The definition of atheism is very simple. When boiled down, it is simply a lack of belief in deities, for whatever reason. Many people go further, of course; for instance, they make claims about the afterlife, but that’s not really an intrinsic part of atheism.

The discussion regarding atheists also being feminists then degenerated into the benefits of feminism and guilt by association, which in itself is such a feminist concept. After my comment, people appeared to be responding to the perceived criticism of feminism implicit in the denial of linking of it to atheism rather than to the idea that atheism should—and can—stand on its own.

As I have said previously(and also in my comment to that article), if an atheist wants to take on those other causes, I have no problem with that. Atheists are driven by their own conscience, and they should take on causes that feel right to them. Note that I’m specifically saying “atheists” and not “everybody”. The religious are not, generally, driven by their own conscience; instead, their motivation arises from the commands of their gods, or their spokesmen.

Somehow, though, that doesn’t seem to be enough for certain people. They need to link certain types of belief with other types of beliefs, and what’s more, they want to do it for everybody. Ebonmuse never did answer my objection, though he instructed me to reread his post, thinking he already answered it within the body of his original post. In fact, he didn’t, he made it worse. The following quote is the entirety of the very last paragraph of his post.

The diversity of the atheist movement is its greatest strength. There will never be a council of elders or an infallible text dictating what atheists must believe, nor would I want there to be. But I think the atheist community can and should act collectively, by unanimous consent, to make it clear to sexists and other bigots that they are not welcome and that we don’t want them associated with us – similar to the way Larry Darby was collectively cast out after he revealed his racist, Holocaust-denying beliefs. We should do this not because it’s a decree imposed on us from above, but because we all recognize, using our own reason and best sense, that it’s the right thing to do, and that we stand to gain many more friends and allies than we stand to lose.

There’s a lot of stuff there, so I’m going to break it down, point by point.

1. Atheist movement is about diversity.
2. We don’t have, and never will have, an overarching text, telling us what we must believe.
3. Atheist community should—and can—act collectively and by unanimous consent.
4. Sexists and bigots are not welcome and we(i.e., atheists) don’t want them associated with us.
5. Larry Darby was collectively cast out for his racist… beliefs.
6. It’s not a decree, but reason and best sense to do this.

This sounds great, very cosmopolitan, until you close your browser and go to the fridge for a beer. That’s when it becomes a case of Fridge Horror. Let’s take it point by point.

1. Atheist movement is about diversity: excellent!
2. We don’t have, and never will have, an overarching text, telling us what we must believe. Except that we should all be feminists.
3. Atheist community should—and can—act collectively and by unanimous consent. It sounds like a great plan, doesn’t it? Except, if we don’t have an overarching text, how do we know? This isn’t just about feminism; you can apply this to anything.
4. Sexists and bigots are not welcome and we(i.e., atheists) don’t want them associated with us. Excellent! Except who defines what it means to be a sexist or a bigot?
5. Larry Darby was collectively cast out for his racist… beliefs. I’ve never even heard of him, but apparently he’s a racist no longer claiming to be an atheist but a Christian and running for government office.
6. It’s not a decree, but reason and best sense to do this. Yes, because it’s all about diversity. See #1. Oh… wait. No, it’s not, not when we don’t agree with your kind of diversity.

This is where the discussion degenerated into the tired old cliché regarding salaries and glass ceilings even though I wasn’t—and still am not—disagreeing with the idea of fighting against sexism. And on top of that, my original objection about linking atheism with feminism wasn’t even addressed. Then I was presented with a completely strawman scenario where if I know of a woman who makes less money than I do for the same job and not do anything about it, then I’m guilty by association and shouldn’t be surprised if feminists come to roast my ass. Or something. Of course, I’ve never even suggested that racism or sexism were OK, or that atheists should ignore these  problems.

That last bit was the most hilarious to me since it basically enshrines the idea of guilt by association without question, atheist-style. Abrahamic religions have one, too: they damn all women for the supposed sin of Eve. Christianity goes a step further and damns the entire human race. How very… theist… of atheists to want to enshrine a very religious concept within their own “platform”. Never mind the ethical question of guilt by association for biological rather than choice groups.

