Church of the Churchless

Kate Cohen on why America needs more atheists

My wife, who is even more of an avid atheist than I am, gave me an article she'd torn out of American Atheist, the publication of (no big surprise) the American Atheists organization, which she belongs to. 

The article, "Why I Call Myself an Atheist," was by Kate Cohen, who wrote We of Little Faith, a book I've blogged about here and here. I liked the article, but couldn't find it online, probably because American Atheists doesn't want people to be able to read stuff in their publication without joining the organization.

But in searching for the article, I came across a piece in the Washington Post by Cohen, where she is a contributing columnist. It was great also. So here's some excerpts from "America doesn't need more God. It needs more atheists." That's a sentiment I heartily agree with.

I like to say that my kids made me an atheist. But really what they did was make me honest.

I was raised Jewish — with Sabbath prayers and religious school, a bat mitzvah and a Jewish wedding. But I don’t remember ever truly believing that God was out there listening to me sing songs of praise.

I thought of God as a human invention: a character, a concept, a carry-over from an ancient time.

I thought of him as a fiction.

Today I realize that means I’m an atheist. It’s not complicated. My (non)belief derives naturally from a few basic observations:

(1) The Greek myths are obviously stories. The Norse myths are obviously stories. L. Ron Hubbard obviously made that stuff up. Extrapolate.

(2) The holy books underpinning some of the bigger theistic religions are riddled with “facts” now disproved by science and “morality” now disavowed by modern adherents. Extrapolate.

(3) Life is confusing and death is scary. Naturally, humans want to believe that someone capable is in charge and that we continue to live after we die. But wanting doesn’t make it so.

(4) Child rape. War. Etc.

And yet, when I was younger, I would never have called myself an atheist — not on a survey, not to my family, not even to myself.

...Studies have shown that many, many Americans don’t trust atheists. They don’t want to vote for atheists, and they don’t want their children to marry atheists. Researchers have found that even atheists presume serial killers are more likely to be atheist than not.

Given all this, it’s not hard to see why atheists often prefer to keep quiet about it. Why I kept quiet. I wanted to be liked!

But when I had children — when it hit me that I was responsible for teaching my children everything — I wanted, above all, to tell them the truth.

...Religion offers ready-made answers to our most difficult questions. It gives people ways to mark time, celebrate and mourn. Once I vowed not to teach my children anything I did not personally believe, I had to come up with new answers. But I discovered as I went what most parents discover: You can figure it out as you go.

Establishing a habit of honesty did not sap the delight from my children’s lives or destroy their moral compass. I suspect it made my family closer than we would have been had my husband and I pretended to our children that we believed in things we did not. We sowed honesty and reaped trust — along with intellectual challenge, emotional sustenance and joy.

Those are all personal rewards. But there are political rewards as well.

My children know how to distinguish fact from fiction — which is harder for children raised religious. They don’t assume conventional wisdom is true and they do expect arguments to be based on evidence. Which means they have the skills to be engaged, informed and savvy citizens.

We need citizens like that.

Lies, lying and disinformation suffuse mainstream politics as never before. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 29 percent of Americans believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected, a total composed of those who think there is solid evidence of fraud (22 percent) and those who think there isn’t (7 percent). I don’t know which is worse: believing there to be evidence of fraud when even the Trump campaign can’t find any or asserting the election was stolen even though you know there’s no proof.

Meanwhile, we are just beginning to grasp that artificial intelligence could develop an almost limitless power to deceive — threatening the ability of even the most alert citizen to discern what’s real.

We need Americans who demand — as atheists do — that truth claims be tethered to fact. We need Americans who understand — as atheists do — that the future of the world is in our hands. And in this particular political moment, we need Americans to stand up to Christian nationalists who are using their growing political and judicial power to take away our rights. Atheists can do that.

Fortunately, there are a lot of atheists in the United States — probably far more than you think.

Some people say they believe in God, but not the kind favored by monotheistic religions — a conscious supreme being with powers of intercession or creation. When they say “God,” they mean cosmic oneness or astonishing coincidences. They mean that sense of smallness-within-largeness they’ve felt while standing on the shore of the ocean or holding a newborn baby or hearing the final measures of Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu.”

So, why do those people use the word “God” at all? The philosopher Daniel C. Dennett argues in “Breaking the Spell” that since we know we’re supposed to believe in God, when we don’t believe in a supernatural being we give the name instead to things we do believe in, such as transcendent moments of human connection.

Whatever the case, in 2022, Gallup found that 81 percent of Americans believe in God, the lowest percentage yet recorded. This year, when it gave respondents the option of saying they’re not sure, it found that only 74 percent believe in God, 14 percent weren’t sure, and 12 percent did not believe.

...Do you know what some of those atheists call themselves? Catholics. And Protestants, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists. General Social Survey data back this up: Among religious Americans, only 64 percent are certain about the existence of God. Hidden atheists can be found not just among the “nones,” as they’re called — the religiously unaffiliated — but also in America’s churches, mosques and synagogues.

“If you added up all the nominal Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. — those who are religious in name only,” Harvard humanist chaplain Greg M. Epstein writes in “Good Without God,” “you really might get the largest denomination in the world.”

Atheists are everywhere. And we are unusually disposed to getting stuff done.

...Atheists must accept that people are allowing — we are allowing — women to die in childbirth, children to go hungry, men to buy guns that can slaughter dozens of people in minutes. Atheists believe people organized the world as it is now, and only people can make it better.

No wonder we are “the most politically active group in American politics today,” according to political scientist Ryan Burge, interpreting data from the Cooperative Election Study.

That’s right: Atheists take more political action — donating to campaigns, protesting, attending meetings, working for politicians — than any other “religious” group. And we vote. In his study on this data, sociologist Evan Stewart noted that atheists were about 30 percent more likely to vote than religiously affiliated respondents.

We also vote far more than most religiously unaffiliated people. That’s what distinguishes atheists from the “nones” — and what I didn’t realize at first.

Atheists haven’t just checked out of organized religion. (Indeed, we may not have.) We haven’t just rejected belief in God. (Though, obviously, that’s the starting point.) Where atheism becomes a definite stance rather than a lack of direction, a positive belief and not just a negative one, is in our understanding that, without a higher power, we need human power to change the world.

I want to be clear: There are clergy members and congregations all across this country working to do good, not waiting for God to answer their prayers or assuming that God meant for the globe to get hotter. You don’t have to be an atheist to conduct yourself as if people are responsible for the world they live in — you just have to act like an atheist, by taking matters into your own hands.

...Peel back the layers of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, though, and you find religion. Peel back the layers of control over women’s bodies — from dress codes that punish girls for male desire all the way to the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade — and you find religion. Often, there isn’t much peeling to do. According to the bill itself, Missouri’s total abortion ban was created “in recognition that Almighty God is the author of life.” Say what, now?

Peel back the layers of abstinence-only or marriage-centered or anti-homosexual sex education and you find religion. “Don’t say gay” laws, laws denying trans kids medical care, school-library book bans and even efforts to suppress the teaching of inconvenient historical facts — motivated by religion.

And when religion loses a fight and progress wins instead? Religion then claims it’s not subject to the resulting laws. “Religious belief” is — more and more, at the state and federal levels — a way to sidestep advances the country makes in civil rights, human rights and public health.

...In fact, when certain believers wield enough political power to turn their God’s presumed preferences into law, I would say it’s dangerous to claim you believe in “God” when what you actually believe in is awe or wonder. (Your “God is love” only lends validity and power to their “God hates gays.”)

So ask yourself: Do I think a supernatural being is in charge of the universe?

If you answer “no,” you’re an atheist. That’s it — you’re done.

But if you go further: You’ll be doing something good for your country.

I'm inspired by Sam Harris' sharp attacks on religion

Like all of us, Sam Harris has changed over the years.

Following the publication of his acclaimed The End of Faith in 2004, Harris became well known as an eloquent advocate for atheism against the foolishness of religion, joining other noted atheists -- Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett -- who were known as "The Four Horsemen of the New Atheism."

Since, Harris has written additional books and has fashioned a vibrant online presence through his Waking Up app and Making Sense podcast. He still bashes religion, but appears more concerned with other subjects, such as helping people experience the notions of no-self, emptiness, and lack of free will that are compatible both with Buddhism and neuroscience. (Harris has a Ph.D. in neuroscience.)

I was reminded of the old-time Harris when You Tube kept displaying to me a video called "Sam Harris: Arguments Against Religion - Part 1." This is a compilation of highlights from talks and debates Harris did after The End of Faith came out. 

I've been listening to the video while I exercise. It's inspiring stuff. Well, unless you're religious. Then you'll think this is blasphemous disgusting stuff. Harris doesn't pull any punches. He hits hard at the ridiculousness of religion, using facts and logic to make his case.

There's a quote in the Amazon listing for The End of Faith that reflects how I feel when I watch the video. 

"The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated....Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."―Natalie Angier, New York Times

Truth-telling has tremendous power.

Harris isn't a comedian, though he does make humorous remarks, but this video has something in common with an edgy stand-up comic. We laugh because the comic is fearless about making fun of "sacred cows," forbidden topics, that usually aren't talked about in polite company. 

In Harris' case, it isn't so much laughter that he elicits from me (though sometimes that happens), but a sense of "Oh, yeah, that's just how I feel, but for some reason I've been reluctant to say it as directly as Harris does." Well, one reason is that I'm not as knowledgeable as Harris is, or as eloquent.

Can't do anything about that. But I can try to be more honest about how I genuinely feel about certain subjects, following in Harris' truth-telling footsteps. For example...

Harris spoke about the insanity of allowing Iron Age myths found in the Old Testament and Jewish lore to inform 21st century warfare and politics. A large proportion of Israelis believe that God gave the Jews territory in the Middle East, so they're now entitled to it. Lots of Christians in the United States believe the same crazy thing.

As Harris notes, a belief is a statement about reality, truth. It's different from a hope.

It isn't crazy for an Israeli to think, "I hope my country can keep control of the West Bank." I don't share that hope, since I favor a two-state solution where Palestinians have their own country. However, it's a lot more acceptable than a bizarre belief that God, the cosmic real estate agent, bequeathed land to Jews.

There's zero evidence supporting that belief, just as there's zero evidence supporting any other supernatural claim religions make. Yet religious people usually aren't challenged about their fact-free beliefs in the same way someone would be if they claimed the moon landings were faked, or that Donald Trump had the 2020 presidential election stolen from him.

Since Harris was speaking not long after the 2001 9/11 attacks by Muslim terrorists on the United States, he was blunt about the Koran -- which he correctly calls not the word of Allah, but one of the world's most boring and poorly written books. Of course, Muslims believe it was dictated to Muhammad by an angel, so every word in it is true.

That sort of religious dogmatism obviously is highly dangerous. Islamic martyrs believe that they'll head to paradise if they die killing infidels. Clearly they're wrong. But that's no comfort to those who lose their lives in the name of Muslim terrorism. 

I'm not as familiar as Harris is with Christian, Jewish, and Muslim history. I do know that he's absolutely correct about how the Bible in no way is divine, but purely human.

The content of the Bible has changed a great deal over the centuries. Some parts of it have been deleted, with other parts added. Editing has altered the meaning of passages to make them conform to how Christians want to spin the story of Jesus, whose supposed miracles aren't unique at all, but were taken from myths floating around the Middle East long before Jesus supposedly existed.

In short, all religions are B.S. (The only exception is non-supernatural Buddhism, which is highly psychological and thus open to confirmation or rejection.) This includes the Eastern religion I was a member of for thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

The hour is late and I don't feel like pointing out all the absurdities taught by RSSB, many of which I never really believed in. So I'll limit myself to one absurdity that comes easily to mind: the belief that Kal, the negative power (think Devil, more or less) who oversees the lower realms of creation, got his position by impressing God with an impressive display of athleticism. 

Here's an excerpt from my 2009 post, "A dialogue about Radha Soami Satsang Beas." The dialogue was between me and Shiloh, who wrote to me because she was concerned about her sister being sucked into a cult. Shiloh asked me some questions about RSSB, which I answered, then got comments on those answers from Shiloh.

(5)  Are Kal and the mind used to dispel the disciple’s rational assessment of the master and his words and actions?

Brian: Absolutely. Questioning is supposed to happen before initiation. Afterwards, the initiate is warned to beware of Kal, the Universal Mind who stood on one foot for eons and earned the right from God to rule the lower regions of creation. (Shiloh: Great heavens! How spiritually athletic!)  Kal's job is to keep souls here, and the mind is his means of doing so.

Shiloh: I rest my case. The above-mentioned attitude nullifies the checks and balances ingrained into our very souls to guard against deception. Willfully giving up the critical mind must indefinitely commit one to labor, with dwarfed mentality, through a spiritual never-never land where the only hope of eventual rescue is through painful disillusionment. Since my sister defensively denied that there was any such requirement, she obviously knows, deep down, how dubious this is.

More atheist wisdom from "We of Little Faith"

The more I read of Kate Cohen's book, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too), the more I enjoy what this talented writer has to say about openly, honestly, and bravely proclaiming one's atheism.

Here's some additional excerpts from the book, which I wrote about in an initial post a few days ago. First, I recall that one of the comments on the post said that it isn't possible, or at least very difficult, to be a Jewish atheist, since Judaism is a religion that believes in God.

That ridiculous, as anyone familiar with the actual beliefs of people in a religion would know. For example, there are Christian pastors who don't believe in God, though they don't proclaim this from the pulpit.

More obviously, it is common to be an atheist Jew. Cohen says this about atheism and being Jewish:

Whether someone is "still Jewish" is not a question you hear in an area with a sizable Jewish population. Anyone familiar with Jews is also familiar with the concept that being Jewish is as much about belonging as belief. It isn't something you change easily. Or at all. You can be more or less observant, you can downgrade to "culturally" Jewish, but it's hard to give it up entirely. I'm pretty sure you can even convert to Hinduism and still be Jewish. 

In a chapter with the engaging title, "Sorry, Honey, God's Just Pretend," Cohen speaks about why she taught her children that we know there's no God, rather than leaving the question of God open. I heartily agree with her logic.

One day, in the middle of doing her math homework at age nine, after having heard a casual remark I made to her father, she [her daughter] paused, pencil poised, to ask me the obvious but as yet never asked question: "How do we know there's no God?"

It's a question atheists get asked all the time, often by people who think we should use that gentler term "agnostic," people who are comfortable with doubt and suspicious of certainty. In answer I would say that all evidence points to the fact that God is a popular and useful fiction, and that no evidence points to the fact that he actually exists.

...So chances were good that teaching my kids there was no God would likely result in... their not believing in God. I can't prove that God does not exist. So how can I teach my children as fact something that cannot actually be proven? Isn't that intellectually irresponsible?

Well, I can't prove that monsters don't exist, either but I have no trouble saying to my kids, "Monsters are pretend." What, after all, is the alternative?

"Mommy, are monsters real?"

"Well, honey, I don't believe monsters are real and neither does your father. Certainly, we've never seen one. But a lot of people do believe they are real. What do you think?"

Of course not. Monsters are pretend. No one would accuse me of indoctrinating my children with a nonbelief in monsters or of brainwashing them with my skepticism about the paranormal. And yet that's precisely what happens when the subject is God.

...Belief in God seems harmless enough. What's the harm in imagining that a kindly old man runs the world? There is none -- as long as they know it's not actually true. Being able to tell fact from fiction comes in quite handy in life, personally and politically, and at least one study has shown that kids who are raised with religion can't do that as well as kids who are raised without it.

So, sure, let's imagine Great-Grandma looking down on us from heaven, but let's be clear we are making that up. And because our surrounding culture tells us, over and over, that heaven might be true, we have to be extra clear that the heaven scenario is no more plausible than the idea that Great-Grandma's spirit has been distilled in a bottle of scotch.

When the kids are old enough, they can have a sip. Or that Great-Grandma now haunts the 793s of the public library; where, in the Dewey decimal system would they like to be filed?

It's okay -- not just okay; mind-expanding, pleasurable -- to think about those things. To picture an alternative universe and ponder its metaphorical significance. I'm happy to do that and happy for my kids too. But I would never say such speculative flights of fancy are or even might be factually true, and I would never say that of heaven or God, either.

Just as I would never say, "It could be that ladybug is in charge; one day you can decide for yourself," I would never say, "I don't think God is in charge, but who knows?" I taught my children there is no God. Or, to be more accurate, I taught them that there are lots and lots of gods, all of them fascinating and all of them invented by human beings.

...Each of these beliefs is something they could learn among the local religious offerings. Not just fiction posing as fact, but also, in some cases, wrong posing as right. Shall I refrain from imposing my moral values on my children as well?

Let's consider a few more imaginary conversations:

"Teddy says wives have to do whatever their husbands say. Is that true?"

"You know, people disagree about that. I think women and men are equal, but a lot of people don't. It sure is an interesting question."

or 

"My teacher says it's now legal for men to marry other men. That's gross, isn't it?"

"No, I don't think it's gross. I think two adults who love each other should be able to get married. But some people think marriage should only be between a man and a woman. They think men who want to marry other men are doomed to burn in hell for all eternity. When you get older, you can decide for yourself."

Not a chance.

...As a parent, I am not willing to say "that's just my opinion" about whether something is fact or fiction, right or wrong. All beliefs -- mine, theirs, Mike Pence's -- are not equal. Many are wrong. Some are harmlessly wrong (I'll go to heaven after I die) and some are harmfully wrong (gay people will go to hell after they die).

Excerpts from a great book: "We of Little Faith" by Kate Cohen

On one of my other blogs, recently someone shared a link to Kate Cohen's book, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too).

I bought it, because while I've read and enjoyed books that praise atheism by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and others, Cohen takes a different approach from these men.

Cohen's book is rooted in her experience as a Jewish woman who found her atheist voice and was determined to bring up her children not as secular, spiritual but not religious, or any other euphemism, but as the proud outspoken atheist she herself came to be.

This gives her book a lightness and practicality that books by the hardcore atheists mentioned above mostly lack. Cohen describes conversations with other Jewish mothers in everyday settings, like school Halloween parties, where she had to decide how open to be about her atheism. I find that refreshing.

Here's excerpts from the "Prologue: Actually an Atheist." It will give you a feel for what the book is all about, and Cohen's engaging writing style.

Americans who don't believe in God call themselves agnostics, humanists, skeptics, free-thinkers. They call themselves "spiritual." Sometimes they are called "nones" -- from the box they checked on a survey identifying their religion. Sometimes they prefer not to label themselves at all. And sometimes they call themselves Jews. Or Catholics or Muslims or Buddhists.

Rarely do they choose the word "atheist."

