Category: Philosophicaliness

Why don’t you believe in God?

I’ve never really addressed this before. At least I don’t think I have. Here’s a brief glimpse into to how the deranged mass of neurons I call a brain works: Weeks ago I had a very brief (something on the order of three sentences) conversation with a friend along these lines. I finished the conversation today in my head. I do that a lot: I have entire conversations with other people in my head that they didn’t actually participate in. Oh, c’mon, you know you do it too.

If you ask the average atheist why he/she does not believe in God, the answer is simple: there’s no proof for god. Basically those of us who label ourselves as skeptics have adopted the scientific method as a way of approaching life in general. It goes something like this:

Fundie: There is a god. He is the one true God and he loves you. Through him only will you find salvation and enter the kingdom of Heaven.

Skeptic: Fine. Where is your proof for said god?

Fundie: Right here! The Holy Bible! This is the sacred word of God and the path to Heaven through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Skeptic: Right. We’ll get back to this Jesus character. So you have a book that you claim was written by a supernatural deity. How do you know that it was actually written by a supernatural being and not written by people?

Fundie: Because it says so right here in the book of I Corinthians.

Skeptic: That’s circular reasoning. The bible was written by a supernatural creator of the universe because it says it was. You have failed the burden of proof. Until you have provided evidence for your claims, the null hypothesis applies, and it is unlikely that there is a supernatural being at all. Your book was most likely written by 3000 year old goat herders with nothing but oral traditions handed down over centuries borrowed from other cultures and no working knowledge of modern science.

Fundie: Infidel! You shall burn in Hell! The Lord thy God shall cast thee into the pits of Hell and watch you burn for eternity!!!

Skeptic: Bring it. By the way, you’re drooling.

The problem though, is that it’s more than this. There’s more to it than just a simple lack of proof. The entire concept of God fails any kind of logical reasoning. For instance, take this example.

Something bad happens. It doesn’t really matter what. Something bad happens and it leads to a series of events. The end result of this chain of events is that someone gets hurt, probably me or you. This has happened to all of us, each and every one. The specifics of this particular example don’t really matter, because the same pattern has happened several times in my life, and probably several times in yours. Let’s go through a couple of scenarios now.

Scenario 1: God fucked up.

Let’s start with the following assumptions:

1. God exists.
2. God knows everything that is happening (Omniscient)
3. God does not see the future.
4. God controls everything (Omnipotent)

In this example, God started a chain of events. Possibly God thought that something positive would come of it all down the road (e.g. he meant well). However, things did not turn out the way he intended. Basically, God fucked with my life and screwed everything up. God is incompetent. He fucked up. Everything would have been better if he just stayed the fuck out of everything.

Scenario 2: God is an asshole.

Let’s start with these assumptions now:

1. God exists.
2. God knows everything that is happening (Omniscient)
3. God can see the future (Prescient)
4. God controls everything (Omnipotent)

Let’s forget the logical inconsistencies of God being all of these things at the same time, and suspend disbelief just long enough to finish the example. In this example, God knew full well that the outcome of the events he set into motion would be and the disaster that occurred as a result. He knew full well the pain waiting for me (or you) at the end of these events. Why would he do that? The fundamentalist would say some dumbass thing like “God works in mysterious ways” or “He was teaching you a lesson” or some other completely inane bullshit. If he’s all powerful, couldn’t he just simply pass said knowledge along? The fundie says “but you wouldn’t learn the lesson that way”. Okay, but if he designed and made me, why would he design me that way? Why not “design” me to just simply know? There’s only one inescapable conclusion to made here no matter how many logical rabbit holes the fundie goes down, God is a complete and utter flatulating butthole.

So, we’re left with two choices, 1. God is incompetent, 2. God is an asshole. Using the bible as a guide, I think we can safely say that #2 is a gimme, but the point of the whole exercise is this: If you proved God’s existence tomorrow, I would, of course, accept the existence of God, but I would not convert back to religion even then. There is no escape from the logical conclusion that if God exists, he is not worth my time. On the other hand, if we accept the null hypothesis that God does not exist, than all of this is nothing more than random bad luck, the kind that statistically happens to everybody all the time. No supernatural explanation is required for this, and I have no reason to be angry at any supernatural entities who refuse to prove their own existence to anybody. Nice, simple, clean, and so much easier to accept and explain.

And THAT is why I’m an atheist.

You don’t call, you don’t write…

I’ll be honest, I’m just too fucking tired to write anything meaningful lately. Not that I ever write anything meaningful. There’s a ton of shit going on in my life and a handful of good things. Actually, I think the specification of “handful” would be 3. I’m broke, I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m in pain, I’m a little broken, a smidge jealous, and Trevor, my inner monkey, is acting up a lot lately. And there’s something about Mormons that drives me absolutely fucknuts. Don’t ask, I don’t really understand it myself.

But it’s late, my laundry is finally done, I’ve had about 2 too many beers, and I’m neurotic that I’ll screw up the only thing going right in my life.