I will write more about this in the upcoming post regarding atheism and the polarazation of politics. Please stay tuned.

That’s the beginning, the middle and the end—the Alpha and the Mu and the Omega—of all three Abrahamic religions—Judaism(perhaps less so than the other two,) Christianity and Islam. The central question. The source of all theology. It isn’t God, or Sin, or Satan. It isn’t the Pope or the Imam or the Rabbi. It is, just that, a seemingly simple question: “What happens when I die?”

The Theistic Approach

From a theistic standpoint, the answer is simple: your soul—your immortal self—leaves your corpse and ascends to Heaven(if you’ve been good) or descends to Hell(if you’ve been bad). Of course, there are other possible destinations for the newly departed souls, destinations such as Purgatory and Limbo. They don’t matter in the context of this discussion because, like Heaven and Hell, they are merely additional destinations for the soul.

For thousands of years, all Christian theology—and given the state of Islam these days, I’d say theirs also—has been compulsively obsessed with the afterlife, and how to get into the better version. Books have been written about who can get into Heaven and how and why, and who is going to Hell and how and why. And in the thousands of years, nobody has ever been able to show that not only is there an actual Heaven and Hell, but that the soul really exists.

When Christians talk about being saved, they don’t mean to become better people, they mean to ensure their eventual entry to Heaven. Which is kind of interesting, because I always thought that’s what Jesus was supposed to have done in the first place. Otherwise, what’s the point to the Christian human sacrifice worship?

Thinking about death as a theist, especially a Christian one, manifests feelings of fear(“Was I pious enough?” “Did I love Jesus enough?”) and also anticipation(“I will meet my beloved Grandma once I die.”) And also feelings of comfort(“Don’t cry, Timmy, Poodles isn’t dead, she’s just gone to kitty heaven.”) A theist will quote Genesis 2:7 and make stuff up about the soul and the afterlife from there.

2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Despite the verse quoted above, the explanation of life is without meaning or understanding, and ultimately fruitless. Clamping unto a thousands-of-years old idea of what life means with both hands, the theist shrieks that that is all the explanation we need and need look no further. God did it, that’s all you need to know. Except, from what I could tell, the Old Testament uses “soul”  to mean living person and nothing more.

The Atheistic Approach

From an atheistic standpoint… Well, now, we have a problem. An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in the same Gods that Jews, Christians and Muslims also don’t believe in, he just goes one God further. The problem with any thought of an afterlife, from an atheistic standpoint, is that theists have usurped the idea of an afterlife, tying it inextricably with their version of God and faith. This is also linked with the common theistic bombast, “If we’re just a bunch of chemicals, why does anything matter?” Or “If we’re just a bunch a chemicals with no higher authority or purpose or accountability, why aren’t you out there raping and murdering and thieving and being ultimately atheistic?”

Thinking about death as an atheist presents a challenge because atheists don’t really have a doctrine that describes life, or what it really means. Scientists(theistic and atheistic alike) can describe the processes of life, the chemical reactions. Using the Theory of Evolution, the scientist can even describe how the lifeforms we see around us, including ourselves, became what they—we—are.

What the science doesn’t answer, however, is what life is. And neither does atheism; in fact, it doesn’t even ask the question. That’s not it’s job.

The Meaning of Life

And that’s the crux of the matter.

One cannot know death unless one knows life.

I find it telling that “alive” is not an attribute of God. I checked out the following(admittedly not an exhaustive collection of sources): Precept Austin and also All About God. In all the thousands of years of Abrahamic disputation, no one has ever defined life. None of holy books certainly do. Oh, they have instructions on how to live a Godly life—when boiled down, it is basically “Obey God and be afraid of Him, very, very afraid and those who purport to speak for him”—but they don’t tell you what life is. How could they? The men who wrote those books had no idea themselves.

Without knowing life, we can’t know death. In that respect, as atheists we are in exactly the same position as the theists. We don’t understand life or death, nor do we understand what happens afterwards. The difference is, though, that atheists tend not to make sweeping generalizations about the nature of eternal life post-death and then condemning all non believers(or different-believers) to hell. Or death.