That used to be me. I was one of the many people who identify with a religion while disbelieving in the Supreme Being that lends it authority. I was raised Jewish and married a Jew in a Jewish wedding. As a child, a teen, even a young adult, though I didn't actually believe in that jealous, capricious, and cruel Old Testament God, I would not have called myself atheist on a survey; I would have called myself a Jew.

...Having drifted from the church or the synagogue after high school, having neglected if not outright rejected their own religious upbringing, many young parents return to it once it's their turn to bring up kids. Even if the idea of heaven once made them roll their eyes, heaven is the consolation they offer their children when burying the family cat.

For me, becoming a parent did the opposite. When it hit me that I was responsible for teaching my children everything, I knew in that moment that I must do something about this. And for me, "this" was the mindless transmission of information that I actually believed to be false, and "something" was telling the truth -- to myself, to my kids, and, finally, to others.

I vowed to teach my children what I truly thought about everything, and that included what I thought about God: that like Zeus, Thor, Brahma, and Ra, he's a fictional character created to soothe the fears of ancient people. I would not -- I did not -- tell them that God might be real, just as I would not have told them the Mayan goddess Ixchel might be real.

And if there's no supernatural being, then there's no supernatural place, either: temping as it was, I did not offer my children the consolation of heaven when the cat died or when they themselves began to understand that their lives had a time limit.

All of this felt right in my head and in my home but radical in the context of the dominant culture. More radical still: I did not let them decide for themselves, as I would not with any other question of morality or the way the world worked. My insistence on telling my children what was true and what was fiction -- my refusal to leave the question open -- bothered even some of my nonbelieving friends.

Being an atheist was one thing, but raising atheists was quite another, and far more questionable -- at best, depriving children of the comforts of religion; at worst, brainwashing them.

I believe, to the contrary, thant passing on one's preference for reason, evidence, and honesty -- pointing out, with conviction and context, where fiction poses as fact -- is the only truly moral choice. It's one of the most powerful ways to stop the cycle of evasion and politeness that has given religious belief far more cultural, political, and legal power than it should have.

Most of us have grown up with this reflexive deference to religion, and many of us continue to act on it even if we don't ourselves believe in God. I still sometimes have to remind myself that it's okay not to tiptoe around religion as it it were a soufflé that could collapse and then the dinner party will be ruined. I'll never be totally free of that reflexive deference. But my children are.

...Raising children made it abundantly clear to me why people invented religion -- why so many strays return to the pews after they have kids, and why even nonbelievers pass along to their children those religious beliefs (or half-beliefs, or the assumption that believing is the benevolent norm). Religion offers ready-made answers to our most difficult questions.

It gives people ways to mark time, celebrate, and mourn. How should we think about death? How do we know right from wrong? How do we make sense of a world of wonders and horrors with no one in charge?

Those are questions I wrestled with as an atheist -- and still do. My answers are not the only answers. They are probably not even my final answers. But they demonstrate that you can conduct a full life, a wonderful, even profound life, without relying on either the familiar religious structures or the supernatural beings that supposedly animate them.

You don't need any special tools or training; you just need the determination not to pass on -- by silent acquiescence or outright misrepresentation -- what you don't believe to be true.

Six months after she declared herself an atheist on national television, Rebecca Vitsmun was interviewed about her heroic display of honesty. "I had this moment where I just stopped for a second  and I realized, you either lie or tell the truth," she said. "And I, just, I'm not a liar."

That's what this book is asking you to do: stop for a second, think about what you believe, and consider telling the truth.

Happy Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for this great atheist message from John.

It's the Thanksgiving holiday today in the United States. We're going to have dinner with some friends in a few hours. My contribution is a Trader Joes vegan Breaded Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast With Gravy. Took me a whole five minutes to prepare before I put it in the oven.

Luckily I'd bought extra last year and put some in the freezer, because I was shocked to learn that Trader Joes isn't offering it this year because it didn't sell well. Damn capitalism! My wife and I have tried every vegetarian alternative to turkey and the Trader Joes offering was the best. Oh, well, life is full of disappointments. Maybe it will return next year.

On a positive note, wanted to say how thankful I am for everybody who visits this Church of the Churchless blog, including those who leave comments on the posts. In some ways we're a family of sorts -- understanding that family gatherings are typically a mixture of pleasant interactions and irritating conversation.

Meaning, while everyone enjoys getting together, there's Uncle Joe who won't stop talking about his current conspiracy theory; Cousin Elaine who is determined to get her relatives to try her new cure-all for whatever ails you; Grandma Mabel who's telling the same stories from her childhood that she relates every year; and indeed, just about everyone has some strange quirks that some family members find appealing and others can't stand.

Just like us on the Church of the Churchless! We're all uniquely strange, and that's a good thing. Life would be boring if we were all the same, if we all believed the same things, if we all had the same reactions to topics that arise on this blog.

As the host, so to speak, I do my best to strike a balance between allowing free expression of views, and making the blog a pleasant place for people to share their views in comments. I don't always succeed in this balancing act. Just wanted to let you know that I try to follow the adage of my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Marshall: Do your best, angels can do no better.

Here's a comment that John left a few days ago which I liked so much, I'm sharing in a blog post so it gets more attention. I fixed a few typos and added paragraph breaks. Nicely said, John.

Hi all, I'm a long time follower of Brian's blog, but I've never posted on an open thread. But I thought I would do so on this one.

I grew up as a Christian (originally Presbyterian) with the last 20 plus years of that belief being in the evangelical/charismatic flavor. I've been an agnostic atheist for about 6 years now. My wife is still a very devout Christian and doesn't know the full extent of my deconversion. Maybe someday.

But because of her still being a believer, I hear plenty of sermons per weak and lots of really shitty Christian music. Speaking of, is all religious music as bad as Christian music? Just curious. Anyway, the further I get from my religious roots, the more I think how weird religion seems to me now. I can only imagine how weird religion in general seems to someone who was never part of any of it.

People have an imaginary friend who they talk to and hope to somehow hear back from. This imaginary friend is super powerful and created everything and has things that they want you to do, and things they don't want you to do.

Often there is a book that their imaginary friend wrote, or at least had a hand in writing. And the people who believe in this imaginary friend live their lives (or profess to do so) according to the book he wrote. Oh yes, the imaginary friend is always a he. Isn't that interesting? More often than not, this imaginary male friend is a loving being.

Unless, of course, you don't believe in him. Then he will almost always condemn you to some kind of suffering or torture after you die. Forever. As though living life here isn't suffering enough! And isn't is interesting that where you are born and raised has almost 100% to do with which imaginary friend you believe in?

Many wars have been fought over, my imaginary friend is real and yours isn't. Or something similar to that. Maybe my imaginary friend is offended by something you did or didn't do and I have to fight you on his behalf.

And then there is the whole money thing. At least in the flavor of Christianity I came out of. This imaginary friend always needs more money! At least 10% of your gross, not net, income. And if you give more than that, he will do some special favors for you. Yep. He's just cool like that. But I do think it's interesting that since I quit giving 10% plus to my imaginary friend, I've been able to get out of, and stay out of debt. Something I never could do when I was giving all that money to him.

And then there is the whole prayer thing. Prayers are basically asking your imaginary friend for favors. Things like, please heal my cat. Please help me get a promotion at work. Please make my kids believe in you so they don't get tortured forever. Please let my football team win this weekend. Please keep it from raining the weekend of our church picnic. While the farmer is asking for rain on that same weekend so he doesn't lose his farm.

How does that work? But I do get it to some degree. Just like when kids have an imaginary friend. This friend is someone they trust and can talk to without fear of judgment. And as "adults", we are only a few years away from being children. 50 years seems like a long time, but wouldn't we all feel a little better if we still had our stuffed animals? Or is it just me?

So if we want to still have our imaginary friend, that's cool. But I shouldn't be trying to convince you that my imaginary friend is real, and is the only imaginary friend you should believe is real. And promise you rewards if you believe it, and punishment if you don't. Yep. The further I get from religion, the more weird it seems.

Atheist me speaks to religious you

Here's the post that I wrote on my new substack account yesterday, and shared via a link on this blog. I like substack, but after a day of pondering how much I like it, I'm leaning toward sticking with my three blogs as ways to share my writing.

If I was starting fresh, substack would appeal to me. But given the many years of history I have with each of my blogs, it just seems to make sense to stick with what's working for me. I can always use substack as a backup to Typepad, my blogging service, since now and then Typepad has a lengthy outage.

If this happens again, you could head to brianhines.substack.com to see what I'm writing about while I wait for Typepad to be fixed.

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Atheist me speaks to religious you

Hi. I’m Brian. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God.

I used to, for 35 years. But not anymore. I’m addressing this post to those of you who do believe in God. Not with the goal of making you like me, a non-believer.

I just want to help you understand how us atheists and agnostics (who basically are undercover atheists) look upon religious belief.

 

Of course, I don’t speak for all atheists. I’m just sharing my own view. But most of my friends also are atheists, and we frequently talk about religion, so I’m pretty sure that what I’m about to say largely meshes with their perspective.

Let’s start with belief.

That’s obviously a big part of religion, which deals with mystery. What happens after we die? Is there a supernatural realm in addition to this material world? Is there a creator God or has existence always existed? Does morality reside in a divine will or is it purely human?

Questions like these aren’t objectively factual, like “How far is the moon from Earth?” They’re subjective, a matter of belief and, for religious people, faith. Atheists like me answer them either by saying no one knows, or talking about likelihoods: Since there’s no demonstrable evidence of the supernatural, probably it doesn’t exist.

But atheists have no problem with religious belief. At least, taken on its own. (I’ll soon explain what I mean by that.)

Life can be tough. Pain, disappointment, sorrow, disease, death — these and so many other misfortunes can be very difficult to deal with. The way I see it, whatever helps us get through difficult times is a good thing, so long as our source of support doesn’t harm ourselves or other people.

(Becoming a heroin addict isn’t advised for that reason.)

Marx famously said that religion is the opium of the people. OK, that’s fine by me. Believing in a God who cares about us; believing in a life after death much better than this one; believing that prayers can help a loved one in distress. If these beliefs aid someone in getting through tough times, they should imbibe that opium with gusto.

My own religious belief for the above-mentioned 35 years was of the Eastern variety. I was a member of an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru who was viewed much as Jesus was in his time: as a Son of God sent to return souls to their heavenly father.

When my mother suffered several strokes prior to her death in 1985, I found some solace by engaging in a sort of prayer related to the meditation practice I was taught by my guru. Because my mother was an avid seeker of truth, when I meditated I asked my guru to give any benefit that might accrue from my meditation to my mother, not to me.

I’d visualize my mother soaring upward toward a truth-filled heaven with every repetition of the mantra I’d been given to repeat, while I was propelled downward into darkness. Love for my mother made this exercise joyful. It gave me some peace of mind that counteracted my worries about her health.

But here’s the thing about my admittedly irrational religious belief. It was entirely private. I didn’t tell anyone about it at the time. Only recently did I talk in a post on my Church of the Churchless blog about how I acted after my mother’s strokes.

So this gets me to the downside of religious belief: when it ceases to be viewed as a subjective way of making sense of an often confusing, distressing, painful world and becomes seen as objective truth that should be accepted by everybody, including the non-religious.

This is where most atheists, me certainly included, have a big problem with religiosity. Too often here in the United States fundamentalist Christians want to impose their views on the rest of us.

If a religious believer doesn’t want to have an abortion, great. Just don’t try to pass laws that claim life begins at conception. Or if this attempt is made, buttress that claim with rigorous fact-based arguments about the nature of life, not by quotes from the Bible or some other holy book.

This tweet by a noted law professor about the recent ruling by a federal judge that could ban an abortion medication nationwide makes my point nicely.

If a religious believer doesn't accept gender fluidity, great. Stay firm in your personal maleness or femaleness. Just don’t encourage discrimination against LGBTQ people in schools, places of employment, or anywhere else. Science isn’t on your side, even if you consider that your religious scriptures are.

Understand: I’m not saying that religious people have to keep their faith under wraps. After all, here I am writing about my atheist perspective. Religious believers have the same free speech right.

The difference, though, is that we atheists don’t go around knocking on doors trying to convert people to godlessness. We don’t lobby politicians to elevate our perception of the cosmos into law. Sure, one reason we don’t do this is that atheists embrace reason and science, so secular society reflects our point of view.

But atheists also tend to be fiercely independent. After I came up with the title of my Church of the Churchless blog, I needed a subtitle. It took just a few seconds for me to come up with Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence.

Atheists, like cats, are difficult to herd. My wife organized an atheist Meet Up group here in Salem, Oregon. They get together every Sunday for conversation and godless fellowship. The group has few rules, and no beliefs that everyone has to accept. Just a commitment to being open-minded.

For me, people who belong to a religion should be like soccer enthusiasts. Fans of a professional soccer team go to a match dressed in the team colors. They cheer and chant wildly. They believe that their favored team deserves to win because it’s the best damn team in all of soccer.

However, they realize that fans of other teams feel the same way. They don’t consider that their soccer beliefs are based on an objective reality. It’s just how they feel about the team they’ve chosen to embrace.

It’d be nice if all of us could realize that beliefs are simply our subjective ways of looking upon the world, while facts point to an objective shared reality.

Check out my substack post about atheism and religion

Hey, I've dipped my writing toe in the Substack water. Today I decided to give Substack a try by setting up my account and writing a post about atheism and religiosity -- just in time for Easter!

I did my best to explain how us atheists view religious belief. It's often a source of comfort, which is good. But when that belief is viewed as objective truth rather than subjective faith, bad things can happen in our highly political and divisive times.

Check out "Atheist me speaks to religious you."

Why asking for proof that God doesn't exist makes no sense

Today I watched a recorded episode of Bill Maher's Real Time HBO show. Scott Galloway, one of Maher's guests, was really down on TikTok, the video sharing service owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.

Galloway thought TikTok should be banned in the United States because he believes the Chinese Communist Party is using it to undermine the patriotism of American young people. 

But he couldn't provide any evidence that this is happening.

Galloway just believed that the Chinese government was messing with the minds of our youth. At one point he said that it wasn't up to those opposed to TikTok to prove that the Chinese Communist Party was doing nasty stuff, it was up to those who support TikTok to prove that the Chinese Communist Party wasn't up to no good. 

Which made no sense to me.

That's the sort of argument I've heard a lot of from commenters on this blog who believe in God and don't like my skepticism about the existence of God. Prove that God doesn't exist, Brian, they'll say.

I'll usually respond with something like, That isn't how proof usually works. For it's very difficult, if not impossible, to prove that an entity doesn't exist. 

Yes, I realize after some Googling just now that some people do consider that it is possible to prove a negative. But reading some of those arguments made my head hurt, because they involved philosophical logic rather than common sense -- which is how I see the situation.

It seems to me that rather than arguing this question abstractly, it is easier to grasp by looking at a specific example. 

With TikTok, how could anyone be certain that the Chinese Communist Party isn't using the video sharing service to make young people have less faith in the United States?

Even if a diligent search of TikTok videos and the algorithm used to share those videos with TikTok users (i'm one of them) showed no evidence of dirty tricks by the Chinese Communist Party, it still would be possible, albeit unlikely, that the CCP was using a very subtle undetectable means of screwing with the minds of American young people.

That's why I believe that TikTok shouldn't be banned in this country unless there's actual evidence of malfeasance by the Chinese Communist Party. The First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, which includes the freedom to view online content even if it is critical of the United States.

Meaning, while private companies can put limits on what people can read and see, the United States government can't ban a service like TikTok just because some politicians think it might be used to undermine confidence in our way of life. 

So someone who wants to ban TikTok needs to have solid evidence that this is justified, not just a belief that TikTok might become an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

Likewise, someone who claims that God exists needs to provide solid evidence of this if they want skeptics like me to agree with them. There's no way to prove that God doesn't exist, since even if we assume that a search for God will come up empty -- as has been the case since the dawn of history -- the possibility that God is lurking behind some cosmic veil can't be ruled out.

In another blog post on this subject, I quoted Armin Navabi:

"There's no evidence that God doesn't exist."

When confronted with criticism, some theists will pull out this argument in an attempt to shift the burden of proof toward the critic. Although this tactic can feel very clever, it opens a door to absurdity.

This argument seems to suggest that we believe in everything, even things we have yet to think about, until that belief is proven false. That's simply not a logical way to perceive reality.

If the criteria for something being accepted as true was based purely on there being no evidence against it, an endless number of hypothetical objects could suddenly become "real." This has been the source of numerous playful thought experiments by skeptics around the world.

-- The flying spaghetti monster, who created the earth with his noodly appendage.

-- The invisible pink unicorn, whose "believers" logically know that she must be invisible because she has not been seen, yet have faith that she's pink.

-- The dragon in Carl Sagan's garage, a thought experiment he describes in The Demon-Haunted World. The dragon is invisible, floats in the air, generates no heat and is incorporeal, thus evading all forms of sensory detection.

-- Russell's Teapot, a hypothetical teapot that you cannot prove isn't orbiting the sun.

Of course, all of these examples were designed in good fun. Bertrand Russell does not actually believe that there is a teapot orbiting the sun. However, there is no way to definitively prove that these fanciful claims aren't true, which demonstrates the total absurdity of this line of thinking.

 

I might have had a mini-enlightenment last night

Even though I no longer believe in God, I'm attracted to non-religious Buddhism. So even though I don't engage in any sort of formal Buddhist practice, I like the idea of being enlightened. 

Just seems better than being endarkened. 

Though I can't say with any certainty that the intuitive flash that coursed through my consciousness as I was heading to bed last night was a sign of a mini-enlightenment (I'm way too humble to claim a maxi-enlightenment), I like the idea that it was.

So I'll go with that.

I was heading down the stairs that lead to the bedroom where I sleep when an unbidden realization hit me. This wasn't a thought, or an emotion. It was an instant knowing. 

What I knew at that moment surprised me, given my usual tendency to see myself more positively than I'm sure I deserve. 

It was: You're just an ordinary person. Nothing special. Nothing really to be proud of.

While this didn't feel like an emotion, the after-effect of the knowing was pleasant. I felt like a weight had been lifted from me, the burden of trying to appear more competent and accomplished than I actually was.

It was sort of akin to the sensation I had decades ago when, after believing that I could figure out a way to actively manage the investments my wife and I have and beat the market, I concluded after considerable reading and research that investing in index funds was the way to go.

Meaning, I'd just try to be average, as I wrote about in a 2008 post, "Profitable spiritual investing."

As the world financial crisis deepens, conversations tend to turn toward money rather than other subjects. Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these.

I didn't have a whole lot to say.

Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide.

