Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
CRITIQUING RELIGION
Teaching a child one religion = indoctrination
Teaching a child all religions = inoculation
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." Anonymous
"Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology." Christopher Hitchens
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Christopher Hitchens
"Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow." Friedrich Nietzsche
"Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous." Will Durant
"The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?" Sam Harris, The End of Faith
"The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil (this is traditionally called the problem of theodicy) is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics. Surely there must come a time when we will acknowledge the obvious: theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings. ... There is clearly no greater obstacle to a truly empirical approach to spiritual experience than our current beliefs about God." Sam Harris
" A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it. Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith." Sam Harris
"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call "spiritual". No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered.Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this." Sam Harris
"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism." Ayaan Hirsi Ali
"The only reason to call oneself an atheist is because there are theists. If nobody claimed to know that a god exists (a theist), there would be no atheists. ... Atheism is part of the scientific outlook, which is called naturalism." Floris van den Berg
"Saying atheism is a religion is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby, off is a TV channel or bald is a hair colour". Non-Stamp Collector
Bertrand Russell on God (1959)
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How To Get Rid Of Religion, And Why: An Inconvenient Liberal Paradox
An Essay by Floris van den Berg, Co-Executive Director Center for Inquiry Low Countries-
It is time to take up the project of the radical Enlightenment and try to liberate humankind of ignorance, unreason and superstition, some of which have been institutionalized as religions.
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LARRY BEINHART ON RELIGION
Larry Beinhart, in his new novel, Salvation Boulevard -- and this series of articles -- is hoping to start a conversation about these issues.-
Why did faith re-emerge as the driving force in America and in the politics of many Islamic countries?
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Only a lack of belief in God offers the possibility of increasing our understanding of him or her.
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We never know 100 percent about anything. There's always an information gap between ourselves and certainty.
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Many people continue to clutch to their belief in God, even though there's no evidence of a higher power. Why?
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GRETA CHRISTINA ON RELIGION
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It's possible to keep the good parts of religion -- like the music, rituals and pageantry -- and get rid of the sex-hating dogma, the belief in god and other troublesome aspects.
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Religion is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality and extreme, grotesque immorality.
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Are you open to the possibility that you might be mistaken? Are you open to the possibility that there is no God, and that the physical world is all there is? Is your God hypothesis falsifiable? Is there any possible evidence that would change your mind?
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As vivid as the experience of our hearts and minds can feel, it's unreliable and subject to bias.
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"Where did the universe come from" is a legitimately tough question... but "God” is a terrible answer. What's more, the "God did it" answer cuts off further inquiry into the question.
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If the universe was "fine-tuned" for life to come into being, why is the overwhelming majority of it so inhospitable to life? Even if there's life on other plantets, why is the part of the universe that's hospitable to life so miniscule?
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The evidence supporting the 'independent soul' explanation is flimsy at best. It is unsubstantiated. It comes largely from personal anecdotes. It is internally inconsistent.
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Doesn't it seem likely that the reason all of us can't see God is because there is no God?
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If God is real, and religious believers can perceive him... why is anyone an atheist?
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The idea that atheists are immoral, or that they treat science as their religion is just pure BS.
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The notion that 'there are no atheists in foxholes' isn't just mistaken, it's bigoted and ugly; a denial of atheists' humanity and the reality of our experience with death.
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The comfort of religion doesn't eradicate grief. And many people would much rather believe in no afterlife at all than an afterlife determined by a sadistic god.
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Thinking you're right and trying to persuade other people you're right is not intolerant or close-minded -- it's a cornerstone of democracy.
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Atheism isn't an attack on diversity, it's a defense of reality.
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Debates over faith often leave non-believers holding the bag: look like a jerk or leave the debate unfinished and apparently concede defeat.
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Here's nine tips for believers who want to reach out. After all, atheists are a growing movement and may soon be a force to be reckoned with.
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We don't need to see sex as spiritual in order to see it as transcendent.
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atheism doesn't mean that life has no meaning. It simply means that we get to create our own meaning. The meaning of our lives isn't handed to us by someone else: we get to choose the meaning of our lives, based on our brains, experiences & culture
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Atheists often point out that religious faith is closed off to evidence that contradicts it. What evidence would persuade atheists that their atheism was mistaken?
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CRITIQUING RELIGION - MISCELLANEOUS
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Opening the Bible up to metaphorical interpretation rips the heart right out of Christianity, and makes central dogmas of the faith untenable and painfully ridiculous.
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A blog by ex-Christians, ex-Ministers and ex-Apologists of the Christian faith.
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Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.
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A savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus.
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Acknowledging Jesus's Jewish background is nothing new, but arguing, as Wilson does, that Christianity is largely the result of a deliberate and deceptive manipulation is more intriguing and contentious.
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The God character in Genesis is cruel, violent, callous, insecure, power-hungry, paranoid, hot-tempered, morally fickle. And God's followers aren't much better. They lie, they scheme, they cheat one another, they conquer, they kill at the drop of a hat.
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There are some very dark passages in the Old Testament, stories of lust and cruelty that have no obvious moral. Incest, bigamy, rape, mutilation, deceit, loyalty and love can all be found in the Good Book.
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BOOK REVIEW - The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love.
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The ethics of secularism is autonomous, in the sense that it need not be derived from theological grounds. Secular humanists are interested in enhancing the good life both for the individual and society.
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“If it’s really true that all religions have this ethical principle, across continents and across centuries, then it is more likely to have a hardwired scientific basis than if it was just a neighborhood custom.”