If I don’t make it back here before Monday, Happy Halloween everybody.

I saw the moon tonight…

Full moons always make me thoughtful
And sometimes just a little sad
I’m usually not sure why

I feel like I’m looking for something I’ll never find
Like a decades long game of cat and mouse
Maybe that’s all that life is

It was a little more comforting when I thought life was magic
Like a storybook. Climax, denouement, happy ending
But even then, there were no happy endings

It’s a daily struggle to make sense of so much crap
Sometimes you see things as you want them to be
But they’re not

I’m not very good at being alone
Life is better with a friend at your side
Shuffling through the crap with you

I’m not very good at being alone
Though I’ve had a lot of practice
It didn’t help

I don’t always feel happy with who I am
Like my life’s journey got derailed way back there
I ended up in Beijing when I was headed for Stuttgart

But there’s no train back
I’ll have to walk
It’s a long walk

Maybe I’ll make a friend along the way
Maybe a lifelong companion
Maybe just a passing ship

Sometimes I walk in a zigzag
Life keeps putting curves in the road
But I just keep walking

No matter how much it hurts

9/11/2011

Ten years ago today the unthinkable happened. The TV has been filled with footage from 9/11 today, much of it I’ve never seen before. It’s a wound in the collective psyche of America that’s healing, but not yet healed.

9/11 meant different things to different people, but most of us can agree that it was a wake up call to the capacity for evil.

But whose evil? It’s easy to point to 9/11 and say that Muslims are violent and Islam is an evil religion, but in actuality Islam is in a state now that Christianity was in only a few centuries ago. The difference being that the violence perpetrated by the followers of Islam have 21st century weaponry.

I won’t pretend that the world would be a perfect place without religion, but it would be a better place. 9/11 was proof positive of the evil that can be perpetrated by those that can manipulate through religion. The most obvious examples come from Islamic terrorists, but we are not all immune to this. Listening to Pat Robertson can easily show you that we’re not that different on this side of the pond. A leader of the free world like Michele Bachmann would make us little different from Iran.

For me, 9/11 was a wake up call to the evil that can be perpetrated in the name of religion. I’m not naïve enough to believe that it’s just Islam though. We are mere footsteps from being the mirror image of the Middle East.

We must step back from the brink. We must not become evil to fight evil. We must be clear on what evil we fight. We must remember who we are as Americans. We must remember what America is about. It’s not God, it’s not Guns, It’s freedom. We are not a Christian nation, we are a nation of the free. We must stop sacrificing our freedom to our fear. We must call for our freedoms to be restored.

Ten years later, we must begin to heal. We must become what we were. We must stop the pointless bickering. We must stop allowing the clowns in Washington to play us like fools.

Each and every one of us must decide who we are. We must determine this absent of propaganda and religion. Once you have decided who you are, you can decide if you really agree with what is being fed to you. When I did this, I didn’t. Who I am is so different from who I was before 9/11, but I’m a better person. I’m finally true to who I am.

You can be too.

God is not good

A brief look at what’s really important to us as a species

You may (or may not) have heard that recently SETI had to mothball it’s Allen Telescope Array.  Apparently it would cost $2.5 million to keep it operational.  That’s a lot of money, especially in these hard economic times, right?

It depends on what’s important to you.  I recently saw a bumper sticker that read something to the effect of “we never have enough money for education, but we always seem to have enough money for war”.  Think about that. The swath of Republicans we just voted into office (due in no small part to the billions of anonymous dollars filtered through SuperPACs made possible by the Citizen’s United ruling) have been busy slashing funding left and right.  They claim we can’t afford these things.  Things like health care for all Americans, NPR, PBS, Planned Parenthood, and our educational system.  I’m watching my sister facing the possibility of being fired and forced to re-apply for her job as a way of “improving our educational system”.  What a crock.  Meanwhile, we’re involved in a third war now.  We don’t pay our soldiers much, but damn do we buy them some expensive toys. 

Microcosmologist has put together a little infographic that shows, quite clearly, where our priorities lie.  (there’s more after the picture)

Is this stuff important? Is it worth the money? I defer to the great Carl Sagan.

Occasionally I wish there were a God

So I could flip the fucker off. 

It would be so easy.  Blame all of this shit on God.  Everything in my life that’s going wrong, wrong job, wrong wife, God’s fault.  Losing my son to the fringe fundamentalists; watching him heading down a path that will waste all the talent and brains he has until it’s too late… so much like me… why would God do this to me?  To him?

Spent the best years of my life trying to be somebody I’m not.  Spent my few healthy years living somebody else’s dream while my own slipped away… why God why?  Why would you let this happen to me? 

But alas, the answer is all too clear.  I did it to myself.  My rage and anger is properly placed on myself.  I saw the direction things were going at work over a year ago.  I did nothing.  I saw my wife’s penchant for fringe fundamentalists over a decade ago when she involved me in a cult.  I let it go.  I saw the increasing insanity of her new fringe religion over a year ago, maybe more.  I’ve done nothing.  I objected to homeschooling five years ago but she did it anyway.  I let it happen. 

