Atheists: Come out, come out, wherever you are

[ednbarby]

Not to compartmentalize people, but I've found that our Catholic and Jewish friends have never once asked us whether we baptised Will/want to take him to church or to Temple/are raising him to believe in God.  Not ever.  The people who have asked us are Christians and go to some denominational church or other.  Which is not to say that *all* people in that latter category are like that.  But just that the ones who have asked us have been in that latter category.

I guess I should answer them this way:  Well, you believe in God and that Christ is his son and the Holy Bible, right?  So you generally teach your kids to do the same things, right?  Well, we don't believe in God and we don't go to church, so generally we're going to teach our son the same things.  But if he came to us and said, "You know what - I believe in God and I want to go to church," not only would we say, "Good for you."  We'd drive him there and attend with him until he was old enough to attend on his own.  I would hope if your son came to you and said, "You know what - I don't believe in God and I don't want to go to church," you'd be every bit as supportive.  Right?

Yeah.  Right.

[Impish]

If anyone thinks I'm being alarmist and paranoid about the state of affairs in the U.S. today, take a look at this article about christian fundamentalists who a) believe that American should not be a democracy; and b) advocate the stoning of gay people:

http://www.alternet.org/story/40318

The scariest thing of all is that these people are not on the fringes of society;  they actually have influence in Washington.

[vkm91941]

If anyone thinks I'm being alarmist and paranoid about the state of affairs in the U.S. today, take a look at this article about christian fundamentalists who a) believe that American should not be a democracy; and b) advocate the stoning of gay people:

http://www.alternet.org/story/40318

The scariest thing of all is that these people are not on the fringes of society;  they actually have influence in Washington.

Well I certainly don't think your paranoid Bill.  Fanatics for any cause or religion are dangerous and deluded folks and heaven or providence help us all if they combine their religious fanaticism with some social or political obsession.

[Marge_Innavera]

By Sam Harris

Editor’s Note: At a time when fundamentalist religion has an unparalleled influence in the highest government levels in the United States, and religion-based terror dominates the world stage, Sam Harris argues that progressive tolerance of faith-based unreason is as great a menace as religion itself. 

Assuming you agree with Mr. Harris, what form do you think intolerance of 'faith-based unreason' should take? Do you think that people who believe in a deity should be able to vote? Hold public office? If not, how would you change the First Amendment, assuming you're in the US?

An Atheist Manifesto

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

This is one of the questions that what is sometimes called "Holocaust theology" wrestles with: if one was saved from Auschwitz by divine intervention, what about people who were not saved from it? Some people in Holocaust theology thinking go the atheist route; others do not.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious.

Unfortunately, we live in a world in which even people with beliefs well across the borders of Goofyland consider them "self-evident" or "obvious."

The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day.

"Obliged" how?  What sort of penalties are you advocating?

We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this.

According to panentheist beliefs (not to be confused with "pantheism", the notion that there should be a "cure" or divine rescue mission for a universe that has imperfection built into it is nonsensical. The universe is functioning exactly as it is supposed to; static perfection isn't part of its reality.

[Impish]

There are five articles (and a long preamble ) in this document.  As I was impressed with it -- especially when I learned the year of publication --  I plan on transcribing an article a day.  All capitalization, boldface and spelling is directly from the document itself.  Best, Impish

"1. I IMPEACH CHRISTIANITY IN THE NAME OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.

Because it is the great organized Superstition of the Western world, perpetuating in modern times the false beliefs, the degrading fears, and the benumbing influences of the Dark Ages -- in proportion to it power over men paralyzing their intellectual faculties, keeping them in the bondage of childish fancies, and governing them by means of an utterly irrational religious terrorism.

Because it is the great enemy of science, retarding the spread of natural knowledge, opposing new truths and discoveries as irreligious, perpetuating popular ignorance on all but permitted subjects in order that is own empire may be unshaken, and making blind faith in impossible doctrines the highest virtue of the human soul and the only protection against terrible yet purely imaginary dangers.

