does exist)? Which god are we talking about here? Poseidon, Zeus or Ra? Oh, you mean the Christian god? What if you’re wrong about Allah or Vishnu? To me it’s not even a question of probability. Gods are created by men. Period. Some use their gods to do good, others use them for money and power.
• Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected? Absolutely not. Your “religious beliefs” really boil down to “what you think is right”, and there are a lot of stupid, intolerant, corrupt, power-hungry, evil people out there.
• Are atheists smarter than theists? Not “smarter”. Just not deluded or deceived.
• How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don’t believe in his divinity? I’m not even convinced that Jesus really did exist, but if he did, he was just a man with some good ideas. His followers created all the supernatural crap to deify him.
• Would the world be better off without any religion? No, because there would still be people who would crave and abuse power, hate or oppress others, profit off their ignorance and good intentions, and generally victimize the innocent.
• What happens when we die? Usually you’re buried or cremated. Either way, your life is over and life goes on without you.

A gem from the people at Creation Science Evangelism

Ok, so I don’t want to give these whack-jobs any more visibility than they already have, but I’m hoping they might just hang themselves with this one. It’s from an essay called “Where Did Cain Find His Wife?”. Words fail me. I’m embarrassed to be of the same species as these people.

“However, there were no moral laws against children intermarrying until after the time of Moses. This was approximately 4,000 years ago and at least 2,000 years after the creation of mankind. Before that time sibling marriage was probably quite common. The Bible states that Adam and Eve had MANY sons and daughters. Jewish tradition suggested that they had 33 sons and 23 daughters! Cain merely married his sister.”

See, God

Here’s a great video on YouTube, “I can’t disprove the existence of Poseidon”. It’s funny, and right on the mark, so I had to re-post it.

Creation Science Evangelism fraudulent claims on YouTube

If you haven’t heard about this one yet, Kent Hovind’s Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) is resorting to blatant fraud in order to have videos removed from YouTube. In short, for videos that they want removed, they claim they own the copyright, YouTube has no choice but to remove them, under US law. One of the videos removed was this one, (Not Safe For Work)

The place to start would be this posting at arstechnica.com.

“From reports that we are getting, starting yesterday a user account on YouTube, called cseministry, began fraudulently claiming that any video which criticized the felon, cheat, liar, fraud, huckster, etc. Kent Hovind violated the copyrights of the Creation Science Evangelism.

Under the draconian DMCA, CSE can use such false claims to silence their critics, with little legal risk to themselves. Once a claim has been filed, YouTube is required by US Law to remove the content immediately and without any review. The real copyright holders then have to jump through hoops to get their content back on YouTube, that is assuming that they haven’t already been falsely banned.”

(from “Hovind’s Goons use Fraud to Remove Critical YouTube Videos” posted Sept 12 2007 at http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/09/hovinds_goons_u.html)

Here’s a video about the issue…

and a “declaration of war”

or this one from eddygoombah, one of the guys who made the animated spoof

Evolution is Not “Just a Theory”

You’ve been told that “evolution is just a theory”, a guess, a hunch, and not a fact, not proven. You’ve been misled. Keep reading, and in less than two minutes from now you’ll know that you’ve been misinformed. We’re not going to try and change your mind about evolution. We just want to point out that “it’s just a theory” is not a valid argument.

Read the full story at http://www.notjustatheory.com/index.html.

I didn’t want to get political here…

…but apparently I have to. You see, the thing is, we’re having an election in Ontario on October 10 2007.

Here’s how I see my choices: In my riding, Mississauga-Erindale, if you don’t vote Liberal or PC, you’re wasting your vote. In the last election (when the riding was called Mississauga-Centre), 47% of the votes were for Liberal Harinder Takhar, 41% for Conservative Rob Sampson. Now there’s nothing wrong with wasting your vote, if you want to make a statement, it’s just not much of a statement if 2% of people vote for the Green Party.

The choices for local representative are actually pretty good: Harinder Takhar, the Liberal incumbent, seems to have done a good job – under the McGuinty government, he served as Minister of Transportation and then Minister of Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

The Tory challenger is David Brown, and he seems qualified to do an excellent job as well.

The problem is that we also get a Premier when we vote for our MPP. Dalton McGuinty has the distinction of being the most bold-faced liar during the last election campaign, but it also seems like he represented us reasonably well, if unremarkable, as Premier. John Tory, who seemed to be an outstanding candidate when he ran for Mayor of Toronto, is the Conservative leader.

We should all know by now that campaign “promises” are really just lies, where we’re supposed to be impressed by how much of our hard-earned money they’re gonna spend. The Liberals are even promising us a new holiday in February, (which may cost the economy as much as $2 billion, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business – Toronto Star, Sep 5 2007).

Campaign “promises” are one thing, but I tend to hope that once elected, the governing party usually ends up doing what it has to do. Bob Rae’s NDP government did a lot of things that you wouldn’t have expected them to do. So I don’t worry too much about who’s “promising” what, because I know it’s all nothing but lies.