I told my friends, "If the world and national economy go to hell, so will our investments. If things improve, so will our portfolio. It's a humble way to invest, since you're happy to be average."

This is pretty much the same way I feel about my spiritual investing strategy now.

For many years I thought I could beat the system. That is, find a way to salvation, God-realization, enlightenment, or whatever, that would lead to a better result than others would enjoy who weren't privy to the inside knowledge I possessed.

I've written about my shift from "active" to "passive" spiritual investing in previous posts:
"Running so fast to become motionless"
"Spiritual diversification, a sound investment strategy"
"Spiritual investing takes nothing"

Here's  an excerpt from "Why atheists are more "spiritual" than religious believers," a 2014 post that echoes some of what I experienced in last night's mini-enlightenment. 

Maybe this statement seems paradoxical to you: I feel more genuinely spiritual now that I've stopped believing in God. But it makes good sense to me. Here's the main reason why.

I no longer feel special.

Virtually every religion and spiritual path considers that its adherents have a special relationship with God or whatever other supernatural entity they believe in. 

There are so many chosen people on Earth, they vastly outnumber the unchosen, the non-special group I'm pleased to be a part of.

I understand that feeling special has its own delights.

In my case, I was a member of an India-based spiritual organization which taught that those approved for initiation by the guru had been "marked" to return to God/heaven after a karma-cleansing meditation process.

Cool!

For about 35 years I embraced the enjoyable belief that, out of all the billions of people on this planet, I was one of a relative few who were the special beloveds of the supreme being. 

Of course, devout Christians, Jews, and Muslims feel the same way, along with countless believers in other theological belief systems. 

Eventually I started to realize that all the talk I was hearing about being "humble servants of the Lord and the guru" was, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit. Genuine humility wasn't much to be seen among devotees of my spiritual organization.

Not surprising.

Since members of this group were told over and over that they've been singled out by a higher power to learn cosmic truths and experience realms of reality not available to other human beings, naturally a pervading sense of "tribal" pride was evident throughout the organization.

We were the cool kids in the spiritual lunch room. Other faiths were inferior, since they didn't have the direct connection to God we did. 

I'm happy that this form of egotism has been discarded.

Sure, I've still got lots of other self-centered tendencies rattling around in my psyche, as we all do. But to get rid of The Big One, a belief that God had chosen me to be his best buddy for eternity, whereas my infidel wife wasn't going to get the same afterlife prize -- this increased my humility quotient by a lot.

Now I don't expect that I'm going to have any different sort of afterlife anyone else does. Namely, I strongly suspect, none at all. 

I also don't expect that there is any power guiding my life which isn't also directing the lives of every other entity on Earth. 

Thus I've embraced a sort of "index fund" approach to spirituality.

Meaning, I don't try to beat the market. I don't assume that I have any special knowledge, any special talent, any special relationship with reality. Whatever laws of nature apply to everybody else, I'm content with.

"It had to be" -- a great four-word secular philosophy

At my age, 74, it gets more common to have worries pop up in my life that are different from younger person concerns.

Health problems, for example. They occur at any age, but when you're young, things that are wrong with you tend to get better. However, the older we get, the more likely we have to deal with chronic problems, things that aren't going to go away. 

Best we can do is manage them so they're annoyances, not major obstacles to living an enjoyable life.

I find that when I have a doctor appointment scheduled where I'm not sure whether the news I'm going to get about a health problem will be good or bad, my mind sometimes gets anxious over the uncertainty.

Then, when the day of the appointment comes and I learn what the doctor has to say, I feel better -- no matter what happened. 

One lesson from this is what I've known for a long time: our minds are adept at imagining both the worst that can happen, and the best that can happen, even though usually what actually happens is somewhere in-between. 

A related lesson is how comforting four simple words can be when I take them to heart: It had to be.

When I say that to myself, no matter what the "It" is that has occurred, I feel grounded, in touch with reality, part of the whole of life that is so much greater than my small self. 

Sure, in a sense It had to be is a truism. After all, if something has happened, obviously it had to be, or it wouldn't have happened.

But saying those words reminds me that just as religious believers like to submit themselves to what they regard as God's will, or God's plan for them, us atheists can enjoy our submission to the marvelous chains of cause and effect, or determinism, that produce everything in existence.

Including the state of our health. And happiness. And all the other thoughts, emotions, actions, and states of being that combine to produce what we call "my life."

Looking forward from now, the future is uncertain. Looking backward from now, the conditions of this present moment were completely determined. Which means, everything that occurs in the future will eventually become the past that was also completely determined.

So It had to be, while a truism, is a valuable reminder of how reality outside of our subjective perceptions actually is. 

We worry about an uncertain future, losing sight of the fact that it really isn't uncertain at all. Only one thing is going to happen: that which happens. Likewise, we engage in regrets about a past that didn't turn out as we wanted, losing sight of the fact that the past could only turn out in one way: that which occurred.

The big bang had to be. The formation of the Milky Way Galaxy had to be. The creation of our solar system had to be. Earth had to be. Evolution had to be. Extinction of the dinosaurs had to be. The rise of Homo sapiens had to be. The birth and death of each of our ancestors had to be. The circumstances of our life from infancy to the present moment had to be.

Pretty damn simple: It all had to be. No exceptions. Our joys and sorrows had to be. Our successes and failures had to be. My writing this blog post had to be. Your reading it had to be.

We can complicate life all we want, or simplify it all we want. Regardless, it had to be. That's why I love those four words: It had to be.

How Armin Navabi became an atheist after trying to die for God

At the end of Armin Navabi's book, Why There Is No God, a book I've written about several times before, I came to a fascinating description of Navabi's efforts to know God as a devout Muslim boy. It was written by a friend of his, Mohammad Savage.

Armin Navabi

Enjoy these excerpts. I find this tale highly inspiring. It shows that many atheists have pursued God with tremendous effort and determination, choosing to disbelieve only after giving belief a very good chance. 

Armin was born and raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was indoctrinated quite thoroughly since early childhood in the Muslim tradition. He would pray regularly five times a day, as all Muslims are mandated to. Growing up, he was afraid of all the things which good Muslims are supposed to be afraid of: hell, sin, the devil, etc.

...During his formative years, Amin attended Muslim classes. In such classes, he learned that according to his Islamic teachers, if a boy were to perish before the age of 15, access to heaven would be guaranteed, regardless of any other extenuating circumstances. 

The same rule also applied to girls; however, for them, the cutoff age is 9. This thought stuck with Armin, and driven by the fear instilled in him by his religion, it began to consume him.

In his young mind, there it was: a surefire, absolute method to gain access to that which many Muslims strive for their entire lives. It confounded him to no end that none of his peers or elders had discovered or taken advantage of such a wonderful and easy shortcut. 

He would not be one such sheep; he wouldn't allow the joys of a full life to pull the wool over his young eyes. His future course of action became crystal clear. At age 14, after making up his mind and steeling his resolve, Armin launched himself from one of the higher windows in his school.

This was his attempt to end his life and guarantee his future ascendance. Needless to say, it didn't work out quite as he had hoped. Armin survived his suicide attempt but was ravaged by injury. Among the injuries he suffered were a broken wrist, two broken legs and an injured back. 

After the accident, Armin was confined to a wheelchair for the next seven months. Even after regaining permission to ambulate further, he still required months before he was able to travel with some semblance of independence. 

Wracked by more than the physical injuries of his failed suicide attempt, Armin was torn apart by the effect his actions had on his parents. Seeing the impact it had on them, Armin was no longer deluded by the temptation of an easy way to heaven, and so, he dedicated himself even more so to his religion and finding a better path to God.

...While his newfound dedication and studies did lead him to become more familiar with the intricacies of his religion, it also led to some rather unexpected and quite unwelcome thoughts. For every question his studies answered about his religious beliefs and the nature of God, ten more popped up in their stead, leading to a seemingly endless and inconclusive search.

The more he studied, the more questions he had and the more confused he became. He started to question God as well as God's motives, and judgments. For example, why would a benevolent God send people to hell simply because they picked the wrong religion?

Such novel questions did not come without a price. Every time Armin found himself questioning God, he felt the cold, creeping fingers of guilt grip his heart. Led by his thirst for knowledge and knowing that seeking Islamic knowledge is encouraged in his religion, he convinced himself that studying the nature of his God could never be a reprehensible act.

Emboldened by his newfound sense of purpose, he set out to study and learn all he could about more religions, including some dead religions. He was fueled by curiosity for why, according to Islam, these religions were so evil that all of their followers were damned to eternal hellfire and brimstone. What did they get wrong? What were their major errors?

The more he studied, the more he learned and the more and more he began to see the fallacies of all of these other religions, including his own. Through countless hours spent studying, researching and pondering, he began to see the greater possibility that religion could indeed have been a manmade concept.

...The more he began to think of religion as a manmade concept, not a divine statute, the stronger his doubt became. No longer able to abide the growing storm inside of him, Armin resolved to face the matter directly, disregard his doubts and attempt to convince himself simply that God was real and that he could be absolutely certain of this.

He simply needed proof, actual, verifiable proof, not the mythos of a centuries-old novel. He believed once he managed to locate this proof, his faith would be stronger than ever.

Failing to find proof, he settled on any logical reasoning for the existence of God, including examining philosophical concepts and theories. However, once all of the logical explanations supporting God had been thoroughly debunked, he grew desperate. 

He prayed harder, begging God to help him. He wanted a sign, a message -- anything at all to assure himself of a divine presence. Of course, his prayers were never answered. All of this transpired during most of Armin's relatively young life, and by the age of 18, he had lost all of his faith.

He felt cheated, betrayed and taken advantage of by society, his country, teachers, and those who impose the belief in God as an absolute truth without any proof, denying all other alternatives. He felt angry, depressed, and broken. He had sacrificed so much, even almost his life, all for the sake of a fairytale.

...Armin was the only atheist he knew. Being the proactive go-getter he had always been, he wished to let more people know about his lack of belief as well as the amazing journey which had led to this conclusion. 

...He started the Atheist Republic in 2011. The main purpose of this community was to let everyone know about the many people who didn't believe in God and provide an invitation for them to explore these ideas if they were interested.

John Lennon's atheism in three of his songs

I love John Lennon's Imagine. But whenever I hear it played at some large event, like New Year's Eve in Times Square, I wonder why it's so popular in a highly religious country like the United States.

After all, the lyrics are not only secular, they're anti-religion. 

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... Aha-ah...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

This is a great You Tube video of Lennon singing the song in the company of Yoko Ono.

I enjoyed reading an article about the song, "Imagine at 50: Why John Lennon's Ode to Humanism Still Resonates." This is how it starts off. 

Fifty years ago, John Lennon released one of the most beautiful, inspirational and catchy pop anthems of the 20th century: “Imagine.”

Gentle and yet increasingly stirring as the song progresses, “Imagine” is unabashedly utopian and deeply moral, calling on people to live, as one humanity, in peace. It is also purposely and powerfully irreligious. From its opening lyric, “Imagine there’s no heaven,” to the refrain, “And no religion too,” Lennon sets out what is, to many, a clear atheistic message.

While most pop songs are secular by default – in that they are about the things of this world, making no mention of the divine or spiritual – “Imagine” is explicitly secularist. In Lennon’s telling, religion is an impediment to human flourishing – something to be overcome, transcended.

As a scholar of secularism and a devout fan of the Beatles, I have always been fascinated by how “Imagine,” perhaps the first and only atheist anthem to be so enormously successful, has come to be so widely embraced in America. After all, the U.S. is a country that has – at least until recently – had a much more religious population than other Western industrialized democracies.

The article clued me in to two other anti-religious songs Lennon wrote after the Beatles broke up and went their separate ways, God and I Found Out. Somehow I've either forgotten about them, or never was familiar with them. 

Here's the lyrics of God. 

God is a Concept by which we measure our pain
I'll say it again
God is a Concept by which we measure our pain

I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in Tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in Kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles

I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality

The dream is over
What can I say?
The dream is over
Yesterday
I was the dreamweaver
But now I'm reborn
I was the walrus
But now I'm John
And so, dear friends,
You'll just have to carry on
The dream is over

Lennon sings the song in this You Tube video. 

Beautiful. And inspiring to atheists like me. Or to anyone who wants to stop believing in abstractions and far-off potential objects of devotion, preferring instead to embrace the reality that's near at hand.

Lennon's I Found Out is another paean to his discovery that religions are worthless, being obsessed with pie-in-the-sky fantasies. Nice to see him taking a jab at gurus.

I told you before, stay away from my door
Don't give me that brother, brother, brother, brother
The freaks on the phone, won't leave me alone
So don't give me that brother, brother, brother, brother No!
I, I found out!
I, I found out!

Now that I showed you what I been through
Don't take nobody's word what you can do
There ain't no Jesus gonna come from the sky
Now that I found out I know I can cry

I, I found out!
I, I found out!

Some of you sitting there with your cock in your hand
Don't get you nowhere don't make you a man
I heard something 'bout my Ma and my Pa
They didn't want me so they made me a star

I, I found out!
I, I found out!

Old Hare Krishna got nothing on you
Just keep you crazy with nothing to do
Keep you occupied with pie in the sky
There ain't no guru who can see through your eyes

I, I found out!
I, I found out!

I seen through junkies, I been through it all
I seen religion from Jesus to Paul
Don't let them fool you with dope and cocaine
No one can harm you, feel your own pain

I, I found out!
I, I found this out!
I, I found out!

Here's a You Tube video of Lennon singing this song, which isn't one of his best. I like the lyrics a lot more than the song.

Before you decide to do something, you're already acting

I'm a big non-believer in free will. OK, more simply put, I don't believe in free will -- even though, like almost everybody, I feel like I have it.

Today I listened to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my Calm iPhone app. It starts off this way. 

There's a famous neurobiology finding where a test subject is told to push a meaningless button whenever they feel like it. And meanwhile, scientists are watching the subject's brain activity on an EEG machine.

And here's the weird thing. A full six seconds before the person has the thought, I'm going to push the button now, the brain has already begun pushing the button. It's like the body was already doing it. The mind only jumps in afterwards.

So, I have no idea what to make of this finding. But it did give me a cool idea for a meditation. In this Daily Trip we're going to let go of all sense of being the doer. It's an opportunity to just relax into the weird spontaneous flow of life. 

I'm not aware of the study Warren is referring to. But the general phenomenon of the brain appearing to make a decision well before conscious awareness has said I'll do this, is well established. 

For example, check out "Neuroscientists can read brain activity to predict brain decisions 11 seconds before people act."

Free will, from a neuroscience perspective, can look like quite quaint. In a study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers in Australia were able to predict basic choices participants made 11 seconds before they consciously declared their decisions.

In the study, 14 participants—each placed in an fMRI machine—were shown two patterns, one of red horizontal stripes and one of green vertical stripes. They were given a maximum of 20 seconds to choose between them. Once they’d made a decision, they pressed a button and had 10 seconds to visualize the pattern as hard as they could. Finally, they were asked “what did you imagine?” and “how vivid was it?” They answered these questions by pressing buttons.

Using the fMRI to monitor brain activity and machine learning to analyze the neuroimages, the researchers were able to predict which pattern participants would choose up to 11 seconds before they consciously made the decision. And they were able to predict how vividly the participants would be able to envisage it.

Lead author Joel Pearson, cognitive neuroscience professor at the University of South Wales in Australia, said that the study suggests traces of thoughts exist unconsciously before they become conscious. “We believe that when we are faced with the choice between two or more options of what to think about, non-conscious traces of the thoughts are there already, a bit like unconscious hallucinations,” he said in a statement.

I find this to be really positive, even inspiring. 

During the 35 years I believed in God and a guru who was God in Human Form, who managed a disciple's karma in a fashion best suited for spiritual development and God-realization, I enjoyed the thought that what was happening to me was God's will. Or, guru's will.

That took the pressure off of me when I did something wrong. Also, when I did something right. Either way, it was a relief to not feel like the responsibility for either good or bad actions fell upon me. I believed that a higher power was guiding what I did.

Now that I'm an atheist, modern neuroscience is showing a different reason for why I'm not responsible for the decisions that I make: the conscious "I" which thinks it is in control appears to be subservient to unconscious brain processes that lay the basis for my actions before I consciously decide to do them.

So "As God wills" is replaced by "As Brain wills." 

Sure, I realize that religious people much prefer feeling like they're being guided by God than by the unconscious aspect of their own brain. However, the end result is pretty much the same. What we do and think and feel springs from a deeper source than our conscious awareness.

Sam Harris often refers to this sort of thing in the guided meditations on his Waking Up app. Harris will point out that in sitting meditation, there's no need to do anything. 

Thoughts come on their own. Emotions arise on their own. Bodily sensations appear on their own. Sights and sounds are present on their own. He urges that we become aware of that open space in which all of these contents of consciousness arise and pass away.

Today I experimented now and then with feeling less like a doer of my actions and more of an observer of them. On the whole, it was a pleasant experience. Life goes more smoothly when I'm not anxiously trying to make everything happen the way I want.

For example, this afternoon I went to our athletic club to exercise before my Tai Chi class.

I didn't have much time to spare in the circuit training weight room. I wanted to use every machine, but saw that a young guy had settled into a leg machine, where he was doing multiple sets and spending a lot of time looking at his phone in between the sets. 

That started to irritate me. But I was able to relax and say to myself, "Let's just see what happens." Well, what happened was that the guy got up and walked out of the weight room. After I'd finished the machine I was on, I went over to the now-available leg machine.

The guy suddenly appeared again. I said, "Oh, so you're still using this." He said, "Yes, but you can go ahead." I told him, "Thanks. It won't take me long." Which it didn't, since I just do 20 repetitions with no break.

When I finished I thanked the guy. We'd had a pleasant encounter. And I really didn't have to do anything other than wait and see how the situation played out without me trying to force anything.

Fear of God's wrath is a lousy reason to be religious

Life is difficult. This is something almost everyone can agree on, believers and atheists alike.

But only religious people add to life's difficulties by imagining God inflicts pain and suffering on those who don't comply with whatever commandments their religion believes in.

I was a Catholic briefly as a child. I readily admit that I've never learned why confession is, or at least was, a big part of being a Catholic.

I simply remember that as part of my first communion, I had to confess my sins to a priest.

Being so young, I wasn't much of a sinner. So the best sin I could come up with was not going to mass regularly. The priest told me to recite some Our Father and Hail Mary prayers, which apparently absolved me of my sin and any retribution from God.

Fear of upsetting God is common in religions. When a guru or other holy person is considered to be God incarnate, or at least good friends with God, devotees fear upsetting them also.

Today I came across three separate references related to this notion of fearing God's wrath from very different sources.