Because it is the greatest stumbling block in the pathway of civilization, inasmuch as it withdraws attention from the natural affairs of this life, concentrates all its earnest thought on a future life that is to be eternal bliss or eternal misery, makes a merit of neglect of this world's riches in order 'to lay up treasures in heaven', frowns on active enterprise as a dangerous devotion to 'carnal things', and thus unfits men for the attention to all those objects of honourable ambition on which the progress of civilization so largely depends."

From: "Impeachment of Christianity," Francis E. Abbott, as published in The Index magazine, January 6, 1872

[Impish]

2. I IMPEACH CHRISTIANITY IN THE NAME OF HUMAN VIRTUE

"Because it appeals to hope and fear as the supreme motives of human conduct, holds out promises of an eternal heaven as the reward of obedience to its commands, utters threats of an eternal hell as the punishment of disobedience to them, makes its appeal to human selfishness as the proper spring of human action, and consequently undermines and destroys the disinterestedness of all high morality, which commands the right because it is right and forbids the wrong because it is wrong, regardless alike of punishment and of reward.

Because it teaches that the virtue of the 'Savior' can be substituted for the virtue of the 'saved' -- that the 'sinner' can be made pure by the righteousness of another, -- that merit and demerit do not belong to the individual, but can be transferred like a garment from back to back.  Its great doctrines of "Depravity' and the 'Atonement' are a blank denial of the very possibility of personal virtue.

"Because it teaches that the natural penalties of wrong doing can be escaped by 'faith in Christ',-- that the consequences of moral evil are neither necessary nor universal,-- that the law of case and effect does not hold in the moral world and thus weakens the natural auxiliaries of imperfect virtue by fostering the delusion that men can do evil without suffering for it.

Because it enjoins self-abhorrence as the first condition of the 'salvation' it offers,-- makes the denial of all 'worth and worthiness' in mankind the first step in the Christian life, and teaches the Christ will save those alone who have lost all faith in themselves and in their own power to escape the just wrath of God.  It thus strikes a deadly blow at the dignity of human nature, extinguishes that noble sentiment of self-respect without which all high virtue is impossible, and smites men with the leprosy of self-contempt.  It makes them crawl like reptiles before Christ -- 'their hands on their mouths, and their mouths in the dust'.  It is the very abolition of true manliness among men.

Because, by this extinction of self-respect, it enfeebles the consciousness of human rights, and thus blights the very idea of natural justice, which is the practical recognition of these rights.  No man who despises himself can respect his fellows or reverence the rights inherent in their very humanity.  Whatever extinguishes human rights before God will extinguish human rights among men.  For this reason Christianity has always been blind to justice.

Because, finally, it recognizes no higher law for man than the 'revealed will of God'.  It thus bases all morality on will alone, and says nothing of that necessary Nature of Things which determines all moral relations.  It thus confuses men's ideas of right and wrong, and renders impossible that knowledge of true ethical principles which is essential to all enlightened virtue."

From: "Impeachment of Christianity," Francis E. Abbott, as published in The Index magazine, January 6, 1872

[Impish]

3. I IMPEACH CHRISTIANITY IN THE NAME OF THE HUMAN HEART

"Because it recognizes no sanctity in natural human affections, but requires that all these shall be subordinated to an unnatural love of Christ as the Savior of souls. 'He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.'  'If any man hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple.'

Because it extends over myriads of sensitive minds the blackness and gloom of a horrible theology, tortures them with a morbid self-reproach for unreal transgressions, and fills them with excruciating doubts of their final escape from hell, -- thus destroying their happiness, and robbing their life of its natural beauty and charm.

Because it commands supreme love to a God whose character is utterly unlovely -- a God whose wrath against his own children is a 'consuming fire',  and who plunges the vast majority of them into eternal agony.  It thus degrades the very idea of fatherhood, by teaching the 'Fatherhood' of a God whose character and acts are as unfatherly as they are incredible.