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A moral sense seems to emerge when you take a smart, articulate species and throw in reciprocal altruism. And evolution has proved creative enough to harness the logic of reciprocal altruism again and again.
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Wright’s utopian solution fails because accommodationism always fails: any genuine harmony between science & faith requires that believers give up essential elements of their supernatural beliefs, & that scientists accept some elements of the supernatural
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There is nothing 'out there' that imposes morality on you, other than local, temporary conditions, a lot of social enculturation, and probably a bit of genetic hardwiring that you've inherited from ancestors who lived under similar conditions.
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“Surprisingly, our sophisticated moral sense of what is right and wrong may develop from a newborn’s innate preference for what tastes good and bad, what is potentially nutritious versus poisonous.”
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The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.
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Popular religion is usually a superficial and flexible psychological mechanism for coping with the high levels of stress and anxiety produced by sufficiently dysfunctional social and especially economic environments.
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According to a new study, prosperity is highest in countries that practice religion the least.
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The Freedom From Religion Foundation is using quotes from famous atheists to spread the message in its national billboard campaign.
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Being an atheist in America means being less than human. Now it’s time for religious and spiritual people to take a stand for non-believers of all varieties.
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They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.
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A godless America would be a better America, one more committed to the Enlightenment ideals that accompanied its founding,
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Atheism is on the rise in Canada. Or maybe it's just that people now are willing to admit it
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Growing numbers of people don’t particularly care whether or not there are gods since, even if there are, they don’t seem able to do anything in our world.
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Critical historical thinking in general, and its application to religious scriptures in particular, is one of the great intellectual achievements of Western civilization.
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Everyone believes his or her own religion to be genuine; no one says, “I believe in my religion, but it isn’t genuine.” It is religious conviction itself that causes such evils, and the question of legitimacy is irrelevant.
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"Faith is at its most toxic and dangerous point not when it is insincere and hypocritical and corrupt but when it is genuine. "
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God People are constantly fine-tuning their weird arguments to pimp the righteousness of faith.
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"No matter who you are, no matter how quote-unquote intelligent you are, when you are defending religion, you sound like an idiot. That's the point: Anybody who defends the nonsense in religion is going to sound like a fool."
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By manipulating mankind’s fear of death, organized religion clearly emerges as the most ruthless and totalitarian authority institution in the history of the world.
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As many as a hundred million Americans believe in the Rapture, a boffo scene they've extracted from the crazy, hallucinogenic, paranoid Book of Revelations.
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Lauri Lebo, author of Devil in Dover, gives an insider's account of a historic court battle about dogma and Darwin in small-town America.
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Rather than empowering "good" religions and repressing "bad" ones, the solution lies in imposing peace by strictly subordinating religion to the needs of modern society.
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The frontline tools of an emergency room will always be splints and sutures, not prayers — and well-applied medicine along with smart prevention will always be the best ways to stay well.
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"If you don't experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don't make the same mistakes again and again?"
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"Readers with a scientific world view understand that faith healing does not work but might assume it will at least do no harm. Actually, it can do harm."
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"Spirituality" is a term beloved by seekers and loathed by atheists. But what does it mean? For a fresh perspective, turn to an old book, Ecclesiastes.
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Center for Inquiry Report for the Year 2007
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Austin Dacey calls for a bold rethinking of the nature of conscience and its role in public life. Inspired by an earlier tradition traced to Spinoza and John Stuart Mill, Dacey defends a renewed secularism based in the objective moral value of conscience.
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A review of "The New Atheists and Their Unholy Grail."
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The fastest-growing faith in America is no faith at all. And now some atheists think they need a church.
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“Do we have to wage the Galileo battle again? The Vatican claims that their objections are “moral,” but they are based on a theological doctrine that a formless fertilized egg is a full human being, a position which most scientists reject.”
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The Vatican's talk of "social sins" may indicate progress. But before it speaks for social responsibility, the Church has to have to take some itself.
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The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.
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"Instead of studying religion by trying to measure unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, we looked at identifiable and observable behavior - the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims"
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You don’t have to be an atheist to agree with Dawkins that there has been and continues to be a great deal of unhealthy religion throughout history and up to the present day.
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The essence of counterknowledge is that it purports to be knowledge but is not knowledge. Its claims can be shown to be untrue, either because there are facts that contradict them or because there is no evidence to support them.
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Thanksgiving Day should be turned into a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of America's indigenous peoples.
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Starting with those massacred French pilgrims, the saga of the nation’s birth and growth is often a bloodstained one, filled with religious animosities.
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It's cold. It's dark. Let's celebrate and take part in activities -- like parties and big group dinners -- that strengthen social bonds.
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Even though the standard winter holidays are supposedly religious, there are ample reasons for atheists to celebrate, too.
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Our contemporary, semi-secular Christmas is similarly a collection of everything yearned for: warmth, plenty, peace, family, conviviality.
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Beneath the laughable charge is a poisonous suggestion that 'our way of life' is threatened by foreigners.
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A scientist can be a believer. But professionally, at least, he can't act like one.
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Religion uses a different body of techniques to explain the nature of the universe. It uses tradition and dogma and authority and revelation, and a detailed legalistic analysis of source texts, to dictate what the nature of reality should be.
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If anyone in modern society talked like Jesus did, conservatives would condemn that person as a class warrior, a socialist. Jesus may not have been primarily concerned with politics, but it is impossible to argue that he was not a progressive thinker.