This is part of Chapter 18 in Armin Navabi's book, "Why There is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God." That chapter is titled You'll become a believer when you are desperate for God's help.

Desperation often is born out of fear.

The idea behind this is that it's easy to be an atheist when your life is going well, but once you experience hard times, you'll believe in God or at least hope that he is real.

While this claim may be true for some people, it's certainly not a universal truth among atheists. Moreover, the existence of "deathbed conversions" and similar experiences does not prove the existence of God.

They only suggest that people are at their most irrational when frightened, in pain or delirious. The intense fear of death may drive some to accept illogical or irrational views out of desperation for comfort or a way to relieve or lessen their intense anxiety.

...Then, it's not that someone is desperate for God; they're desperate for some kind of comfort and emotional belief. The idea that fear could drive you toward the belief in God only goes to suggest that religious claims are commonly fear-based and not rooted in actual logic or evidence.

Here's a quote from a story in the February 28, 2022 issue of The New Yorker: After the Fall -- The Taliban fought for decades to retake Afghanistan. How will they rule? The Taliban are big on instilling fear, using the Muslim religion as justification for harsh measures.

He [Ibrahim Haqqani] spoke with the assurance of an all-knowing parent: "Severity is a global principle. Whenever there is chaos in a country, strict measures are put in place, and when things become normal again the strict measures can be relaxed." 

He went on, "God is patient. If a tribe takes the wrong path, denying the Quran and such things, then God gives them severe punishment. This is God's way and the world's way." 

Lastly, this is a passage from Johnjoe McFadden's book about William of Occam and the rise of modern science, "Life is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe." This is how people looked upon things in medieval times when plague was ravaging Europe.

The first epidemic burned itself out within four or five years but, over the following decades, outbreaks of the plague continued to devastate Europe with grim regularity. Looking for someone to blame, frightened rulers and citizens targeted the Jews and thousands were murdered.

Many others believed that man's wickedness was the cause of the divinely inflicted suffering so, in a bid to appease an angry God, donned sackcloth and ashes to wander from town to town to gather and mutually scourge each other with iron-tipped whips.

Yet flagellating, penance, prayer or purges did nothing to placate the fierce God. None were spared.

...With death around every corner, the scholastics abandoned scientific speculation and took to their prayers. It would be more than a hundred and fifty years before anyone else in medieval Europe took any serious interest in science.

Atheism has no doctrines

In Armin Navabi's book, Why There is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God, he has a chapter called "Atheism has killed more people than religion, so it must be wrong."

Navabi's main argument against this is in a section called Atheism Has No Doctrines. He makes some great points, so I'm sharing that section here.

Atheism Has No Doctrines

The violence within Christianity or Islam can often be traced back to the teachings of those religions because it is embedded in the ideology of the religions themselves. 

Even though war and violence in the name of God are often motivated by non-religious ambitions, such as political and territorial gain, religions in such cases are often used as an excuse for justifying such acts, disguising their intentions as holy and recruiting armies of people who would not have been willing to risk their lives for purely secular causes.

People throughout history have been martyred and sacrificed in the name of religion, and holy wars have been fought over the tenets of those religions.

The same cannot be said of atheism for the simple fact that atheism is not a religion. Atheism is a lack of belief in deities. It has no governing dogmatic principles, no rule book and no core ideology. Comparing atheism to religion is like comparing apples and oranges.

It's more helpful to compare atheism to theism, which is simply belief in a deity. While some theists also hold fundamentalist beliefs, just believing that some god exists is not enough to cause wars and violence based on the belief alone. 

How many wars have been caused by deism? You'd need some additional dogmatic beliefs in order for that to happen.

No one commits mass murder in the name of theism or atheism alone. Additional dogmatic principles are needed to justify such grisly outcomes. In the case of theism, religions like Christianity and Islam provide such dogma, creating convenient excuses.

Secular totalitarian regimes and religion share this dogmatic element: a belief that a set of ideas are true because an authority figure says so and that questioning those ideas can lead to serious or even deadly consequences.

Therefore, it's not reasonable to say that atheism condones or promotes violence or that tyrants have killed in the name of atheism. Such actions or any other action, both good and bad, do not and cannot speak for atheism in general, as no two atheists necessarily hold any of the same beliefs or convictions about the world.

The only thing held in common between all atheists is a lack of belief in deities.

This means that some atheists are undoubtedly unkind, aggressive and violent. It also means that some atheists are kind, friendly and peaceful. Any type of person can be an atheist, just as any type of person can be not interested in golf. Just because some non-golfers are jerks doesn't make not golfing bad any more than atheism can be blamed for the behavior of a handful of atheists. 

If you're trying to make a decision about whether you believe in God based on how a certain non-believer you know acts, you're using flawed reasoning. 

For the same reason, not all religious people are bad or cruel individuals, yet the practice of violence and war is deeply embedded in many religious ideologies. It is, therefore, best to examine your views about God or other religious beliefs by evaluating the evidence provided for such claims, not based on the behavior of people who do or do not accept it as truth.

What if God hates religions?

I'm an atheist who likes to imagine how God thinks. What allows me to do this is the same reason anyone is able to make a claim about God.

Since there's no convincing evidence that God exists, every person has an equal opportunity to imagine what this non-existent entity is like -- in much the same way that anyone can come up with a fictional story about characters they conjure up in their mind.

So I enjoy visualizing how irritated God is at religious people.

God is fine with people who use drugs, drink too much, watch porn all the time, have sex with anybody they want, get an abortion, and engage in any other sort of supposedly sinful behavior.

But when it comes to being religious, God absolutely hates this disgusting insult to all that is good and holy. I know, because God is using me as a channel to set humanity straight. Like all prophets, I shall speak the Word of God.

The only difference being, what follows is absolutely true.

If you don't believe me, too bad. Only I can testify to the majesty of the revelation revealed below, because ONLY I AM ME -- God's first and most important commandment.

God hates religions and religious people for lots of reasons. Chief among them is that no one knows anything about God. They're just guessing what God is like and what God wants. I'm no exception. However, God loves me for not pretending to know what God is like and what God wants.

I just make crap up about God, and am pleased to admit this. That pleases God mightily. 

God is especially pissed when religious people claim they have a special relationship with the Almighty. As if! God wants everyone to know that they all are equally beloved by God -- though God has a special fondness for atheists, since we acknowledge God's non-existence, and God likes truth-tellers.

Even if God existed, God tells me, there's no way Christians, for example, would be viewed any differently than Rastafarians or devotees of Zeus. The notion that God looks upon some people more favorably than other people is so fucking absurd, God lacks words to describe the absurdity.

Which is why I've been chosen to speak for God. 

God doesn't play favorites. When death comes, every person is going to end up in the exact same place: nowhere. And in the same condition: nothingness. Nowhere and nothingness... these are two words that please God beyond all others, since they describe the nature of God perfectly.

So what's the harm in believing in God? I asked God this question and got a one-word flaming response that burned its way into the depths of my consciousness.

Everything. 

Since God's nature is to be nowhere and exist as nothingness, each and every bullshit description of God that takes itself at all seriously -- and believe me, this revelation doesn't fall prey to that fatal error -- is blasphemy piled upon blasphemy with a big topping of blasphemy.

That's why being religious puts you on the Road to Hell. Or it would, if Hell existed. Which it does, because I've just imagined it. But my revelations about Hell must await another blog post.

Sneak peek: there's eternal suffering there for all who dare to speak of God without feeling in their innermost heart, "I'm just bullshitting."

I take another look at U.G. Krishnamurti

Back in 2009 I wrote a blog post about U.G. Krishnamurti, calling him intriguing, irritating, inspirational. That was based on reading some of his Mind Is a Myth book, which has an appealing copyright notice.

My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.

The book is still available online. But recently I got a paperback copy after being reminded of the book when a passage was quoted in something else I was reading. 

I still feel the same way about U.G. Krishnamurti, not to be confused with J. Krishnamurti. It's perplexing that even though he claims he has no teaching to share, and harshly criticizes gurus, the book consists of transcripts of conversations he had with people who sought him out -- maybe because they liked to be insulted.

Which Krishnamurti does a lot. 

Below are some excerpts from the initial part of the book that will give you a feel for his philosophy and style. There's quite a bit to like about his irreligious outlook on life, and also a lot not to like about the way he talks. 

He's provocative, for sure. An introduction says that Krishnamurti's childhood "was, in short, steeped in religious lore, philosophical discourse, and the influence of various spiritual personages."

However, "It was in these early years of his live that U.G. began to feel that 'something was wrong somewhere,' referring to the whole religious tradition into which he had been immersed almost from the beginning."

So his rejection of religion was based on a deep understanding of what later turned him off. This is part of what he says in the book's The Certainty That Blasts Everything chapter.

Your problems continue because of the false solutions you have invented. If the answers are not there, the questions cannot be there. They are interdependent; your problems and solutions go together, because you want to use certain answers to end your problems, these problems continue.

The numerous solutions offered by all these holy people, the psychologists, the politicians, are not really solutions at all. That is obvious. If there were legitimate answers, there would be no problems. 

They can only exhort you to try harder, practice more meditations, cultivate humility, stand on your head, and more and more of the same. That is all they can do. The teacher, guru, or leader who offers solutions is also false, along with his so-called answers.

He is not doing any honest work, only selling a cheap, shoddy commodity in the marketplace. If you brushed aside your hope, fear, and naïveté and treated these fellows like businessmen, you would see that they do not deliver the goods and never will.

But you go on and on buying these bogus wares offered up by the experts.

------------------

All their philosophies cannot compare to the native wisdom of the body itself. What they are calling mental activity, spiritual activity, emotional activity, and feelings are really all one unitary process. 

The body is highly intelligent and does not need these scientific or theological teachings to survive and procreate. Take away all your fancies about life, death, and freedom, and the body remains unscathed, functioning harmoniously.

It does not need your or my help. You don't have to do a thing. You will never again ask stupid, idiotic questions about immortality, afterlives, or death. The body is immortal.

------------------

Life has no beginning and no end. A dead and dying body feeds the hungry ants there in the grave, and rotting corpses give off soil-enriching chemicals, which in turn nourish other life forms. You cannot put an end to your life, it is impossible. 

The body is immortal and never asks silly questions like "Is there immortality?" It knows that it will come to an end in that particular form, only to continue on in others. Questions about life after death are always asked out of fear. 

Those leaders who would direct your "spiritual life" cannot be honest about these things, for they make a living out of fear, speculations about future life, and the "mystery" of death.

------------------

As long as you think you have something to renounce, you are lost. Not to think of money and the necessities of life is an illness. It is a perversion to deny yourself the basic needs of life. You think that through a self-imposed asceticism you will increase your awareness and then be able to use that awareness to be happy.

No chance. You will be peaceful when all your ideas about awareness are dropped and you begin to function like a computer. You must be a machine, function automatically in the world, never questioning your actions before, while, or after they occur.

------------------

For this reason the whole guru business is absolute nonsense. This has always been the case, not just now. Your self-denial enriches the priests. 

You deny yourself your basic needs while that man travels in a Rolls Royce car, eating like a king, and being treated like a potentate. He, and the others in the holy business, thrive on the stupidity and credulity of others.

The politicians, similarly, thrive on the gullibility of man. It is the same everywhere.

------------------

If your meditation, sadhanas, methods and techniques meant anything, you wouldn't be here asking these questions. They are all means for you to bring about change. I maintain that there is nothing to change or transform.

You accept that there is something to change as an article of faith. You never question the existence of the one who is to be changed. The whole mystique of enlightenment is based upon the idea of transforming yourself.

------------------

Any action that takes place at the conscious level of your thinking existence is a reaction. Pure, spontaneous action free of all previous actions is meaningless. The one and only action is the response of this living organism to the stimuli around it.

That stimulus-response process is a unitary phenomenon. There is no division between action and reaction except when thought interferes and artificially separates them. Otherwise it is an automatic, unitary process, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. There is no need to stop it.

Just as in reality there is no separation of action and reaction, so there is no room for the religious man in the natural scheme of things. The fresh movement of life threatens his source of power and prestige. Still, he does not want to retire. He must be thrown out.

Religion is not a contractual arrangement, either public or private. It has nothing to do with the social structure or its management. Religious authority wants to continue its hold on the people, but religion is entirely an individual affair.

The saints and saviors have only succeeded in setting you adrift in life with pain and misery and the restless feeling that there must be something more meaningful or interesting to do with one's life. Existence is all that is important, not how to live.

We have created the "how" to live, which in turn has created this dilemma for us. Your thinking has created problems -- what to eat, wear, how to behave -- the body doesn't care. I am simply pointing out the absurdity of this conversation.

Once you get the hang of it, you just go. I have no message to give mankind.

Why atheism makes sense even if theism doesn't

Even though it's true that usually people aren't described by their unwillingness to believe in imaginary things -- there aren't afairyists who proclaim their skepticism about the existence of fairies -- the situation is different in regard to God.

Below I've shared an excellent comment from Appreciative Reader that was left today on a recent post of mine. The comment explains why even if the notion of God is incoherent, which of course it is, there's still good reason for atheists to object to the belief in God held by billions of people. 

After all, believers in fairies don't try to impose their belief on other people, whereas highly religious countries like the United States have their politics greatly influenced by fundamentalists who consider that whatever they imagine their God wants, like an end to legal abortion, should apply to everybody.

Plus, atheism is a stand for truth, reality, reason, evidence. Even if religious believers didn't try to impose their beliefs on others, many atheists (certainly me included) would feel the need to point out that God is a hypothesis lacking any demonstrable factual foundation. 

Here's the comment from Appreciative Reader, which is a reply to another commenter, 271 Days. His mention of Adam Dalgliesh led me to Google the name, which I'd never heard before. Wikipedia told me this is a fictional character in a series of  fourteen mystery novels by P.D. James, a British thing from what I could tell. 

@271Days:

Heh, okay, I get what you’re saying. You’re saying the term “God” itself is incoherent, so that the term “theist” would be incoherent and meaningless too; and, as such, its obverse, that is to say, “atheist” or “atheism” would also not be quite coherent. Fair enough, that makes sense, so far as it goes.

Here’s three separate observations, as far as this, that I’m enumerating separately in the interests of clarity:

(1) Your argument is based squarely on how wide, in fact wide to the point of incoherence, is the term “God”. Therefore, it fails the moment we move from the general to the particular.

So that when it comes to the Christian God, or the Judaic, or the Islamic, atheism continues to be a valid position. Likewise, when it comes to the Hindu gods, or the Shinto gods, or for that matter the Roman and Greek pantheons of yore, then too atheism continues to be a sound position to take. Ditto the RSSB God.

Even, for that matter, some kind of Deistic impersonal Oneness-God, or some completely watered down abstract Aquinian “prime mover” God, or whatever --- the moment you move from wide-open generalization to any kind of exactitude, immediately atheism once again makes complete sense.

(2) This is kind of topsy-turvy, in the sense that you’re suggesting that atheism does not make sense because theism, generally speaking, itself does not make sense. In order to suggest that atheism is an invalid position, you’re first and foremost suggesting that theism itself is an incoherent and invalid position.

And you know what? I can live with that. It is entirely possible that if, a century or two down the line, theistic superstitions become relegated to arcane history books, and the word “God” and “theism” will draw blank stares from everyone other than history nerds; should that come to pass, then the term “atheism” itself will become meaningless, absolutely.

Unfortunately we’re not there yet, though. As long as there remain theists, so long atheism remains a valid position. If the moment a theist comes out and declares himself such, you’re willing to jump out and tell him that what he’s saying is incoherent and nonsensical, the atheist will be content to stay silent in the sidelines. Of course, if and when the theist, in response to your ridicule, now moves from the general to the particular, well then, that’s when you GO TO #1.

(3) This third point is merely a variation on #1 and #2 above, but still might be meaningful for the sake of emphasis. Do you believe in the existence of ampembalanxes, 271Days? Yes, or Not-Yes? If the censor arrives at your door with his clipboard and asks you, “Do you tick a “Yes” to the question, ‘Do you believe in ampmbalnxes?’ ”, I guess you won’t agree to tick it, right?

You may either just say “No” (choosing to define “No” in this context as simply “Not-Yes”); or you may just tell him his question is not meaningful without further clarification. The point is, you don’t tick in a “Yes”, you don’t say you believe in said undefined ampembalanxes. I don’t see why the atheist wouldn’t be content to do the same for the God question.

I don’t think the reasonable atheist has any kind of fixation over God. If people around him stopped going on and on and on about unsupported claims about God, the reasonable atheist would be content to not say anything at all. Let theism disappear completely from the face of the earth; and so will atheism.

If what I’ve tried to convey, in some detail, by those three (overlapping) points above, is what you’re saying here, then I guess we’re in agreement. But if you’re somehow trying to claim that while atheism is an incoherent position, but at the same time theism makes sense to you, then I’m afraid your argument is totally mistaken, and I disagree with you in the strongest possible terms, for reasons already discussed very clearly above.

-------

“Forgetting about that book for a second my view is simple. No matter what you posit ie. cosmos, universe, laws, you have already posited awareness first. You can’t get behind awareness. Whatever you say requires awareness first. Awareness is the First Principle. So I think we can logically say Awareness/Being/Spirit/ is God. You don’t have to question if awareness exists. It exists before anything else possibly can.”

-------

I don’t see that, at all.

I think you’re conflating two things here: on one hand, what we know about something; and on the other, how we’ve come to know of it.

Sure, as far as the latter, awareness is indeed the first principle. You cannot become aware of some facet of existence without first having become aware in the first place. That’s tautological, absolutely. First principle, as you say.

However, that most certainly does not apply to the thing we’re becoming aware of. Sure, you need to first to become aware in order to become aware of the universe/cosmos. But that is most certainly not to say that awareness itself must first have existed in order for the universe/cosmos to exist or to have come into being.

You’re basically stating the former position, and ending up implying the latter; and this latter position, when you unwrap your implicit argument and look clearly and closely at it, makes absolutely no sense at all, and in fact is plain wrong.

An analogy may make this obvious point doubly clear. Is it necessary for James’s Adam Dalgliesh to be alive in order for him to finally understand who is (or are) the one (or ones) that did away with the publishing magnate, whose murder he’s been investigating? Absolutely, yes.

But that speaks only to Dalgliesh’s personal understanding, and not the subject of his investigation. Dalgliesh’s life, his consciousness if you will, is necessary to his personal understanding of the perpetrator’s identity, yes, absolutely; but his life and/or his consciousness have nothing at all to do with who the perpetrator(s) actually might be.

Of course, as earlier (that is, as with your argument about the semantics around theism and atheism), if you’re merely making the former argument without in fact meaning to slip in, by implication, the latter argument, then once again I don’t disagree with you.