Because it proclaims a 'Brotherhood of Man' which denies the natural equality essential to all genuine brotherhood -- which perverts the natural sentiment of good-will towards all men into an artificial and exclusive bond among Christians themselves, and into a thoroughly unnatural condescension or pity towards all others -- which is in fact consistent with the harshest injustice and the most frightful cruelty towards those who reject the Christian creed.  It thus degrades and lowers the very idea of brotherhood, by calling that the 'Brotherhood of Man' which is simply a fellowship of Christian believers, and which has been too often in history a fellowship of thieves and murderers."

From: "Impeachment of Christianity," Francis E. Abbott, as published in The Index magazine, January 6, 1872

[Impish]

4. I IMPEACH CHRISTIANITY IN THE NAME OF HUMAN FREEDOM

"Because it sets up a despotic authority which, whether as Church, as Bible, or as Christ, makes man a slave in his very soul -- an authority which shuts up the human intellect within arbitrarily prescribed bounds, hands over the human conscience to the custody of clerical keepers, and rules all human life, individual or social, with an iron rod.

Because it has always allied itself with despotism in civil government, joined with the oppressor in keeping the oppressed under foot, and sought to maintain its own supremacy on the ruins of all human liberty.

Because, as Catholicism, it has been an unmitigated spiritual and temporal tyranny, from which many centuries of constant struggle have today only partially emancipated the world.

Because, as Protestantism, it has been as unmitigated spiritual tyranny, and is even now plotting in this free republic to reestablish itself as a temporal tyranny also.

Because it is the true heir of the ancient Roman Imperialism, seeking now as ever to establish and maintain an absolute empire over the whole world, and to bind the entire human race not only in political, but also in religious bondage.  Wherever Christianity lives, Freedom dies.  They cannot both long breathe the same atmosphere.

From: "Impeachment of Christianity," Francis E. Abbott, as published in The Index magazine, January 6, 1872

[Impish]

5. I IMPEACH CHRISTIANITY IN THE NAME OF HUMANITARIAN RELIGION

"Because it stands stubbornly in the path of all human progress, blocking the way of every movement which aims at the enlargement of human life, --opposes, and has always opposed, every genuine reform in human affairs, -- consults only the interests of its own creeds, and sets its face like a flint against the purely secular education in which, by a quick instinct, it recognizes the most dangerous enemy of this creed. 

Because it teaches the impossibility of Humanity's advance through it own natural exertions, and insists that it should rely on supernatural assistance alone -- thus extinguishing aspiration and drying up the fountain-head of all progress.

Because it teaches despair of human nature, as ruined, lost and depraved -- incurable of all salvation but that which comes from without, and subject to no law of natural development but that of degeneration, carrying it from bad to worse and from worse to worst.  It thus denies the great hopeful doctrine of humanitarian religion, that Humanity tends by its own free efforts to grow better as it grows older, and to emerge from a lower into a higher state in accordance with natural laws.

Because it proclaims ideas of God which would drive every reflective mind acquainted with modern knowledge into absolute Atheism, were it not that modern knowledge itself furnished the elements of a far higher idea of God in universal Nature.  It thus appears as the most insidious enemy of the religious sentiment -- the destroyer of that pure and ennobling worship which recognizes that Divine throughout all Time and Space, and creates in the soul of man a consciousness of profound spiritual oneness with the vast Whole of which he is a part.

From: "Impeachment of Christianity," Francis E. Abbott, as published in The Index magazine, January 6, 1872

[Impish]

"In the name, therefore. of Human Intelligence, of Human Virtue, of the Human Heart, of Human Freedom, and Humanitarian Religion, I seriously and earnestly impeach Christianity before the tribunal of Humanity it still continues to outrage and enslave.  I impeach it in the name of that which is higher than itself, not lower -- in the name of Truth, of Morality, of Love, of Liberty, of God; and I summon it to answer at the bar of Humanity, its rightful judge, that it may clear itself of the crimes and misdemeanors of which I accuse it, or else submit to the sentence of just condemnation pronounced against it by the public opinion of civilized mankind.

Francis E. Abbott, 1872



From: "Impeachment of Christianity," Francis E. Abbott, as published in The Index magazine, January 6, 1872