So I try to look more at the character of the leader and is he someone I want representing Ontario in front of the world. Here’s the real problem, that just came to light yesterday. John Tory announced in July that a Conservative government would extend funding to all faith-based schools. While I’m completely opposed to this move, I saw it as another one of those lies that they would immediately back-track on once they got in power. It’s so clearly designed to attract the immigrant vote, who according to the experts, are such faithful Liberal supporters.

To me, keeping religion out of schools is every bit as important as the separation of church and state. Schools should be for teaching language, math, science, history, geography, music, art and other subjects, but not religion. Religion should be taught in sunday school and at church. Period. As I understand it, the unfortunate fact that Catholic schools get full funding stems from a constitutional compromise in the 1800’s, without which Canada might never have become a country.

As with any issue between the Liberals and Conservatives, the cost of funding all faith-based schools is not agreed on. Kathleen Wynne, the Minister of Education who is ironically running in the same riding as John Tory, says it would “strip about $500 million out of public schools” (Globe and Mail, Aug 23 2007) whereas “Mr. Tory has promised to give private religious schools $400 million if they opt into the public system” (Globe and Mail, Sep 5 2007). Regardless, this move would clearly cost Ontario taxpayers a lot of money and cause huge damage to the public school system, at a time when many public school boards across the province are already facing funding crises. Anything that takes away from Ontario’s public school system is a bad thing in my eyes.

On a personal note, the outcry when many Christians realize their tax dollars are also funding Islamic, Jewish and Hindu schools would actually be fun to observe. Outside the GTA, where I think people tend to be more conservative, I’m sure many would love funding for Christian schools but I doubt they want anything to do with funding other religions.

In many areas of the GTA, “visible minorities” aren’t even a minority anymore. In my son’s school, visible minorities are the overwhelming majority. If the Hindus and the Muslims at his school suddenly left for a fully-funded faith-based school, the public school would probably have to be closed.

I was hoping to stay out of the pros and cons of immigration and multiculturalism, but I will say this: I think it’s a very good thing that people from different backgrounds go to school together and learn about each other. This is something that the world desperately needs. Sadly, what I see at my son’s school is that the various ethnic groups tend to stick together, leaving him part of an almost invisible minority. But this isn’t about whining about his situation.

I understand it’s not fair to fund only one religion, but this isn’t the way to solve the problem. To me, the only acceptable option to resolving the inequity of only funding Catholic schools is this: Withdraw funding to Catholic schools. This isn’t likely to happen, so I say we have to accept an unfair situation as a legacy of our past.

But my biggest concern with John Tory isn’t about the money, because I just consider it a cynical campaign lie to attract ethnic votes.

On September 4th, he announced that “publicly-funded religious schools would be allowed to teach creationism and other theories.” (Globe and Mail, Sep 5 2007, emphasis mine) Let’s get it straight, evolution is science, creationism is religion. Ms. Wynne got it right, “teaching creationism alongside evolution would be a violation of the curriculum…. Catholic schools are allowed to explore creationism but only in religion – not science – classes.” (from the same Globe & Mail article).

John Tory has shown himself to be the kind of person I don’t want representing Ontario. This is not Kansas, the world doesn’t need another leader who misunderstands science and evolution, who thinks in any way that there’s a “debate” between creationism and evolution or who believes he was chosen by God.

I actually have so little faith in either party that I’d love to vote for someone really different, but who?

I’m fiscally conservative, so I’ll never vote NDP. I’m content to accept that in any minority government, the NDP may control the balance of power in a coalition with the governing minority.

On the big issue of the environment, the only ones with any credibility are the Green Party. I believe they’re more idealistic, in it for what they truly believe is best for the world, not just for the power. But currently, like I said, a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote. Perhaps that would change if the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation referendum is accepted. I’m still undecided on that, but I do see a scenario where, with enough “list” seats, it might be the Green Party who holds the balance of power and that might the best scenario I could hope for.

In summary, yes, McGuinty should be punished for his flagrant lies during the last campaign, but more important is not electing someone who thinks creationism should be taught in Ontario classrooms. It becomes a vote for whoever has the best chance of defeating John Tory, and that means McGuinty.

The Wisdom of the Holy Bible in One Verse

A lot of criticism of the Holy Bible has been written by the people at Evil Bible, the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, Biblical Errancy and others. Not that I disagree with them, but I thought I’d look at it from a positive point of view – look for the timeless, universal and perhaps most importantly, understandable wisdom.

Here it is, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31, NIV)

Obviously this verse is known as the Golden Rule, and I think it gives you, in 11 words, a pretty good model for how to live your life. It applies just as well today as 2,000 years ago, and it should apply just as well or 2,000 years from now. It’s universal – it applies to white, black, Asian, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, heterosexual, homosexual, disabled and whatever other categories you care to put “others” in. And it’s easy to understand and easy to remember. No proverbs, no verses that can be interpreted to prove whatever you want to prove.

You can read more about what Wikipedia calls the “ethic of reciprocity“, as the “common principle for many religions”. They suggest appending “if you were them” as an attempt to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

If you can look at your life and say that you’ve treated everyone with the honesty, respect, tolerance and forgiveness that you think you deserve, then I think you’ve led a pretty decent life.