I’ve completely and utterly failed myself and my children.  The crushing weight of this guilt would be so easy to schluff off on an imaginary supernatural being who was supposed to watch out for me.

Oh how easy it would be to weasel out of my guilt that way.  I suppose that’s the last of the God Virus in me, like that cough you have for a week or so after a bad cold.  I find myself wanting to blame somebody else for my own failures, and a God would be such an easy target.  After all, he wouldn’t fight back now, would he?

So I sigh and resign myself to the fact if anybody is to blame, it’s myself.  I take a deep breath and set about fixing all the things I’ve let fall to shit.  Here we go.

The Evolution of the Cowboy

As I write this, I’m sitting here watching Cosmos on Netflix on my XBox.  Coolest XBox feature EVAR.  I’m reminded of this video I watched the other night.

I know what he’s talking about.  It’s the oddest feeling when you’ve learned enough science that suddenly everything starts to fit together.  I’m reminded of the common Christian claim that Atheism or Science is a religion.  The stupidity of that claim aside, I’ve realized something: These kinds of moments are not unique to religion.  Religion has these kinds of epiphany moments.  So does music.  I remember my first musical “Moment” during a performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.  It was amazing.  I think I’d like to call it a Musicgasm.  You simply can’t imagine it until you’ve had one, it’s unreal.  They’re far too few and far between. 

Religion can have the same kind of moments.  I had one in the cult.  A Godgasm, if you will.  I know the allure of it.  People believe they’re feeling the presence of God.   It can be very hard to reason with someone who has had a Godgasm.

This is a Sciencegasm.  It’s totally unique, yet familiar.  I’ve had one.  Apparently that’s all you get.  It’s that moment when you realize that the Universe is glorious and amazing, awe inspiring if you will.  Everything clicks, and you realize just how awesome it is to be a part of the Universe and to understand it as we do, and it doesn’t require a supernatural being to appreciate it. 

What’s cool is that it only gets better.  We actually understand very little about our Universe, but we learn more every day.  A hundred, a thousand years from now, we’ll know so much more, but still not everything.  There’s always another amazing, awe-inspiring discovery to make. 

I can’t explain the unbelievable feeling of understanding how the pieces fit together, how we fit into our world, our Universe, and how even though we’re a small seemingly insignificant part of it, we’re still a part of it.  Atheism is just as, no, more gratifying than Religion.  I wish everybody could see this, but Atheists don’t proselytize.  I’m not recruiting for the Atheist cause.  None of us do.  The only reason we’re in a fight with Religion is frankly because they started it.  At some point teaching science became blasphemy.  At some point realizing that we don’t need a god to be good became a threat.   At some point no longer needing an imaginary Master became an affront.  When we fight back we have reason and science on our side, but facts are meaningless to people who have already made up their minds. 

It seems every Fall I undergo some kind of mental change.  I evolve into a newer, better being.  Well, sometimes it’s better.  This blog has chronicled my evolution over the past few years.  It’s time for another change. 

On this blog I’ve made some friends.  I’ve realized that conservatives, or at least Republicans, do not represent my values as a human being.  I’ve advocated Henry Rollins for President.  I’ve argued against voting party lines, and I’ve voted straight Democratic tickets.  I’ve espoused the virtues of Taoism, and I’ve abandoned it because of the value it places on ignorance.  I’ve ranted.  A lot.  I’ve geeked out.  I’ve complained about religious intolerance, I’ve been intolerant of religion, and I’ve abandoned religion altogether, although I’m pretty sure that actually happened a very long time ago.  I’ve really only just recently admitted it to myself.  I’ve cussed, and blasphemed, I’ve hoped, and I’ve wondered.  I’ve deleted the whole thing in a moment of anger, and I’ve painstakingly restored it after regretting my actions.  I’ve had spiritual epiphanies, and I’ve despaired for the entire human race.  I’ve grown as a human being, and it wasn’t always pretty.

I’ve discovered a lot about myself over the past few years.  Anybody who reads this blog regularly probably has too. 

I’ve been thinking about a new direction for several days now, and I think I’m going to do it.  Hopefully I don’t lose what little audience I may have acquired spewing vitriol over the interwebs for the past few years.  I’m absolutely in love with science right now, and I think I’m going to begin posting about this.  For one, just so that I’m not just bitching all the time.  For two, hopefully somebody will begin to see just what is so amazing about all of this.  For three, it’s a nice convenient place to keep track of the things I’ve learned.  Crap I wish I’d paid more attention in school!

With any luck the tone here will change.  With any luck I’ll open a few minds.  Mostly, I just don’t want to forget this stuff.  I would love nothing more than to return to college right now and rack up several doctorate degrees in various fields of science, but that’s simply not reality given the cost of living and the cost of college.  I’m also desperately trying to save for my children’s college, and sending myself back to school doesn’t help that cause. 

Well, here we go…

Atheists can read Harry Potter and study Evolution without feeling like God is going to get them.