Reaching Higher

Modern science concentrates exclusively on the mechanics of life, and death. That is certainly a worthy goal. By better understanding our own biology we can prevent(or even eradicate) and heal disease, improve injury repair methods and generally improve our quality of life in ways that religion can only dream of. Understanding the mechanics of death can help us understand the mechanics of life, and also to catch criminals. All worthy goals. It also teaches people how to think, how to ask the questions nobody else wants answers to. In other words, we don’t need to know the philosophical meaning of life to develop a polio vaccine.

Psychiatry concentrates on the mind and mental diseases. What was once thought to be possession of devils is now understood to be mental illness. That, also, is a step forward. You can’t cure mental illness with prayer—or throwing down with devils—but you can with better science. At the very least, you can provide the ill with palpable, if not permanent, relief and help these people live relatively normal lives.

Theism, in turning to ancient texts for all its answers, can only frighten and cajole and beat people into submission; it can’t answer any of their higher questions. About the only thing it can do is convince people that the only questions they should ask are the ones already answered by millenia-old texts written originally in now-dead languages, and to shame into submission those that dare ask uncomfortable questions anyway.

God is moral and cultural stasis: Deuteronomy 4:2.

4:2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

No progress can be made in such an environment. I wonder if this injunction applies equally to those chapters Leviticus that discuss how to deal with disease and those contaminated with it.

Atheism, ultimately a negation of theism and nothing more, forces you to look forward. By denying you simplistic solutions driven by fear—or anything else, for that matter—it expects you to find your own meaning, to reject dogmatic strictures of the past—and even the present. Quality of life will improve only when we start imagining the future and not living in the past. Quality of life cannot be improved by looking backward for moral guidance to a time when it was thought acceptable to murder a woman for not screaming loudly enough during her own rape.

The Meaning of Death

The meaning of death, as I noted before, has been the preoccupation of humans since we first recognized ourselves for what we are: beings different from—better than!—all the other animals; animal lovers will hate me for this, but there it is. In all that time, perhaps tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of years, no one has been able to answer it. Our arts, our literature, our entertainment, our religions are all obsessed with death. Somebody dies, somebody tries to figure how and why. Trouble is, we can only understand death as it relates to life, which we also don’t understand, but at the very least, we have 6 billion walking examples of it. We have no examples of death; no one has ever come back and conclusively said, proven 100% and beyond any doubt, what it is like on the other side. If there is another side.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to die, and it’s a hard concept to understand, and I don’t know if I ever will. To be conscious and aware one moment, and the next to be simply… turned off and gone scares people. It scares me. It’s incomprehensible; I simply can’t conceive of being… and then simply not. I’m walking on a sidewalk, whistling a happy tune, thinking about my next blog post. Suddenly a piano falls on me and crushes me to death. What happens then? I haven’t a clue.

This is the reason religions start. They act as cushions for humans with fears of mortality. Of course, then they grow up and demand more and more of your attention, like children that haven’t been taught their place. Money, time, fear, love: all these things religions demand and, in return, offer no more truth than an atheist can in regards to death—or anything else. They’re like vampires who suck the life out of you until you’re bone dry while giving you an orgasm to cover up the terror and the agony.

Final Thoughts

Perhaps I, as an atheist, make too many assumptions about the universe. I don’t believe in Gods because there is no proof, but is the assumption that there is likewise no soul and that everything stops at death equally valid? Why is the concept of a soul tied in so closely with religion? What if theism is right, but for entirely different reasons, reasons that would make theists’ heads exploded with shock? What would it mean to be human if the soul really does exist, but decoupled from any theistic meaning or idea, and at death it simply moves forward? Or backward? Or maybe it circles?

Perhaps there is reincarnation and your soul circles from the death to life and back to death and then life again until you get it right—whatever it happens to be—and then move you forward to… whatever.

Atheism demands evidence. Of course, there isn’t any to be had anywhere. This world seems perfectly insulted from everything incorporeal, but is that because a) there is nothing beyond our physical form or b) because our incorporeal selves put those barriers in place or c) because that’s the only way they could even make it down to the corporeal world if there was a pre-existing barrier? I have no idea; there is no way to know, not until you’re dead. The perfect veil, but is it perfect because it doesn’t exist or because it is that impenetrable?