If all you’re saying is that in order for there to be awareness of the universe/cosmos, there must first be awareness --- and if you just stop there, not making any further implicit claims --- then fine, we’re agreed. But that’s just a blindingly obvious truism, an out-and-out tautology, and I don’t see the point of making that argument at all.

Still, and like I said, if you choose to make that focused argument, entirely pointless though that argument seems to me (“pointless” in that it leads nowhere at all, and is most certainly not a refutation of atheism in any shape or form), then okay, I don’t disagree with you.

Why it makes no sense to ask for evidence that God doesn't exist

Over the years I've written numerous blog posts about the near-impossibility of proving a negative such as God doesn't exist. 

This isn't the way both science and common sense work.

We don't ask for evidence that invisible fairies aren't making our cars move. Since cars have engines, or motors if they're electric, there's lots of evidence in favor of engines/motors, so no need to deal with the invisible fairy hypothesis.

Same is the case with God. Or at least how atheists look upon God. 

Below is how Armin Navabi addresses this issue in his book, "Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God."

"There's no evidence that God doesn't exist."

When confronted with criticism, some theists will pull out this argument in an attempt to shift the burden of proof toward the critic. Although this tactic can feel very clever, it opens a door to absurdity.

This argument seems to suggest that we believe in everything, even things we have yet to think about, until that belief is proven false. That's simply not a logical way to perceive reality.

If the criteria for something being accepted as true was based purely on there being no evidence against it, an endless number of hypothetical objects could suddenly become "real." This has been the source of numerous playful thought experiments by skeptics around the world.

-- The flying spaghetti monster, who created the earth with his noodly appendage.

-- The invisible pink unicorn, whose "believers" logically know that she must be invisible because she has not been seen, yet have faith that she's pink.

-- The dragon in Carl Sagan's garage, a thought experiment he describes in The Demon-Haunted World. The dragon is invisible, floats in the air, generates no heat and is incorporeal, thus evading all forms of sensory detection.

-- Russell's Teapot, a hypothetical teapot that you cannot prove isn't orbiting the sun.

Of course, all of these examples were designed in good fun. Bertrand Russell does not actually believe that there is a teapot orbiting the sun. However, there is no way to definitively prove that these fanciful claims aren't true, which demonstrates the total absurdity of this line of thinking.

Ad hoc arguments

Carl Sagan's invisible dragon argument shows the futility of ad hoc arguments in explaining reality.

An ad hoc argument is one that makes excuses to rationalize away the valid criticisms of an argument without any evidence to support it. When the claimant desperately wants something to be true, she'll often employ an ad hoc argument to counter any arguments to her claim.

The dragon in Carl Sagan's hypothetical garage cannot be seen because it's invisible. A skeptic might press for evidence. But its footprints cannot be observed because it hovers in the air, and the dragon's invisible fire is heatless.

A rationalization can be formed to explain the absence of any form of evidence. These rationalizations don't make the original claim true. Indeed, it's easiest to make ad hoc arguments about things that don't really exist because that frees you up to create increasingly fanciful arguments.

When applied to theism, this ad hoc reasoning can be seen in the increasingly vague descriptions of God. The rationalizations discussed in the last chapter -- that God cannot be comprehended or described -- fall under the ad hoc fallacy.

Such rationalizations make God so vague that it becomes impossible to refute the idea, but they get the claimant nowhere closer to proving his claim. 

Disbelief is not the same as belief in something else

Telling an atheist to prove there is no God automatically assumes that this is what the atheist believes. While gnostic atheists confidently believe that there are no deities, many other atheists are agnostic atheists. 

In other words, these people do not believe in any gods, but they do not claim to be certain that gods do not exist. Gnostic atheists, meanwhile, do feel confident saying that no gods exist. Both are valid types of atheism.

It is important to note that atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. To understand the difference between atheist and agnosticism, visit AtheismVsAgnosticism.com

Lack of belief in deities is enough to classify someone as an atheist. Lacking belief in something does not mean that you believe it to be false; it just means that you have no conviction that it's true. 

For example, a friend of yours may believe that Ford is the best car company in the world. You have no particular opinion one way of the other. You don't believe that Ford is better than any other car brand, but you also don't know that it's not the best car brand. In this situation, you would be agnostic about your friend's claim.

In actuality, most people are atheist about at least some gods.

After all, there are thousands of gods throughout the history of world theology, but the majority of religious people have no problem in disbelieving Zeus, Thor, or Anubis. Jews and Muslims have no problem denying the divinity of Christ. Monotheists are well practiced in disbelieving other gods.

As Richard Dawkins put it, atheists simply take this one god further.

Religions demand perfect evidence from anyone rebutting their claims but offer none for their own claims. If faced with convincing evidence in favor of any deity, we should reconsider our position. 

But we need to ask questions and go where the evidence leads us, rather than try to lead the evidence where we like. By questioning everything, we follow the evidence, rather than trying to force the evidence to fit our presupposed conclusions.

I'm an atheist who has a personal relationship with God

The title of this blog post is surprising, right? How is it possible for an atheist to have a personal relationship with God?

Answer: it's easy. I simply define "God" a lot differently than religious believers do. As described in Atheists should redefine "God" as all that exists, I look upon God as being synonymous with reality, or existence.

So I find God awe-inspiring, mysterious, impossible to fathom. 

After all, the greatest mystery -- one which almost certainly never will be unraveled by humans -- is that existence exists. Or as the mystery often is described, why is there something rather than nothing?

I've written quite a few blog posts on this subject. It fascinates me. I never get tired of pondering it, even though I never get close to grasping a possible answer. (I'm in good company; no one else ever has either.)

Saying that God is the creator of existence is no answer at all, because the obvious question arises, who created God? 

If the supposed answer is no one, since God always has existed, the same answer can be applied to why the cosmos exists. There's no why, because the universe always has existed.

Which brings us back to the same question: why is there something rather than nothing?

Doesn't matter whether that something is the physical cosmos or a supernatural God. Each is something that must have always existed, since something can't be produced from absolute nothing. Thus the mystery of existence remains.

I love a good mystery, and this is the grandest mystery of all. 

That's why I'm pleased to have a personal relationship with God. I like being intimate with the mystery of existence. Like I said, to me God is synonymous with existence. 

It isn't that God is a person, obviously. I don't believe in a personal God. However, I do have confidence that I'm a person. Thus my personal relationship with God is all on my end, since so far as I know, existence can't have a relationship with anybody.

I do think that it'd be way cool if a personal God, a conscious being with all that omni stuff like omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, actually was real. So occasionally I alter my strict atheist conception of God to include that possibility. 

"Hey, God, if you're out there, pay me a visit. Love to have a chat with you. You know where to find me, since you're all-knowing." 

Haven't gotten a reply yet. Thus I'm placing most of my philosophical bet on the God that is equivalent to everything in existence. This includes my conception of "God," since a concept is a neurological pattern in a brain, so it is existent.

I like my conception of God because it points to something that truly exists: namely, existence. Otherwise "God" is just an idea that refers to nothing other than itself. Imagine that "music" was just a concept and there was no actual music in the world. 

Then people would discuss the possible meaning of "music" without anyone being able to point to music that can be heard by the ears, rather than merely thought of with the mind.

This is the situation with every religion.

Religious believers chatter on endlessly about the glory of God, blah, blah, blah, but nobody ever can show that this God they're glorifying actually exists. Whereas I can play a huge variety of music in my living room by firing up the Sonos iPhone app and having it play songs on my speakers.

Further, music existed before humans did. It's possible to view birdsong as music, thunder as music, porpoise/whale communications as music. So my relationship with music has tremendous depth, because music is so much more than a concept.

I have a personal relationship with music. But music doesn't have a personal relationship with me. Same applies to God. My relationship with God isn't conceptual or a matter of belief. It is absolutely real, since the God I revere is everything that exists.

In short, reality. 

Atheists should redefine "God" as all that exists

The word "God" has a strong hold on people. So strong, even atheists sometimes use it, as in "God damn it!" Or "God bless you" after a sneeze. 

So I've come to believe that we atheists need to appropriate "God" for our own purpose -- living without superstition, supernatural fantasy, and blind faith. 

There's nothing wrong with that word, just as there's nothing wrong with any word.

A word is simply made up of letters. The meaning those letters represent is entirely in the hands of humans. Unlike "gravity," say, there is no objective reality that the usual meaning of "God" points to: a divine being who created our universe and takes an interest in what people do.

Given that thousands of religions exist, each with a different understanding of what "God" refers to, it makes sense for atheists to define that word in a fashion that makes sense to us.

More specifically, me, since naturally I don't claim to speak for all atheists. 

My preference is to view "God" as referring to all that exists. Yes, this is close to pantheism. However, I reject the theism part of pantheism. My notion is both simpler and more radical. 

In addition to referring to the universe, or the cosmos, as all that exists, I like the idea of being able to use God as shorthand for the same concept. God is reality. The reality that we know now, plus whatever additions to reality become known in the future.

Obviously this includes the laws of nature. 

Thus "God willing" is equivalent to saying "if the laws of nature bring this about;" "I pray to God that..." is the same as saying "I hope that..."; "Thank you, God" becomes "Thank you, reality"; "God is good" means "I see goodness in what exists."

Now, I realize that most people would see no point in repurposing "God" in this fashion. I agree in large part. But not entirely. 

Like I said, the word "God" is impossible to ignore. From an early age children are exposed to the various meanings of this word. As we grow older, we choose whether to embrace a traditional religious view of God or some other view. Yet just as pantheism includes the term "theism," so does "atheism." 

Not believing in God still brings up the notion of God, in much the same way someone who dislikes country music has to cite what is abhorred in saying "I hate country music." 

This is one reason I've become fond of the idea that there is a God atheists can embrace. When God means everything that exists, I can say, "Yes, I believe in God." 

True, this is the same as saying "I believe in reality." But that goes without saying, really. Who doesn't? Even psychotic people believe in the reality of their own deluded thoughts. 

I just don't want religious believers to be the only ones who decide what "God" means. For several weeks I've enjoyed playing around with using this word in the sense I've described. It's working for me.

When something goes well in my life, at times I say to myself "Thank you, God." I'm affirming that reality, or existence, has brought about a condition that is pleasing to me. I don't expect any response from reality, since the God I'm thanking isn't a conscious being.

Instead, I'm redefining a familiar word in a way that fits with how I've come to understand life and the world: as a vastly complex interconnected web of causes and effects that extend back to the big bang and forward into a possibly infinite future. 

Here I am, a very small cog in the machinery of the cosmos. Or, of God. My actions have some small effect on the rest of reality, but mostly I'm under the sway of causes and conditions that are hugely vaster and more powerful.

Calling all that "God" feels good to me. And like Janis Joplin sang, feeling good is good enough for me.

Believers in God have the burden of proof, not atheists

My wife has organized an atheist group that meets every Sunday here in Salem. Recently I noted that someone had shared a link to a book on the group's Facebook page. 

It looked interesting, so I bought Why There is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God.

I'm enjoying Armin Navabi's book. Here's info about Navabi that's on the back cover and Amazon listing.

Armin Navabi is a former Muslim from Iran and the founder of Atheist Republic, a non-profit organization with over one million fans and followers worldwide that is dedicated to offering a safe community for atheists around the world to share their ideas and meet like-minded individuals.

Armin was born and raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran and was indoctrinated thoroughly in the Muslim tradition. After almost losing his life in the pursuit of God's grace, the devastation of that event motivated him to seek a better understanding of the nature and concept of God and religious belief.

Armin's journey led him to leaving Islam and becoming an atheist. Wanting to reach out to others like himself, Armin continues to examine religion as well as the notion of God and interact with others to engage in thought-provoking and educational discussion.

I liked what Navabi says in his Introduction about the burden of proof. He reminded me of me in how he argued this. Great atheist minds think alike, I guess. 

One concept you'll see come up repeatedly in this book is the idea of the burden of proof. During any debate, it's the job of the person making a claim to provide support, evidence and reasoning for that claim.

It simply doesn't make sense to make an unfounded claim with no evidence to back it and demand that the other person to either agree with you or disprove your unfounded statement. 

...The burden of proof is a necessary part of any debate, regardless of the topic being discussed. Its utility in facilitating discussion is so well established that it's required in legal proceedings as well; the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty.

In the case of debates about God, the burden is on the believer to offer support for her position if she wishes it to be considered seriously. In reality, the only necessary argument against believing in God is simply that there is no evidence that any gods exist.

An atheist doesn't need to justify her lack of belief any further. This keeps the burden of proof on the side of the claimant where it belongs. The person making a claim has to provide the evidence for its validity.

Would you believe in the claim that flying pineapples exist until proven wrong without any evidence? Probably not. You would withhold belief until there is evidence to support such a claim. 

All the same, it's sometimes valuable to point out the fallacies in a claimant's argument. At the very least, this creates constructive discussion where all points are considered and examined. This can also introduce doubt, causing the other person to reconsider his or her position or consider searching for evidence before accepting a claim. 

Atheism exists on a spectrum. Some atheists claim absolute certainty in God's nonexistence. Others simply remain unconvinced and refuse to believe in a deity without compelling evidence. However, once one has a high enough level of certainty about something, they usually treat it as certain for the sake of practicality. 

After all, I cannot say with absolute certainty that my wife is not a professional assassin hired by the People's Republic of China to exterminate me. But I don't spend time worrying about the possibility because there is no evidence whatsoever to support it.

The same is true for the existence of God, although my wife being an assassin is actually more likely; that scenario, at least, would fall within the known scientific laws without contradicting the prevailing models explaining the universe. 

It was easy to respond to this atheist challenge

Yesterday Anurag Nathyal left this comment on a recent blog post. I'm pleased to take Nathyal up on his challenge. Replies below in bold. At the end of this post I'll also share an excellent rebuttal to what Nathyal said by Appreciative Reader, a regular commenter on this blog.

I have a challenge for the atheists here. You say that we can't prove god is there. I ask you can you prove anything in this world? This may sound absurd at first but think about it.

It's tough for me to respond about "proof" any better than Appreciative Reader said in a reply to your comment, which I've shared below. He's right. In science and everyday life, we don't go about trying to prove things. Basically, we try to explain things. Often this is called "inference to the best explanation."

As Appreciative Reader noted, mathematics has proofs. Science and everyday life don't, at least not in a formal mathematical sense. So atheists don't ask for proof that God exists. We ask for evidence that God exists that pr0vides a persuasive explanation or reason for why, as you put it, God is there.

Science haven't been able to prove consciousness. The very basis of our existence. I bet can you prove anything. Literally anything? By proving I mean there should be no room for doubt. Can you even prove we are not living in a dream or this world is a computer simulation?

Again, science isn't about proof. It is about explanation. Neuroscience has made a lot of progress is understanding consciousness. How much progress have religions made? Zero, essentially. Also, you're mistaken if you believe that science has no room for doubt in its explanations. Every scientific explanation is open to doubt, to refinement, to being overthrown.

That's how science keeps learning more and more -- by challenging current explanations and looking for better ones. In science and everyday life we aren't after certainty. Instead, we seek the most likely and reasonable explanation. Such as, we aren't living in a dream or a computer simulation, though this is a possibility. 

You may think I have gone absurd but still you won't be able to answer my question. Can you prove that this world is real and not a dream. No you can't. All what you can say is that according to my experiences I believe the world is real. But still you can't say that you are certain of it because certain means having no room for doubt and that's not possible.

For some reason you keep asking us atheists to prove things, whereas if you want people to accept that God is real, you should be focused on presenting evidence that supports God's existence. Like I said, nothing is 100% certain. Since you appear to agree with this, I assume you also agree that it isn't certain that God exists. Correct?

All we do is believe. And if this argument isn't enough I have got another. How can you tell a person who doesn't feel pain how pain feels like. It's a real question not a hypothetical one. There are people who don't feel pain. And they just don't know what pain is. You can only try to describe them what pain feels like but you will never be able to know what it actually is.

This is true of everything. You have no idea what my experience feels like, and I have no idea what your experience feels like. No one can know someone else's experience, because all experience is personal. 

They might think that you are telling lies. You can't tell a blind person what it feels like to see. You can't tell a mute person what it's like to hear what you can do is try. They may tell to your face that you are telling lies.

Correct. And us atheists can't tell religious believers what it feels like to not see God. So you simply have a belief about atheists, because there is no way that you can tell what we actually experience. Nor can an atheist tell what a religious believer experiences. Again, this is true of every experience. 

Same goes with those who have experienced the allmighty. They can just describe to you. But they can't tell you exactly because words can't describe such things just like you can't explain to a blind how it feels like to see , you can't tell a mute person how it feels like to listen.

OK, but here's the thing. We know a lot about sight and hearing. Eyes see. Ears hear. And seeing and hearing are senses that tell us things about the physical world, the reality that we all share. By contrast, those who claim to have experienced God can't tell other people what sense they used to have this experience. Nor can they point to the divinity that the unknown sense produced an awareness of. So your analogy fails.

I'll say this again: if I see a movie, like Summer of Soul (great movie, by the way), I can try to describe why I liked it, but the description doesn't capture my experience of the movie. However, I can tell you how to watch the movie, so we can be sure we're having different experiences of the same reality. Where is this God you speak of? How can we be sure that your God is the same as the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or the thousands of other Gods? Which experience of God should I trust?

You can't describe pain to someone who doesn't feel it , there are some actual people like that. You just can't describe these things through words !!! You just can't !!! I will copy paste this message to every section of this website where there are atheists. Don't think I am a bot. I just need to say the same thing to everyone.

Your argument is weak, if you're trying to defend a belief in God. Psychotic people have experiences of realities that are only in their own minds. So do people who dream, or take psychedelic drugs. Again, this is true of every experience anyone has ever had or will have. No one can fully describe their experiences through words, because experiences aren't made of words.

But you've used a lot of words to argue why words can't capture all of reality. I agree with you, of course. What we do in science and everyday life is use words for various purposes, one of which is to explain the nature of reality. So I invite you to use words to describe how you had an experience of God, and what that experience consisted of. 

And I swear if you give answers to my these 2 questions. I will become atheist !!! Try to give a logical explanation , be true to yourselves.

In my opinion, you've just become an atheist. Congratulations! Glad to help. 

Here's the excellent comment from Appreciative Reader.

Hello, Anurag Nathyal. It's astonishing, how people are so very ignorant about the basics of the scientific method. And no, it isn't just you, and nor is this a derogatory comment against you: this ignorance is far more widespread, and extends to far more ...stratified realms, than one might imagine.

I don't think you're trolling. I do think you're honestly ignorant about this very basic thing, as so many others are.