“Speechless”

 

(http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070706)

Labels – Atheist, Agnostic or something else

How does one categorize oneself? I’ve thought a lot about what to call myself.

First off, when I look at Christianity, I see no reason to believe any of its supernatural claims more than any other religion, past or present. I see all religions and all gods as entirely the creation of man. More on that another day.

I admit right away that most Christians would probably look at my position and automatically call me an atheist, because I don’t believe in their God. Fine, it’s probably the label that will stick, and it’s even part of my blog name, but I’ll try to explain why I don’t think it the best one.

Quoting Greta Christina, another blogger, from Greta Christina’s blog, because I really can’t say it any better,

For most of my life, I’ve called myself an agnostic. I’d always understood “atheist” to mean “someone who’s 100% certain God doesn’t exist,” and “agnostic” to mean “someone who isn’t 100% sure one way or the other.” The latter was true for me, so I called myself an agnostic. And I tended to be somewhat critical of atheists: I felt that being 100% sure that there is no God was just as dogmatic and faith-based as being 100% sure that there was one.

Lately, however, it’s been becoming increasingly clear that “100% sure that there is no God” isn’t the only definition of “atheist.” Richard Dawkins himself — generally cited as “the world’s most famous atheist — isn’t a “100% sure” guy. In The God Delusion (which I just finished, and hope to blog about soon), Dawkins talks about a belief spectrum of 1 through 7 (I wish he’d made it 0 through 6, to correlate with the Kinsey scale!), in which 1 means you’re 100% sure that God exists, and 7 means you’re 100% sure that God doesn’t exist. Dawkins puts himself at 6 leaning towards 7 — a position he calls “de facto atheist.”

And Dawkins’s position on his belief/non-belief scale is pretty much the same as mine.

Which got me thinking.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, while in the strictest technical sense of the word I’m an agnostic (I’m not 100% certain that there is no God), in any real practical sense I’m an atheist. I don’t think the existence of God is impossible, but I think it’s very, very improbable — improbable enough for me to rule it out as a hypothesis.

A comparison I’ve been making a lot lately is Zeus. I am about as sure that there is no personal interventionist creator god as I am that there is no Zeus. But I wouldn’t call myself an agnostic about Zeus. I would call myself an atheist about Zeus. I can’t absolutely prove that Zeus doesn’t exist– but I think Zeus’s existence is sufficiently improbable that I don’t have to consider it as a possibility, and I certainly don’t live my life on the assumption that he might exist.

And I feel exactly the same way about Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah, or whatever you want to call the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, personal interventionist creator god.

Greta Christina is a blogger I found recently, who expresses a lot of things better than I could ever hope to, but she’s also a very different person from me and I don’t buy into everything she says. For example, I’ve never considered myself an agnostic. I’ve never felt “wishy-washy” about whether God existed or not, at least not as an adult.

One of the problems with the term “atheist” is it’s too vague — which God do you not believe in? Or maybe it’s too Christian-centric — it’s assumed that the God you don’t believe in is the Christian one. Somebody named Stephen Henry Roberts said, “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” (from Positive Atheism) You and I probably both are atheists with respect to Zeus, Ra and Thor and for exactly the same reason, I am an atheist about the Christian God.

But the bigger problem to me is that “atheist” doesn’t capture the complexity of my views on religion. I assume atheists never go to church, since they’d feel hypocritical doing so. I rarely go to church, but that’s not because I don’t believe in the “institution” of religion. As a human creation, religions are imperfect, but on balance, they’re more good than bad. As for religions other than Christianity, I’ve looked at Hinduism and Islam, and they’re just too foreign for me to begin to relate to them. My Christian heritage is part of who I am, but it’s more than just a historical thing. Religion’s also about belonging to a community. I recently had one of those defining moments, when I started looking at religion as culture.

The best label for me would identify my Christian heritage and culture, which is an important part of who I am, but would also say that I’m past all the mystery. So the ideal label is one I haven’t seen very often, but I remember coming across it years ago, “post-Christian”.

As an atheist, I used to feel I had to explain why I didn’t believe each particular part of Christian theology. Now, I’m beyond all that, I don’t believe any of it. I don’t believe in God, Jesus, heaven, hell, the soul or the afterlife, Satan, angels or the Bible.

So, what does being “post-Christian” mean to me? It means I can embrace Christianity because it’s my culture, I can enjoy Christmas and Easter, I can go to church, which makes me feel good, without feeling hypocritical, I can cope with religious rituals because that’s “how’s it’s always been done”. I can take oaths to God knowing that it’s the community I’m promising to, not the deity. I want my kids to have some understanding of their Christian culture but I will not indoctrinate them into it. I live by the morality that I know is right, not by what any religious leader tells me. I respect many people of religious faith (the exception is the extremists on any side of the equation — I have equally little respect for Christian and Islamic fundamentalists) and would never try to convince anyone to leave their religion. I have no respect for ignorant, intolerant people regardless what religion they belong to.