Perhaps it is much simpler than this. Perhaps the meaning of death isn’t so much about where you go afterward, but what you leave behind. That would make life of primary concern, something we should be concentrating on far more than on death.

When we blog on whatever topic—religion, atheism, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, gay teletubbies, God’s wrath at Haitian slaves so rude and crude as to demand freedom and equal treatment as human beings(I know, the nerve!), conspiracy theories or what have you—we really inhabit two different worlds simultaneously: the meat world and the virtual world.

The meat world is where our real lives take place, where we are no known by real names, have jobs, pay bills, get into traffic accidents and argue with girlfriends over our wedding plans with other women. This is also the world inhabited by all the other lifeforms currently occupying this planet apart from ourselves.

On the other hand, the virtual world is where we play at our blogging, create new identities and live lives completely disconnected from the meat life. We have virtual friends we’ll never meet in the meat world, other virtual people are aware of our virtual identities and of our virtual writings.

These two worlds can meet when we blog under our meat names, but for a large proportion of us, we try to keep the two worlds separate. When these two worlds intersect outside of our control or without thought, they can collide and damage each other.

It has occurred to me that religion likewise has created two worlds, a meat world and a virtual world. In fact, religion postulates two of one and only one of the other. One world is where our real lives take place and the other is for make-believe. The issue at hand is, which world is which. A religious person would say that heaven is the meat world while the Earth is a virtual world. A non-religious person would say quite the opposite.

How do we really tell the difference?

We don’t. We can’t. Nothing is certain, except how irritating theists who claim otherwise are.

Which leads us to which world should we consider which?

Without getting into the esoteric, useless Matrix-like philosophy, we know the world in which I’m sitting at my keyboard and typing this article exists. There are buildings, forests, cars, animals, mountains, people, planets, stars, galaxies. This is the world where our current lives take place. A non-religious person would say that this is the meat world, the only world in which anything matters. The other two, well that’s just fairy tales and make-believe.

This is what religious people seem to have the most difficulty in grasping. Atheists don’t believe in two other two worlds not because we’re rebels or we hate God or anything other than that there is absolutely zero evidence that those other two worlds even exist. All we have is one book and nearly two thousand years of postulation based a priori on the existence of those two worlds and, even more alarmingly, that the people who wrote that one book knew what they were talking about in the first place.

But is there any real cause to think that these two extra worlds exist and that the beliefs espoused in this one world over the course of between -0.75 to 100 years determine one’s destination for eternity are at all valid?

Religious people would say there is, but when pressed, they invariably quote Biblical verses to support their worldview. The reality, however, is that those verses can only support the worldview, and never the world. By focusing on the eternal instead of the here-and-now, religions convince adherents strap on suicide vests and kill flight attendants with box cutters before flying planes into other people’s buildings, hide evidence of child molestation by priests because speaking out against said molestation would damage the Church, and also excommunicate nuns working in Christian hospitals for choosing to abort a fetus that was killing its mother rather than allowing the both of them to die.

Yes, some of us who believe in this one world and this one world only go on to do terrible things. Religious people often point to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot as evidence that atheism is morally bankrupt and creates terrible evils. What they miss is that even if it can be shown that Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were out-and-out atheists, it’s still irrelevant because they didn’t do it in the name of atheism, but in the name of a single idea, a concept that should be very familiar to religious people.

Hitler was obsessed with racial purity, Stalin cult of personality, Mao the perfect society and Pol Pot… well, honestly I don’t know about him, but I’m sure it was something in a similar vein. Religions are obsessed with themselves.

When God—or anything at all—becomes the central theme of one’s life, anything becomes possible, regardless of how monstrous or evil it is.

So, which world is the real one and which one is make-believe?

I choose the one inhabited by real people with real problems that need help now, not in the hereafter.

I’ve been watching Doctor Who, starting with the 2005 series. Of course, I’ve looked up the summaries of the previous twenty-odd series, though to get the full benefit of the 2005 series, it’s actually unnecessary to know very much about those early years. Enough is explained to get you by. Good thing, too, because there is no way anybody just coming into the 2005 series fresh is going to then slog through all those other episodes.