The short answer to your question is: "Proof" is what you do in closed systems, essentially tautological systems, like logic and math. When it comes to the real world, and specifically when it comes to the scientific method, the operative word you're looking for is not "proof", but something like "best-fit model", or, more generally, "best and most consistent and most economical explanation", that is based on, another operative word, "evidence".

I'm not looking for a detailed discussion, just thought I'd send out a helping hand to a fellow human being who's seemingly grappling with an honest question. Just think over the short paragraph above, and you'll find your answer. You're welcome.

There is indeed a presumption of atheism

Yesterday someone  left this comment on my post, "Sorry. No winner in 'Tell me why you believe in God contest.'"

There are arguments for theism. There are arguments for atheism. The failure of arguments for one side, does not mean that the other position is true by default. There is no "presumption of atheism" or "presumption of theism."

The commenter is completely wrong. What they said lacks any foundation in logic, reason, or direct experience.

I talk about this a lot on this blog. Almost always there's no way to prove the non-existence of something. What we do in both science and everyday life is demand proof that something exists.

If you say, "There's an invisible pink elephant standing on the sidewalk," it's absurd to consider that this statement is as believable as "There's no invisible pink elephant standing on the sidewalk."

Why? Because once we assume that things unseen and unprovable possess as much reality as things seen and provable, we've lost touch with reality. 

That's another word for psychosis. 

Now, it's unlikely the commenter is psychotic. They just have a deficiency in clear thinking, which is very different from being mentally ill.

That's why I'm writing this post -- to help them, and others, understand where they are going wrong in their approach to reality.

Glad to help! That's what we do here at the Church of the Churchless, help bring people back into touch with reality after wandering in the desert of religious delusion.

Hey, I've been a wanderer myself before I understood in what direction truth lies.

Atheism is the presumptive truth because there is no demonstrable evidence that any of the thousands of gods theorized to exist actually does. Atheism simply means "no theism" or "no god."

Likewise, no invisible pink elephants is the presumptive truth because there is no demonstrable evidence that such creatures exist -- except in the minds of people who claim that they see them.

How to become an atheist in three easy steps

This says it all, in just a few words.

What is versus what might be -- a rationale for atheism

There are several reasons why I'm a proud atheist. For example, atheism is firmly grounded in reality, since there is no demonstrable evidence that a god exists. Hence the "a" before theism. 

Atheism also is humble. I'm not saying that all atheists are humble, just that not believing in a god is inherently humble, since there is no way to feel that you're part of a god's chosen people if you don't believe in a god.

Here's another reason. 

Atheism is focused on what is, not what might be. In contrast, religions have the opposite focus, on what might be rather than what is. Now, obviously this is closely tied to the first reason above, the grounding of atheism in reality.

Mostly I hang out with other atheists. This isn't a conscious choice. It is just a natural outcome of the sort of friends and family I have. They're mostly people who embrace science and facts, in addition to the many other possible things people embrace, like art and politics. 

In our conversations, obviously there is zero talk of what happens after death or an afterlife. Religious believers, though, love to talk about heaven, reincarnation, spending eternity with God, and so on. 

The fact that there's no good reason to believe in this stuff doesn't bother them. Hey, it might be true, and that's good enough for people who value fantasy and wishful thinking over what is -- indisputable reality.

Of course, us atheists, along with everybody else, have to strike a balance between attending to what is versus what might be. Planning for the future is as much a part of being human as living in the now is. They're both essential for a fulfilling life.

To offer up an example from my life, a few days ago I wrote a post on one of my other blogs, "My geeky search for the perfect winter tire." As I said in the post, the first question I faced was whether I should get winter tires for the 2020 Subaru Crosstrek that I bought last February. 

That was easy for me to answer.

My wife and I live in a part of Oregon where it can be snowy or icy in late fall, winter, and maybe even early spring. We don't get a lot of snow and ice, none at all the last two years, but when it happens, it's tough to drive around. We live in the south Salem hills, so some roads, along with our driveway, are steep.

And often the temperature is close to freezing when snow or ice hits. That makes roads more slippery than the dry snow common in the mid-West, which also is quite flat. 

So based on my experience of what has been, a close cousin of what is, I decided to order a set of winter tires yesterday -- a new Michelin model, the X-Ice Snow. I recalled how we haven't been able to get up our driveway in the snow with an all-wheel-drive car that had all-season tires, whereas a front-wheel drive car with winter tires did just fine. So an all-wheel drive car with winter tires will be super-fine.

But it would be crazy for someone to buy winter tires if they lived on a place near the equator where it never has snowed or been icy. In this case the odds of needing winter tires to drive around is close to zero. Possible, but extremely unlikely.

That's comparable to religious people planning for an afterlife when it is extremely unlikely that they'll have one.

There's a cost to religiosity, to acting on the basis of a very low probability of might be. Whereas the cost of winter tires is monetary, the cost of religious belief is using one's limited lifetime for activities that aren't based on clear and present reality.

I'm going to feel good when the winter tires are put on my Crosstrek, because I have a solid factual basis for believing there might be snow or ice in our area in the next four or five months. However, no one has a solid factual basis for believing there might be an afterlife, because those facts don't exist.

They might exist someday, though.

Just as if global warming continues to increase, there could come a time when winter tires are needed in Western Oregon just as much as they're needed now at the equator -- never. Keeping an open mind to new facts enables us to preserve a healthy relationship between what is and what might be.

Here's a passage from a recent issue of New Scientist that bears on this.

One of the special things about science is its inbuilt system of self-correction. There is no such thing as scientific truth, just a set of provisional truths that are subject to revision or rejection when new information comes in. That process isn't always quick or peaceful, but it usually gets an answer in the end. The result is scientific progress.

Ricky Gervais nails the ridiculousness of religion

It's Super Bowl Sunday here in the United States, so I've got to save my time and energy to watch grown men try to give each other brain injuries in front of a national audience. 

(Soccer, which the rest of the world calls "football" for some reason, is less crazy, though its fans are even more fanatical.)

So today I'm sharing a great post from the Friendly Atheist blog, Ricky Gervais to Stephen Colbert: "You Don't Believe in 2,999 Gods. I Don't Believe in Just One More."

Hard to argue with Gervais' argument.

GERVAIS: … Atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a god. Atheism isn’t a belief system. So this is atheism in a nutshell. You say there’s a God. I say, “Can you prove that?” You say no. I say, “I don’t believe you then.” So you believe in one God, I assume?

COLBERT: Uhh…. in three persons, but go ahead.

GERVAIS: Okay. But there are about 3,000 to choose from… Basically, you deny one less God than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more.

And when Colbert said that Gervais' belief in science was a form of faith, he had a comeback.

...GERVAIS: … Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would [produce] the same result.

COLBERT: That’s good. That’s really good.

GERVAIS: So I don’t need faith in science. I don’t need faith to know that, probably, if I jump out of a window, every other time somebody jumps out of the window, they smash to the ground because of this thing called gravity.

Here's a video of the conversation between Gervais and Colbert.

Changing your mind is a superpower. Use it.

I have a superpower. But unlike those with superpowers who inhabit the pages of comic books and the screens of movie theaters, my astounding ability is available to everyone.

It's called changing your mind. 

I'm sure you've used it  -- many times. After all, we change our minds about countless things during the course of our lives. For example, I've changed my mind about my...

Politics (Used to be conservative, now I'm a liberal).
Cars (I've gone from a 57' VW bug to a 2017 VW GTI, with many other makes in between). 
Marriage (Got divorced, then remarried).
Profession (Earned a master's in social work, then went into health planning/research).
Eating (Loved meat until I became a vegetarian in 1970).
Residence (Grew up in the country, then lived in cities, now back in the country again).
Religion (Was Catholic for a while as a child, then a believer in an Eastern religion, and now an atheist).

So how is changing your mind a superpower? After all, everybody does this, all the time. True, but since we're so used to changing our minds, it's easy to overlook how marvelous this ability is.

First, to change your mind you need to have one.

Rocks don't have minds. Nor do stars. Living beings, though, have various sorts of minds. We humans have a powerful one. Other primates, ditto, though to a lesser degree. Plants have some sort of cognizance, but probably not a mind. Computers are very adept at certain tasks, yet so far lack what we would call a "mind."

Thus people are able to learn, adapt, modify our thinking, feeling, intuition, and such.

Because very little of human behavior is controlled by instinct, we have the capacity to transmit knowledge between people and across generations. We can read Plato and understand a great mind that lived thousands of years ago, thereby altering our own.

One of the best things about being able to change our mind is how good it feels, and how freeing it is. 

Yesterday I wrote on one of my other blogs about how I struggled to figure out why my DR Field Mower wouldn't start. I changed my mind several times over several days, with a foolish "fried battery" mistake thrown in. But in the end I learned what the problem was, with the aid of a friend who is much more knowledgeable about machines than I am.

I watched him methodically evaluate possible reasons for the mower not starting, with his mind changing about the various possibilities as he went along. This is similar to what a doctor does when arriving at a diagnosis, or a scientist when testing a hypothesis.

If a mind stays stuck, it can't move in a more productive or realistic direction. We have to be willing to give up an idea in order to embrace a better one.

Of course, "better" and "worse" can be difficult to discern in some situations.

When a mower won't start, it's easy to tell which is the better idea. It's the one that, when followed, leads to the mower starting. (In my case, we disabled the neutral switch, which was broken, and the mower started just fine -- so that was a good idea.)

In the examples I gave above about some of the areas in which I've changed my mind during my 70 years of living, most people would agree that in these areas, there aren't objective criteria about which of my mind-changes were better or worse.

Subjectively, though, I can confidently say that my current 2017 VW GTI is a much better car than the 1957 VW bug that I drove in college.

For one thing, the heater works in my GTI, so I don't have to scrape ice from the inside of the windshield while driving along, like I had to at times in college. But if someone is a collector of old cars, a '57 VW bug (or beetle) could be much more attractive to them than the modern car I have now.

Ditto for the other areas.

Though I'm a proud progressive, I'd never say that this is the only valid way of thinking about politics, since conservatives can have equally good reasons for thinking the way they do. And when it comes to marriage, my first wife and I were pleased to be done with each other after 18 years of wedded bliss that eventually turned into non-bliss.

Yet she and I both found other partners with whom we were wonderfully compatible. That's the nature of life: it changes. And as life changes, so does our mind (or, as our mind changes, so does life).

I'm not saying that change is always welcome, or even tolerable.

That isn't what I mean by changing your mind being a superpower. Sure, it is possible to reduce anxiety, fear, suffering, and such by altering one's thoughts and feelings, but I'm not aware of anybody who can remain completely unmoved by severe pain, disappointment, or loss. 

What is possible, though, is altering our psyche to embrace a new reality, even though it may be unwelcome. That's a superpower in and of itself -- the ability to say "This is...," no matter what those three dots stand for.

Here's some examples of what I mean.

On this blog I've been writing quite a bit about the legal, financial, and ethical troubles involving the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon. I was a member of RSSB for 35 years, so I like to use this organization as an example of how religions can be wrong, and do wrong, since I'm so familiar with it. 

(If I'd remained a Catholic for 35 years, then became an atheist, likely I'd be using Catholicism as an example of bad religion.)

Fairly frequently commenters on my blog posts about the Dhillon family's alleged criminality will say something like, "Brian, when it turns out that the guru did nothing wrong, you're going to be unable to accept this." 

That really isn't true. 

Because I'm adept at changing my mind, if the Indian legal system ends up exonerating Gurinder Singh Dhillon, I'll accept that reality with very little trouble. In the same fashion, back in November 2016 it took a few days for me to fully accept that Donald Trump had been elected president of the United States.

But it didn't take long for my mind to adjust to a new reality.

Now I'm hoping Trump will be a one-term president. If that doesn't happen, and he is re-elected, I'll be disappointed. However, I won't deny that this happened. (I do worry, though, that Trump won't be able to accept the reality of a 2020 defeat.)

I'll end by noting that even though I'm used to many varieties of religious craziness after 15 years of regularly writing here on the Church of the Churchless, it still surprises me when a commenter expresses extreme surprise at how I could have changed my mind about the validity of the RSSB teachings after being a member of the organization for such a long time.

Often I'll ask them how many things they have changed their mind about during their lifetime. Have you stuck with the same job, same car, same residence, same friends, same political views? Almost certainly not.

There's something about religion that encourages a rigidity of mind that isn't nearly as evident in other areas of life. Members of some religions, like Mormonism or Scientology, will shun people who leave the religion. Yet if someone changes their mind in a way that leads them to join the religion, that's not only fine, it's marvelous. 

For many fundamentalists, mind-changing is a one-way street. It's great if you convert to their religion, yet horrible if you deconvert.

Strange? Yes.

But since just about every religion believes that it, and it alone, is privy to the eternal ultimate truth of the cosmos, this encourages true believers to denigrate anyone who embraces that religion, then chooses to leave it. I guess changing one's mind makes those fundamentalists fearful that their chosen faith really isn't true.

Which, almost certainly, it isn't.

I feel good about having changed my mind to realize this. It's much more pleasurable to accept reality as it is, or at least as it appears, than to cling to a rigid way of thinking that no longer makes sense to me.

Critical thinking welcome here. Preachiness, not so much.

On this blog I've gone back and forth with moderating comments. After deciding a few weeks ago to return to approving comments before they're published on this blog, I'm feeling good about doing this.

I'd rather have just a few -- or even just one -- thoughtful comments on a post than a bunch of irrelevant comments, especially if they're of the "Praise God!" or "Praise Guru!" variety.

But for many years my boundless Buddha-like compassion for religiously-minded beings has led me to offer an "open thread" option to those who want to express themselves in a fashion that isn't appropriate for comments on regular blog posts. Such as, being preachy.

(Here's the newest Open Thread that I just put up.)

This is a big difference between open-minded atheists like me, and dogmatic religious devotees.

I can pretty much guarantee that few religious web sites or blogs allow commenters to criticize their faith, while most non-believers are fine with open discussion of their viewpoints. 

Critical thinking is key. I love comments that exhibit thoughtfulness, even if the commenter disagrees with me. 

Now, I don't have a definition of "critical thinking," nor do I feel like looking one up. Instead, here's my ideas about what this entails.

I'll start with the most important word, critical, since I think most people understand what thinking means. Critical can mean "important," and that's certainly true with critical thinking. It also connotes a certain skeptical questioning, not taking things on faith.

A critical thinker isn't a blank slate, since all of us have preconceived ideas, assumptions, world views, and such.

However, we need to be willing to hold the attitude "I could be wrong." Many, if not most, religious believers aren't willing to do this. Though they may use critical thinking in other parts of their lives, they put it aside when it comes to their belief in God, heaven, life after death, and so on.

The main goal of critical thinking is to understand reality as clearly, completely, and accurately as possible. A related goal is to enable individuals to have productive discussions of what reality consists of, since without critical thinking as a foundation for such discussions, they'd degenerate into people making claims that stifle open debate.

Let's imagine a group talking about global warming -- it's causes, consequences, and what should be done about it. Then someone chimes in with "Jesus saves!" or "God is in control, so no worries." That would stop the discussion in its tracks.

Critical thinking mainly is directed at objective reality, the world outside of our internal subjectivity. 

If someone says, "I believe in God," or "I like chocolate ice cream," there's little that I'd feel like saying in response except, perhaps, wonderful. However, if that person says "God is real," or "Everybody should like chocolate ice cream the best," I'd want to argue with them.

During the 15 years I've been posting regularly on this blog I've seen countless (almost) examples of religious believers mixing up their subjective faith with objective reality. No reasons need be given for subjective faith, but very good reasons must be provided if a claim is made about objective reality.

Typically, truths about objective reality require an extensive process of review, discussion, debate, and criticism.

No one gets to say "the world is like this: _____" without that claim being put under the microscope of critical thinking. Saying so doesn't make it so. Facts, evidence, sound arguments -- those things make it so.

Look, I'm not saying that every comment on this blog outside of an Open Thread needs to be an intellectual tour de force. I'm simply encouraging visitors to this blog who want to leave a comment on one of my posts to be thoughtful in your arguments. Which doesn't mean serious, necessarily. Humor and thoughtfulness are allies, not enemies.

Each of us should be able to laugh at our mistakes, our tendency to believe that we're correct even in the absence of evidence, our unwillingness to admit I could be wrong.

Again, I see this as a difference between us atheists and religious believers.

I'm not certain that God doesn't exist. I'm open to evidence and arguments that God does exist. All I ask is that religious believers have the same attitude. Admit that you aren't certain God exists. Be open to evidence and arguments that God doesn't exist.

If this happens, we can have a dialogue based on critical thinking. 

Here's a few cartoons about critical thinking.

 

Here's the problem with living: we're going to die

This isn't exactly breaking news, but I'll say it anyway. Each of us is going to die. 


Those seven words are undeniably scary. Life isn't always pleasant. Yet the gulf between having a difficult life and no life at all is more than immense. It's immeasurable. There's no way to compare being alive and being dead, or existence and non-existence.

The worst day anyone can have is on a different dimension than not existing at all.

Understand: I'm not saying that life is always worth living. Suicide and death with dignity testify to the fact that sometimes people prefer to check out of life early, rather than waiting for the involuntary eviction notice.

There are many reasons most people on Earth embrace some form of religiosity. However, a central reason has to be the reassurance almost every religion provides that when the last breath is taken, that doesn't mark the end of their life, but rather the beginning of a new form of existence.

I don't believe this is true.

There's no convincing evidence of life after death. Nor is there convincing evidence that human consciousness can exist without a functioning brain. Comas, anesthesia, being hit on the head with a baseball bat -- there's abundant evidence that consciousness is a product of the brain, though how this happens still isn't fully understood.

Still, each of has to come to grips with the reality of death whether we're an ardent atheist, committed religious believer, or somewhere in-between. 

Leaving aside the option of not thinking about death until it stares us in the face (which can be a good way to live, for those capable of doing this), it seems to me that there's two basic approaches to preparing for the inevitability of our eventual demise.

One is to try to expand our self. The other is to try to shrink our self. 

Almost all religions take the first approach: expanding the self. For example, some religions say that after death there is either bodily resurrection (Christianity) or reincarnation (Hinduism). Mystical aspects of religion proclaim that the soul can merge with God, taking on divine attributes. 

Aside from the fact that self-expansion, or consciousness-expansion, likely isn't possible in any sense that extends beyond the bounds of a single physical life, there's other reasons to shy away from this approach.

It encourages grandiosity.

I see this all the time in comments religious believers leave on my blog posts, notably those who are devotees of an Indian form of spirituality known as Sant Mat, or the Path of the Saints. They're fond of claiming that this is the highest form of religion, supposedly leading as it does to knowledge of an ultimate divine reality.

Of course, just about every religion makes this same claim.

Since there is no evidence of one religion being superior to another, almost certainly because they all are "fake news" (to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump), it seems ridiculous for a member of any faith to say that their way is the only way -- sort of like people arguing about which unicorn color is the most attractive, given that unicorns don't exist except in one's imagination.

So I prefer the other approach to dealing with life and our eventual death: shrinking the self. 

After all, us humans already are pretty damn insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Aside from having a lot of company here on Earth -- the human population is about 7.6 billion -- we are on a planet circling one of about 100 billion stars in our galaxy, which is one of at least 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

And we're very lucky to live 100 years, which is an infinitesimal blip in the 13.7 billion year old universe we inhabit. 

Thus it doesn't take much for us to shrink down to almost nothing, either figuratively or literally (the whole "ashes to ashes' thing). But our egos enjoy pretending that we're way more important than we really are, which goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of religions.

God so loves us, he sent his only son to die for our sins. The soul is destined to return home to its heavenly father. Humans are the pinnacle of creation. 

The myths of religion are innumerable. I much prefer reality:

Each of us is nothing special. We're connected to all other living things through the secular "miracle" of evolution. We live for a while, then we die. Humility is not only a virtue, it's the way things are in a world that is much grander and longer-lived than us.

Of all the world's religions, in my opinion Buddhism and Taoism are the best at offering ways to help us shrink our sense of self. One reason is that neither posits an enduring Self, or Soul. Rather, they teach that life is ever-changing, as are we. Our existence is intimately connected with that of everything else on Earth. We're humble parts of the whole.

He who stands on tiptoe is not steady.
He who strides cannot maintain the pace.
He who makes a show is not enlightened.
He who boasts achieves nothing.
He who brags will not endure.
According to followers of the Tao, 
    "These are extra food and unnecessary luggage."
They do not bring happiness.
Therefore followers of the Tao avoid them.
    -- Tao Te Ching

As a concrete example of the difference between grandiose and humble approaches to spirituality, I spend exactly zero time and effort on religious web sites or blogs trying to push my atheist point of view. Sure, I enjoy sharing churchless/atheist ideas here on my own blog, but I don't go out of my way to convince others that they should adopt my perspective.

But ever since I started this blog in 2004, religious believers -- mostly of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas/Sant Mat variety -- have commented in droves on my blog posts. The way I see it, this shows that they're not very confident in their belief system, since when someone presents arguments against what they believe, they take this as a battle cry to fight against.

Thus I'm pleased to be a humble churchless blogger rather than a grandiose believer in religious dogma. It's much more relaxing that way, since my only commitment is to the truth as best I can understand it. Truth doesn't require any attempt to boost it up, since it stands tall on its own.

Regarding death, my bet is that what will happen to me is exactly the same thing that happens to every other person: we die and are gone forever. The way I see it, the more I can reduce my sense of ego and specialness, the easier it will be to let go when the moment of dying comes.

Until then, I'll enjoy life.

Sure, religious believers typically derive comfort from a fantasy that death won't be the end for them. But the price they pay for their belief strikes me as too high -- feeling like they are the special beloveds of God or some other higher power, which leads to a sense of separation from everybody else who won't enjoy such a marvelous afterlife.

I'd rather feel like I'm simply part of the dead-and-gone-forever crowd. If somehow I discover that I'm living on after I die, that'll be great news. I'm not counting on it, though.

I'm an atheist with more faith than any religious believer

A week ago I came up with the title to this blog post.

The next day I wrote a comment in reply to someone who goes by "In Search Of" that ended up being a good start to explaining why I consider that atheist me has more faith than religious believers.

Here it is.

Following my comment you'll find excerpts from one of my first Church of the Churchless blog posts from way back in 2004, "Just have faith." I'm pleased that while I've become more of an atheist over the past fifteen years, my basic faith in reality hasn't changed.

In Search Of, you asked: "Brian, help me out here. Am I being unreasonable? Why can't I get an intelligent response to my question? Are we unable to differentiate between logic and faith? Or are the two at opposite poles? Is this the real question we're trying to answer? And is it an answerable question?"

Great questions. Interestingly, I came up with the title of a future blog post yesterday that I wrote down for future reference: "I'm an atheist with more faith than any religious believer." In brief, here's what came to mind that led to the idea for this blog post.

I have faith in reality.

Not just bits and pieces of reality, but reality as a whole -- the entire unimaginably vast cosmos, including the aspects that we humans currently know about and also the parts that remain a mystery. Sure, I also have faith in discrete entities. My doctors. Scientists. My VW GTI. My MacBook Pro.

But it isn't possible to have 100% faith in anything discrete.

For example, every finding of science is open to revision if new facts are revealed. Ditto for my faith in my car, which has had defects that needed to be fixed. And certainly ditto for religious leaders, even those like Gurinder Singh Dhillon that are supposedly "perfect masters."

Yet even given all that, I believe in a cosmos that operates according to some beautiful laws of cause and effect.

This applies at the quantum level also, though the laws appear to be more probabilistic than deterministic. Still, probability is a law, or quantum mechanics wouldn't be such a precise science that's responsible for much of our modern technology.

So my mantra is: "I open myself to reality, however it may appear." I wrote a blog post about this: "An atheist meditation that pleases God."

Where I went astray during many of my 35 years of being devoted to RSSB and the Sant Mat meditation practice was having undue faith in a particular aspect of reality. Namely, RSSB and the gurus in that tradition. My observation is that many others fall into the same trap.

They ignore evidence that doesn't fit into their mental model of what reality is like.

But reality doesn't give a shit about our mental models. Reality is simply what it is: reality. As another favorite saying of mine from Philip K. Dick puts it, "Reality is that which, when we stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

The guru's financial dealings/wrongdoing aren't a matter of belief. They're well documented. But RSSB devotees are so used to relying on belief, they aren't able to accept that no matter what they believe, reality remains.

So no, I don't believe that faith and reason are opposed.

At least, not in how I view faith: as trust in a reality that exists independent of our beliefs about it. Thus my view is that it's up to us humans to do our best to understand reality, not for reality to comport with our beliefs about it. That latter option leads to magical thinking.

I see it all the time in comments on this blog. RSSB devotees feel that if they only scream loudly enough into cyberspace, "The guru did nothing wrong! The guru is God! Stop criticizing the guru!", somehow this will change the reality of the guru's behavior.

All of our mental models are false to some extent.

However, we get so attached to them, often there is no crack in the mental model armor where greater and more accurate knowledge can enter.

Religious people are especially prone to this, because their need to believe that not only this life, but also their afterlife, is in the hands of a higher power is so strong, so compelling, so desperate, their reluctance to adjust their mental religious model is equally strong.

With my VW GTI, which I like a lot but am not hugely devoted to, I still found it difficult to accept that a creaking in the sunroof really was a major defect. I tried quite a few ways to fix it before it finally dawned on me, and my dealership, that the whole thing needed to be replaced, basically. See: "My VW had a creaky sunroof. Here's the tale of a 5-week repair."  

There's an analogy here.

Sometimes an entire mental model needs major refurbishing, or even replacement. That's what happened with me and the RSSB teachings. Well, looks like I just wrote a good portion of the above-mentioned planned post. Thanks for giving me that head start.

And here's the excerpts from the above-mentioned "Just have faith" post.

Faith is wonderful.
Faith is all we need to be spiritual.
Just faith. Faith alone.
So we shouldn't have faith in anything other than pure, naked, empty faith.

...Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith:

Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief

After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered.

Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos.

You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.

Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos.

For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.

Which door would you choose to walk through?

Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?

Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.

On living an atheist life: nothing special, not feeling alone

As I've done in previous posts, here's an email interchange I had recently with someone who visits this blog regularly and likes to share ideas with me. 

I WROTE:

Yes, giving up the feeling of being special is indeed a relief. As you’re probably aware, I’ve written about this from the perspective of index investing. Trying to beat the markets both takes a lot of work and has been proven to usually be a waste of time, since investors typically buy high and sell low, rather than the reverse.

Likewise, so is believing that you can beat the God market. As I’m sure I’ve noted before, now I simply say, “God, if you exist, it’s up to you to show yourself to me, since there are so many ways people have used to find you, they can’t all be correct.”

 

Even if it can be argued that God likes all of these ways, seemingly God also would like my attitude of “I want to know you, but it’s your job to make the connection.”

 

To me this is much more logical and scientific than picking one way to know God, which statistically speaking is almost certain to be wrong. So I just sit in as much inward silence as my meditation allows, and wait for God to show up. So far, nothing. Unless God is that nothing, in which case I’m decidedly enlightened.

 

THE OTHER PERSON REPLIED:

Hi Brian, thanks for writing.  I really like that last paragraph.  “Unless God is that nothing, in which case I’m decidedly enlightened”.  Awesome.  

I really enjoyed the post, Here’s a positive sign of my (mini) enlightenment.

And I can totally relate to much of it.

This part really got me thinking:

“But now I've come to feel something different, and seemingly more attainable. I simply want to be as fully aware as possible of whatever it is I'm doing until I take my last breath. What that whatever is doesn't matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.”

Good stuff! 

I was thinking about something sort of similar recently.  I was listening to someone talk about things they want to do before they die.  Like the bucket list you mentioned.  This person happened to be a Christian, so the list consisted of things they believed God wanted them to do, and some of their own desires. 

Funny how those are separate.  And they felt like if they didn’t accomplish the God stuff, they wouldn’t get their full reward and all that.  Sounds exhausting!  But I get it.  I used to think the same way. 

I’ve noticed that, after practicing mindfulness to varying degrees for the last few years, that I don’t really have a list of things I want to do, anymore.  I’m mostly content to live day to day.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a few things I’d like to do in the near future, but they aren’t things that are on an important list. 

Even if I did have a list of cool stuff, and was able to do most or all of them, the memories and emotions tend to fade pretty quickly.  Especially when living mindfully.  I was kind of laughing thinking that when we die, assuming there is nothing after all this, we won’t remember any of the cool stuff because… well, we will be dead.  LOL 

And if there is some kind of afterlife that’s anything like what people think, it will probably be cooler than the cool stuff we did here, so the stuff we did here will pale in comparison. 

I don’t know if this sounds nihilistic or not, but I don’t think of it that way.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t plan fun activities.  Like this summer, my wife and I will celebrate 25 years of marriage and we will go to Florida for a week.  I’m sure it will be great.  But I’m not driven to cram in as much stuff into my life as I can before I die.  It just seems more relaxing that way.

I’ve noticed something interesting going on with me.  I don’t have any atheist friends.  And I only have a couple of friends who would probably be considered agnostic.  I’m finding myself feeling, I guess lonely, for lack of a better word.  I know for a fact that is why many people go to church.  It’s part of their social life. 

Christianity is so prevalent in this part of the country that it permeates everything.  So it kind of changes how people view the world and life.  I know my views on most things have changed drastically since I left religion behind. 

I was meditating with a Buddhist friend on Sunday mornings for a while and we had some really good conversations after our meditation time.  But we stopped meditating because his schedule changed.  I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed being able to talk to someone about my current views without judgment until recently. 

So I find myself reading blogs and listening to podcasts.  Not really to learn something new, but I guess it’s that human need to hear other people say things similar to what I believe.  It’s interesting to hear people talk about going from a religious life to an atheist life.  Lots of similarities in their stories.  I guess that kind of makes me feel not as alone as well.

I hope you and yours are well.

Talk to you again soon.

Atheists like me are by far the most disliked religious minority

Minorities tend to be misunderstood by majorities.

Whites don't really know what it is like to be African American. Heterosexuals don't really know what it is like to be homosexual, or more broadly, LGBTQ. And religious believers don't know what it is like to be atheist.

(Note: I was a religious believer for 35 years, Eastern mysticism variety, so I'm very familiar with both religious belief and atheism -- having deconverted from my previous belief about 14 years ago.)

So as an atheist, I haven't been surprised by the response of many to my also-atheist wife, Laurel, using the public comment period at a Salem (Oregon) City Council meeting to complain about the Mayor's 2019 State of the City address being preceded by a Christian pastor calling upon God/Jesus to bless the Mayor, and for everyone in attendance to pray.

I wrote about this a few days ago in "Praying shouldn't be part of public meetings." That blog post attracted the attention of KATU news in Portland, which interviewed my wife and Mayor Chuck Bennett as described in this KATU story and accompanying video. 

On Facebook I've seen numerous comments along the lines of, If you object to praying, just don't do it and You should leave religions alone to do their own thing. 

While these sorts of attitudes roughly reflect how my wife and I also feel, they miss a crucial point: Atheists in the United States aren't only bothered by religious beliefs that are unscientific, non-factual, and often appallingly political. We also object to a long history in this country of atheists being discriminated against, a prejudice that continues to this day.

Though  I don't believe in heaven or hell, I do think this familiar movie phrase applies to me, my wife, and many fellow atheists: "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Meaning, since the founding of the United States atheists have been wrongly put down as immoral, un-American, and elitist. A book by two emeritus Cornell professors, R. Laurence Moore (history and American studies) and Issac Kramnick (government) explains this in great detail. 

Here's an overview of "Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life" via a Publisher's Weekly review:

From the pages of state constitutions to the seats of Congress, Moore and Kramnick (The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness) search for places for the godless in American politics and find few.

Beginning with the country’s roots in England, with its official state church, the United States’ protection of religious liberties excludes one group: nontheists and their nonbelief in a religion or deity. The authors explain that 18th- and 19th-century Americans associated morality with religion, so eschewing one was considered a rejection of the other.

The tensions of the Cold War reinforced this historical bias, with rhetoric tying communism to atheism and implying a corresponding relationship between belief and patriotism. The concept of the dangerous, un-American—or worse, anti-American—atheist paved the way for the addition of “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 and “In God We Trust” to America’s currency in 1957, and constrained nontheists’ chances at public office and judicial seats.

Synopses of pivotal Supreme Court cases demonstrate how atheists, agnostics, humanists, secularists, and nontheists are frequently cast as an amoral minority. Through cautious and sensitive comparisons between nontheists and other marginalized groups, the authors present the marginalization of nontheists as an equal rights issue.

This accessible and sincere book usefully makes explicit often-unspoken currents in American political life.

The Pew Research Center says that 31% of people in Oregon, where I live, are unaffiliated religious "None's" -- 5% atheist, 8% agnostic, and 18% nothing in particular. However, that last category is made up of 12% for whom religion is unimportant and 6% for whom religion is important. 

Thus let's subtract those "nothing in particular" people who don't consider religion important.

That still leaves 25% of Oregon's population as decidedly non-religious. Is it possible that a quarter of the citizenry deserve these sorts of discriminatory attitudes, as described in the Godly Citizens in a Godly Republic book? (Boldfacing added for emphasis.)

-- "Of the respondents to a Pew Research Center survey question on attitudes to specified religious groups in 2009, 49 percent scored atheists negatively, while the unfavorable response to other groups was dramatically lower: Muslims, 32%; Mormons, 26%; Hindus, 21%; Buddhists, 20%; Evangelical Christians, 17%; Jews, 11%; Catholics, 11%.

-- "A 2011 Gallup poll that asked, 'If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be atheist would you vote for that person?' found that only 49% of Americans said yes. Responses for other similarly well-qualified nominees: black, 94%; women, 93%; Catholic, 92%; Jewish, 89%; and Mormon, 76%."

-- "An earlier iteration of the 'willingness to vote for your party's nominee' in 1999, which included homosexuals among the choices, ranked them at 59%, higher than atheists at 49%."

-- "When asked into what group they would least like their children to marry, nearly half of Americans list atheists first, significantly higher than Muslims, African Americans, and Jews." 

-- "So too, when asked to name 'the group that does not at all agree with my vision of American society,' 40% of Americans put atheists on top, followed by Muslims, 26%; homosexuals, 22%; conservative Christians, 13%; recent immigrants, 12%; Jews, 7%; African Americans, 5%."

The book's authors ascribe this distaste toward atheists as reflecting three foundational features of American sociocultural belief: (1) A conviction that one can't be a good person if one is not a believer; (2) one can't be a good American if one is not a believer; (3) American anti-intellectualism, since many see atheists as cultural elitists -- philosophers, scientists, and artists who threaten the beliefs of ordinary people.

Thus there's a lot going on beneath the surface of my wife's complaint about a Christian prayer being offered at a public meeting here in Salem.

Us atheists, along with the broader category of "None's," are tired of being viewed as second-class citizens. We're fed up with being put down and marginalized just because we don't believe in unbelievable supernaturalism. We no longer find it acceptable to stay silent while religious speech (mostly Christian) fills the airwaves.

Nationally 23% of Americans are religious None's. That's about four times more than the 6% of Americans who hold to non-Christian faiths. Here in Oregon, the ratio is even higher: 31% None's and 7% non-Christian.

Yet I'm willing to bet that an atheist, agnostic, or other non-believer has never been invited to give the invocation at the State of the City address in Salem, even though non-Christians such as Jews have.

This points to the disturbing falsehood that the authors of Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic emphasize: atheists are viewed by religious people as less moral and trustworthy, even though there is no evidence of this being true. It's just a discriminatory attitude that would be viewed as abhorrent if a racial or ethnic minority was being typecast in this fashion.

Why do religious people go on atheist sites?

Here's a positive review of my new comment policy on this blog, where I now moderate (approve) comments before they're published. One day in, I'm enjoying the lack of off-topic crazy comments from dogmatic religious believers. 

I regularly exchange emails with the person who wrote what follows. John used to be religious, but now, like me, he's seen the atheist light. 

John makes some good points. I don't know any atheists, which includes me, who go to religious sites and try to convert believers to atheism. But this churchless blog gets many visits and comments from religious people.

Why? Well, like John says, I agree that believers in God get a lot more defensive when someone questions their religion, than atheists do when someone questions their lack of belief in God.

Which makes sense.

I don't get upset when someone questions why I don't like country music. Since I don't have any attachment to that type of music, it doesn't bother me if a country music lover thinks I'm a fool for not being a fan of that genre.

Plus, atheists are used to being put down by religious people, while this is much less common for believers -- given that the vast majority of people in the world believe in some form of supernatural divinity.

This is the message I got from John today.

Hey Brian, I saw where you are moderating comments again.  Good for you!  I think I’ve talked about this before, but I can’t understand why religious folks go on sites like yours and try to convert people, or “prove” that others are wrong, or whatever.  It seems very common. 

I wonder if atheists go on religious sites and rant and rave and such?  I would think there are some, but my suspicion is that it’s less common.