An interesting idea started forming in my mind as I had my first real exposure to the Daleks and the Cybermen, a pair of Doctor Who baddies who are really fun to watch on screen. It occured to me that the Daleks and the Cybermen, as seen on the screen, are nearly perfect metaphors for religion.

What are Daleks

Within the Doctor Who universe, the Daleks are a race of genetically engineered creatures encased within an armoured, tank-like device, bent on the complete destruction of all other lifeforms because… well, because, as the Doctor put it in the Season 1 episode “Dalek”, they honestly believe that they should die.

As such, they represent the virulently aggressive strains of religion, religions that will kill you out of hand for being different and for simply existing.

What are some of the features of the Daleks

• Rage at everything different
• Absolute belief in the Dalek way and command structure
• Inability to question authority
• Inability to accept change
• They love to make a speech

Favourite catchphrases of the Daleks

• Exterminate!
• Any sort of command, repeated three times with increasing tone, pitch and intensity

Behaviour of the Daleks

The Daleks appear to be in a constant stage of rage. Whenever they get excited—which is almost all the time—they routinely shout a phrase three times with increasing intensity. While trying to make Rose Tyler predict the Doctor’s course of action, a Dalek shouted at her, “Predict! PREDICT! Predict!” This is accompanied by the visible shaking of their armoured base, as if they were a child in the midst of a temper tantrum, complete with stamping of the feet.

As a group, they are incapable of change and will destroy any one of them that dares to challenge the status quo. Even the virtually complete destruction of their entire race during the Time War proved unable to alter that. When one of the four surviving Daleks was able to perceive a truth beyond his own existence, the other three banded together and destroyed him.

They’re difficult to fight since they have forcefields that shrug off fire from human weapons, and they’re routinely surprised when people continue to resist anyway.

They’re fun to watch on-screen, like the train wreck in Wanted: you know people are going to die, but you just can’t look away.

What are the Cybermen

Cybermen are basically people who’ve had their brains ripped out and welded unto a metal frame and had all emotions suppressed. No doubt there are other things done to these people because as soon as a Cyberman is created, it immediately becomes militaristic and willing to kill for its people. What the Cybermen want collectively is to convert others to be like them, or failing that, to kill those that resist or, as they put it, suffer maximum deletion.

As such, they represent the more benign strains of religion, a religion that tries its damndest to convert you first and only if that doesn’t work will it kill you.

What are some of the features of the Cybermen

• Lack of emotions because the pain of what they are hurts too much
• Overriding belief that all humans(and I suppose humanoids) are desperate to be saved from their own humanity(humanoidity? )
• Conditioning is not perfect—strong enough human minds can survive the conversion and become anti-cybermen
• Suffer under delusions of adequacy—they are really good at screwing up the lives of regular people, but no good whatsoever against the true fanatics, the Daleks

Favourite catchphrases of the Cybermen

• Delete!
• Maximum deletion

Behaviour of the Cybermen

The Cybermen are more reserved than the Daleks, more dignified somehow. They walk proudly, with balled fists, as if they spurn the earth on which they stand. They use force and intimidation to keep the populace cowed until they can be converted to Cybermen and are not averse to mind control devices. They’re driven by the need to convert all others to be like them, perhaps in the desire to share their own pain. They know nothing of love or mercy or even peace; they’re nothing but killing machines. Occasionally, a converted human is able to override the Cybermen programming from within his—or her—own metal chassis and usurp the armoured suit for his—or her—own purposes. Such a Cyberman must, of course, be destroyed by the others.

As a group, the Cybermen are cursed with delusions of adequacy. They’re really good at ruining normal people’s lives, and are therefore deluded into thinking they’re capable of facing the Daleks without overwhelming force. This leads a Dalek to quip that there is only one thing the Cybermen are better at than the Daleks, which is dying.