I kind of understand why the religious folks like to argue their points.  I was never really zealous in my religious days.  I was very serious about my faith, but I didn’t argue with many people who didn’t believe like I did.  But I think it’s more threatening to have a believer’s beliefs questioned than it is for a non-believer to have their non-beliefs questioned.  LOL  If you know what I mean?

There were a few times that I got into a discussion with an intelligent atheist or agnostic and they would ask me questions that I just didn’t have the answers to.  That was very unsettling!

I thought the cartoon that you posted was great, as well.  Oh man, how accurate is that?  I remember, in my early days of walking away from religion, I read a lot of Wayne Jacobsen’s material.  At that time, he talked a lot about how religion always seems to have a hook in it. 

“Invite your non-churched friends to the church picnic!”  Why?  Just so you can get to know that and bless them and see that they have a good afternoon getting to know some great people?  NO!  It’s so we can get them to come back, and eventually get them saved.  And then they will tithe, of course. 

And inevitably, if they get worked on long enough without getting saved, then they are normally discarded and the believers move on to someone else.  Often with the attitude from your cartoon.  I’ve heard many a church member say something along the lines of, “well, I’m glad they are going to hell”.  Really?!?!? WTF?  Ugh.

I have yet to hear of a blogger whose mind was changed by the religious comments on their blog.  And vice versa. 

In my experience, and in others that I’ve talked to, any time a person makes a big change in their beliefs, it’s usually because something happened to make them start thinking and seeking answers.  Now, in that seeking they may come across someone who says something that will help them down the road a bit. 

But the classic knocking on someone’s door out of the blue and converting them to your beliefs, or flooding someone’s comment section, usually doesn’t have the desired result.  Most of the time, it actually works in the opposite direction!  The person being preached to normally walks away just that much more sure of their own beliefs.

Thanks, as always, for the great posts.

Talk to you again soon.
John

"Seven Types of Atheism" is intellectually dishonest

Last month I shared a critical Amazon reader review of John Gray's book, Seven Types of Atheism, in a blog post: "Great review of 'Seven Types of Atheism' by someone who hasn't read the book."

I said in the post that I wasn't going to buy the book. Then I changed my mind. Not sure why. Maybe I wanted to see if the book was as bad as I thought it would be.

Now that I've read Seven Types of Atheism, I'm glad I did. Here's my own review.

The most glaring irritating thing I found in the book was that Gray defines atheism on page 2, then forgets his own definition on the following pages. Here's the early-on definition.

A provisional definition of atheism might still be useful, if only to indicate the drift of the book that follows. So I suggest that an atheist is anyone with no use for the idea of a divine mind that has fashioned the world. In this sense atheism does not amount to very much. It is simply the absence of the idea of a creator god.

OK, as an atheist I generally agree with this. There could be other types of gods than a creator god, but the major world religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism -- all teach that the world was created by a divine mind, or being.

So I figured that in the rest of his book, Gray would view atheism as how he defined it: the absence of the idea of a creator god. This fits with how I view my atheism. It also fits with how every atheist I know views atheism. Again, as the absence of a belief in god.

But in many places in Seven Types of Atheism, Gray speaks of a "religion of humanity," a "self-deifying humanity," "secular religion," and such. How could this be if atheism is the absence of the idea of a creator god? Wouldn't religion then be the presence of the idea of a creator god?

No, not according to Gray's twisted logic. 

Because on page 3 of his book, Gray offers up a decidedly strange definition of religion. It isn't a belief in god, creator-variety or otherwise. Nor is it an attempt to understand reality in terms of supernatural or divine phenomena. Rather, Gray says:

A provisional definition of religion may also be useful... Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.

Wow. What a weird definition of religion. The Amazon reviewer who hadn't read the book nailed Gray on this, since he'd heard Gray speak in the same fashion in an interview. Here's part of what that reviewer said.

Gray said: If you asked an anthropologist or a sociologist or even a cultural historian about religion, not one of them nowadays, or very few of them, would think of religion as bodies of theories or beliefs or propositions which try to explain the world.

For starters, if we're talking about the three Abrahamic religions, they absolutely assert theories, beliefs and propositions for the purpose of explaining the world.

In a feeble attempt to support this claim, Gray uses a straw man. He says, "The myth about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden was never meant as an early theory of how life came about on this planet." Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact that the Abrahamic religions assert that God had a hand (direct or indirect) in the creation of the universe, which ultimately led to the creation of humans, with whom God has a special relationship.

Moreover, the Abrahamic religions assert that God has a hand in laying down morals. Clearly, these assertions are intended as theories, beliefs and propositions.

Thus what Gray does at the beginning of his book is intellectually dishonest. He defines atheism as the absence of the idea of a creator god. But he doesn't define religion as the presence of the idea of a creator god. Rather, Gray defines religion extremely broadly as "an attempt to find meaning in events."

Again, wow.

The day I got married was deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of marriage. The results of last Tuesday's midterm elections were deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of politics. 

But obviously every attempt by us humans to find meaning in events isn't religious in nature. But this obviousness isn't apparent to John Gray, because the bulk of his book is an attempt to paint atheism with the brush of religion, since atheists find meaning in events, history, humanity, and other non-godly entities.

Wait! Aren't atheists defined by Gray as lacking a belief in a creator god? Yes, but Gray says atheists are religious because they find meaning in events. Thus every person on Earth who finds meaning in events is religious by Gray's absurd logic. 

Here's some passages from Seven Types of Atheism that reflect this absurdity.

But it was Saint-Simon who first presented the religion of humanity in systematic form. In future, scientists would replace priests as the spiritual leaders of society. Government would be an easy matter of 'the administration of things.' Religion would become the self-worship of humankind.

...Having renounced the idea of any divine power outside the human world, human beings could not avoid claiming divine powers for themselves.

...A free-thinking atheist would begin by questioning the prevailing faith in humanity. But there is little prospect of contemporary atheists giving up their reverence for this phantom.

...Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence the unending succession of God-surrogates, such as humanity and science, technology, and the all-too-human visions of transhumanism.

Gray doesn't believe that "humanity" exists. Only individual humans do.

Fine, he's entitled to that belief. I don't agree with him, because our species, Homo sapiens, does have common characteristics, and the modern world has erased many of the borders that used to separate humans by geography, culture, and such. 

John Gray doesn't believe that our species advances. This is highly debatable. Witness how slavery, the subjugation of women, and world wars have faded away (though still existent, or possible) in the past several hundred years. 

But since Gray holds that belief, and he wanted to bash atheism in his book, he needed to define religion in such a way that anyone who finds meaning in human events or history is "religious." Hence, humanists are religious, and any atheist who finds meaning in a hope that humanity is progressing is also "religious."

I'm an atheist. I'm a progressive. I'm not religious. I don't believe in a creator god.

So Gray ignored the reality that the vast majority of atheists simply don't believe in god. But this fact doesn't fit with Gray's desire to make atheism into a secular "religion," so he ignored it.

Great review of "Seven Types of Atheism" by someone who hasn't read the book

When I first heard of John Gray's book, "Seven Types of Atheism," I thought I'd be interested in it. But after reading some reviews, I decided against buying it. (For example, see here and here.)

In another post I'll have more to say about an article in The New Yorker, Without a Prayer, which is partly about Gray's book. For now I'll just note a quotation from the book that illustrates how far off-base Gray's take on religiosity and atheism is:

"A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think."

Wrong. A godless world leads one to embrace modern science, which provides many answers to the questions that religious believers attribute to God. So there is considerably less mystery in a godless world.

To give one example, the theory of evolution does a much better job of explaining how us humans came to be than the countless creation myths put forth by religions. 

Now, I haven't read Gray's book. Neither has someone who wrote a scathing review on Amazon. But he listened to an interview of John Gray discussing "Seven Types of Atheism," which is the next best thing. 

Below is what Steven Mason says in his review. It seems right-on to me, given what is said about Gray's book in The New Yorker article. What Gray appears to ignore is what Mason zeroes in on: the fact that religions make truth claims about the world/universe.

This means that atheism has a much stronger leg to stand on than Gray admits to. I know lots of atheists. They all are fine moral people who are every bit as caring, virtuous, and loving as religious believers.

What they reject about religion is simple: it isn't true.

Put another way, there is no evidence that God or the supernatural exists. So again, this means there is a huge difference between (1) believing in a universe suffused with divinity, and (2) not believing in this sort of universe.

Here's Mason's review:

Amazon review by Steven Mason of John Gray's "Seven Types of Atheism."

I haven't read this book but I did listen to a long interview of the author discussing this book. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This is a review of the author explaining his book.

If any defenders of Gray would like to have a discussion with me about the views expressed in this book, I encourage you to post a comment. I assume that the views expressed in the interview are also expressed in the book. Let's get started:

Gray said: The first thing that's wrong with the so-called New Atheism is that there's nothing in it which is new.

Even if this were true (it's not), it's irrelevant. The so-called New Atheists are responding to the current crop of theists who are using, or trying to use, the power of government to force their religious beliefs on everyone, and other theists who are using pseudoscience to "prove" that God exists. It could be said, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that New Atheists are a response to New Theists. Moreover, while religion is exempt from taxes, there's no reason it needs to be exempt from criticism.

Besides, if originality is the name of the game, Gray should criticize himself because he doesn't say anything new.

Gray said: None of the New Atheists knows anything about the history of ideas.

That's an ad hominem attack that has no evidence to support it. This remark reminds me of "the true Scotsman" fallacy. In this case, Gray gets to define "knows anything" in a way that makes his claim valid (in his own mind, at least).

Gray has advanced degrees in philosophy and politics, so it's quite possible that he has acquired more knowledge about the history of ideas than most of the New Atheists. But that doesn't mean that the New Atheists have "no knowledge." Nor does it mean that having less knowledge than Gray necessarily invalidates their criticisms of religion. This is elitism of the worst kind and it's also the fallacy of "appeal to authority."

Gray said: If you asked an anthropologist or a sociologist or even a cultural historian about religion, not one of them nowadays, or very few of them, would think of religion as bodies of theories or beliefs or propositions which try to explain the world.

For starters, if we're talking about the three Abrahamic religions, they absolutely assert theories, beliefs and propositions for the purpose of explaining the world.

In a feeble attempt to support this claim, Gray uses a straw man. He says, "The myth about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden was never meant as an early theory of how life came about on this planet." Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact that the Abrahamic religions assert that God had a hand (direct or indirect) in the creation of the universe, which ultimately led to the creation of humans, with whom God has a special relationship.

Moreover, the Abrahamic religions assert that God has a hand in laying down morals. Clearly, these assertions are intended as theories, beliefs and propositions.

Gray said: What we now call Hinduism, a very bold body of beliefs, of practices associated with very sophisticated philosophies, has never been summed up in a single body of beliefs. The same goes for Taoism, or Taoism and Confucianism and Shinto. Judaism hasn't been embodied in any single list of propositions or creeds.

What is Gray's point here? Even if there are many varieties of religious beliefs within broad families of religions, each variety still asserts "theories, beliefs and propositions that try to explain the world."

Gray said: I seriously considered not discussing New Atheists at all because I do find them boring and feeble in their arguments. But I did in the end, because most readers, if we say the word 'atheism,' wouldn't nowadays be most familiar with figures like Dawkins and Sam Harris and the others that you mentioned. I did discuss them quite briefly.

One gets the impression that Gray "discusses" New Atheists mostly to point out that they are ignorant about atheism, ideas, and religion, and they are boring besides. But again, if New Atheists are responding to what some power-hungry and pseudoscientific theists are trying to do in the world today, why does Gray find this "boring"?

For example, does Gray want a world in which Creationism is taught in public school science classes, as if it were a valid theory supported by evidence? Doesn't Gray know that is exactly what some theists are trying to do?

I could respond to lots more quotes, but you get the idea. These few quotes are more than sufficient to convince me not to bother reading this book, or any other book by Gray. Even if I were receptive to his views, there is certainly nothing "new" about them.

Join the godly, supernatural, mystical "I Don't Know For Sure" club

It gives me great pleasure to invite not only visitors to this blog, but everybody in the whole freaking world, to join a non-exclusive club I've just formed:

The I Don't Know For Sure club. 

Admission is free. There are no dues. Also, no meetings. Nor any sort of organization. This club exists only in the minds of those who answer "no" to a simple question.

Are you 100%, completely, absolutely, without-a-doubt confident that what you believe about god, the supernatural, and mystical experiences is objectively true?

Now, though this question is simple, I still feel a need to explain it.

What I'm after here is getting people to consider whether there is at least the tiniest sliver of doubt that their spiritual/religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are true.

And I've used "objectively" to define true.

Meaning, I'm not asking about whether someone has an absolutely firm belief that, for example, God either exists or doesn't exist; that life after death either exists or doesn't exist; or that it is possible or impossible to experience a supernatural realm.

A belief is subjective. I'm asking about objective reality. For it sure seems that either God exists, or God doesn't exist, no matter whether humans believe or don't believe in God. 

I've become an atheist. I no longer believe in God, life after death, or supernatural mystical experiences. Yet here's the thing: 

I don't know this with absolute certainty. So I'm a non-card-carrying member of the I Don't Know for Sure club, with a membership number of #1 (which, as noted above, only exists in my own mind).

If you also want to join this club, leave a comment on this post to that effect.

And if you like, mention whether you're (1) a religious/spiritual believer who isn't 100% sure that what you believe is objectively true, (2) if you're an atheist who isn't 100% sure that your non-belief is objectively true, or (3) someone in-between who isn't sure whether whatever it is you believe or don't believe is objectively true. 

My theory, which admittedly may not hold up, is that despite the obvious great divide between religious believers and atheists, there's a thin bridge that unites most of them: a recognition that what they consider to be objectively true, may not be.

In my case, I see atheism as being much more probable.

But this means there's a chance I could be wrong. I readily admit this, and have done so frequently in my churchless blog posts. That said, I don't think there's a high probability I'm going to live on in some ethereal form after my bodily death.

However, if this happens I'll be overjoyed to tell whatever loving divine being I meet on the "other side," Wow, I sure was wrong. (If it's a hateful devilish being, I won't be as enthusiastic about this.)

Admitting that no one knows for sure strikes me as a wonderful way to bridge the gap between religious belief and atheism. Sure, it isn't a wide bridge, given that I suspect many, if not most, people would say they're at least 99% sure that, say, God either exists or doesn't exist.

But any admission of "I don't know for sure" leaves open the door to looking upon those with different views with a kinder, gentler, less dogmatic eye.

And this is a very good thing in our current world where people are increasingly divided into opposing tribes that find little or nothing good to say about the other side, or see little or nothing they have in common.

Oneness is like the Hotel California: you can't leave it

I'm a big fan of spontaneous, well-written, heartfelt descriptions of how someone realized that atheism is the way to go. And if they've got a bunch of profanity in them, even fucking better!

So when I read a comment by regular Church of the Churchless visitor Osho Robbins that met those criteria, I knew the comment should be elevated into a blog post.

There's references to Indian words in the comment, but it can be understood just fine without knowing Indian philosophy. Briefly, Sach Khand is roughly equivalent to heaven. Sat Purush is God. And the lyrics to Hotel California are here. 

(The key lyric: "You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave!")


This is the sort of comment I envisioned when I started this blog fourteen years ago. One of my first posts was "Our Creedless Creed." It's worth reading whether or not you're new to this blog, because it shows what my philosophical intention was both at the start, and now.

I mention this because periodically I have to remind commenters on this blog that it's a damn churchless blog.

I'm fine with religious people commenting on my posts, so long as they keep preachiness to a minimum. Today I had to put one regular commenter, "777," on a month-long time out, because he was an unrepentant repeat offender -- too often preachy, incoherent, and off-topic.

Anyway, here's Osho Robbins' pleasingly on-topic comment. I've corrected a few typos and changed the formatting a bit to make it more readable.

Appreciative Reader, I read your comments. My first response is this: “I ain’t got a fucking clue.” However, now that you’ve raised the subject, I will attempt to give a rational explanation.

I have never bothered to categorize myself, but I’ll do it now – just for the hell of it. I am just thinking aloud here and have no idea where this will lead me.

First thing: I don’t like the ‘God’ word – nothing personal – just in case she is reading this blog. So I don’t fit into the theist category or the gnostic category. I neither believe in God; nor do I know there is a God. (personal god)

The issue I have with “God” is the ideas and concepts attached to that word. (A powerful, all knowing guy who lives in Sach Khand and hangs out with his two pals Anami Purush and Agam – or I might have that wrong – whatever.)

So I used to believe in a character called Sat Purush, many many years ago in the days when I used to follow Darshan and Thakar and Charan.

Back then I was definitely a Theist. Then someone told me it’s all bullshit.

My first reaction was that he just hasn’t meditated hard enough. But as I spent time with him, it became clear that he fucking knew what the fuck he’s talking about. Which is more than you could say about me at the time.

All I had was grand ideas and concepts about the inner regions and about the man in the sky and I “knew” I would get there one day and have a good chat with him.

He showed me that I was a fucking lunatic. And I fucking listened – and one day I fucking agreed. That day my life turned fucking around.

I still had one question that would not go away. “What do I need to do next?” “How will I realise this fucking oneness?”

He laughed at my silly questions. “You still don’t fucking get it, do you?” I admitted the obvious. Then he dropped the bombshell.

There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to attain.

“You mean I am already there?” I asked in disbelief.

“Where?” he asked

“Well, you know, in the ONENESS?”

He laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me? You never left because you’re not allowed to leave. Nobody is allowed to leave. Nobody leaves.”

“You mean, it’s like the Hotel California?”
“I can check out any time I like?”
But….. “I can never leave?”
I laughed too. “You mean everyone is trying to get back to where they never left?”
“Well fuck me!” were my last words before I left him that night.

Oneness – at least to me – has nothing to do with God. There is only one thing that is real (the way I define real: changeless, formless etc). The oneness cannot be seen or experienced. It just is. Everything I say about it will be a lie.

I could call it “nothingness” and it would be just as valid (or invalid) as calling it the ONE. I don’t claim any mystical experience. I don’t believe there is any such thing. I believe the seekers make it out to be mystical because they don’t understand the simplicity of it. It’s a very simple realization.

Actually it appears I might actually be an atheist after all. The atheist says he doesn’t believe the theist claim of a God. Well – I don’t believe it. Since I don’t have a belief in a personal God of any sort – including Sat Purush.

The hard atheist goes further and says “I know there is No God”  I would say the same when it comes to a personal God. I now say categorically that there is no Sat Purush or Sach Khand. And his pals, Alakh, Agam and Anami don’t exist either, except in the fertile minds of the seekers.

So it turns out I am actually a hard atheist – a far cry from the Theist I once was, many years ago. Not sure where this leads – but at least it was entertaining to write about.