Behaviour of Religion

The Daleks, Cybermen and religions all behave the same way. They expect instant submission to their most outrageous demands, backed up by threats of dire retribution. They demand and expect unquestioning loyalty from its followers, with the apostates being cast out and destroyed. They are sublimely convinced of their superiority and inferiority of everyone else. They throw hissy fits whenever thwarted in some small way. Individual adherents of this or that religion will yell at the top of their voices that they can’t understand how others, especially unbelievers, can even talk of morality and why they aren’t out there doing what’s best of them without regard for anyone else, which for some strange reason always equates to raping and murdering and stealing. Then these adherents will stamp their feet in frustrations when unbelievers aren’t actually doing this. Even religions that won’t kill you outright for the smallest transgression still condemn you to the everlasting flames.

Religions believe they’re the sole way to the infinite; their arrogance leads to place limits on the infinite to make it fit with that religion’s ideas. They believe they can save you, and if that means your life, or your livelihood, then so be it. Religions try to deny the non-believers the right to do things their own way and assume that their way is the only true way, all others are false.

The Daleks and the Cybermen are therefore metaphors for religions, behaving in ways that are, though exxagerated, often bear striking similarity to religions. And like the Daleks and the Cybermen, religions also have favourite catchphrases, often spoken—shouted?—when doing something other people would disapprove of.

As a whole, religions scream at the top of their lungs, BELIEVE! BELIEVE! They get very angry when people show any signs of resistance or believing differently—especially when those people dare speak up about their own beliefs, or unbeliefs, as the case may be—, as if it reflects poorly on them. Religions are difficult to fight because, as a rule, they’re immune to logic and new ideas, and all religious thought revolves around thousands of years-old books and is judged on how well it fits in with existing writings.

Is religion a belief in God?

The quick and simple answer is “no”. A belief in God is theism or deism, not religion.

The long and complicated answer is that religion is a combination of dogma, beliefs, ideas, misconceptions, prejudices, heresies, love, hate, rage, intolerance, darkness, light, personal inadequacies. It is a human creation, from start to finish, and its purpose is nothing less than the mental control of human beings. Literally.

What does religion do?

Religion attaches, parasite-like, to the theism and deism.

It tells not only adherents how to believe and behave, but also those who don’t ascribe to its dogma.

It trivalizes life on the basis of a magical fantasy land no one knows anything about.

It locks down modes of thought and substitutes fantasy for reality.

It claims special access to the Almighty and then sets man-made limits on the universal infinite.

It claims to know the mind of God and then declares said mind off-limits to all others.

It creates guilt and fear and claims that only it knows the one and only way in an infinite universe to alleviate that guilt and fear.

It infantalizes adults by keeping them in a child-like state, unable to form their own morality.

It claims progress in learning more about the mind of God, but everything remains mired in two thousand year-old(and older) theology.

It makes adherents susceptible to absurdity by showing them it’s easy to believe in other absurdities.

It substitutes cartoonish fantasy evil for true evil.

It makes an a priori assumption about heaven and hell and then makes wild, unsubstantiated claims about them.

It says that it’s bad to kill, and then proceed to inform the adherent exactly who and under what circumstances can be killed, and how.

It makes perfectly testable claims that the end of the world of nigh and when the world keeps going without anything happening, it convinces its adherents that the calculation was off and the end of world is really just about nigh.

It convinces adherents that God owes them a direct intervention in their disease to be followed by an immediate cure. This despite the fact that God had, in their worldview, already endowed humans with the ability to effect said cure.

It convinces people that whatever they feel in their hearts must be so because the Universe is attuned specially to them.

I’m sure there are other aspects of religion.

With that in mind, I once again want to thank you and to wish you well in all in your future endeavours.

This public service announcement has been brought to your by SAAAC, the Society Against Accidental Alcohol Consumption.

Atheism: what it really is all about.

Even if I were to grant that God exists, in some way, shape or form, I would not try to put limits on God by claiming that I can possibly know and understand the supposedly-infinite, or know God’s mind. I would most definitely not say that my God inexplicably likes the same things I do and wants me to do exactly the same things that I want to do and wants me to kill the same people I want to see dead and would punish the same people I want to see punished.

In other words, I would not try to limit the infinite by claiming that it is merely human.