Fish in Space

Stop me if you've heard this before: "You can't be an atheist because atheists believe there is no God!" Maybe you've said it yourself, I don't know. Whether you've said it or simply heard it, I would like to explain why this statement is pointless no matter what definitions you've embraced. Labels aren't important. They're really not. We use them as mental shortcuts to help us decide how to respond at a glance. You may be aware of my previous comments on mental scripting if you want a more in-depth examination on the topic, but the point here is that these shortcuts don't tell the whole story. Labels are descriptions of things, they're not prisons. I am a liberal. To you that may mean I want to steal all your money so I can redistribute it around to make everyone poor. It may mean you think that I support killing babies to slake my lust for blood. If you're stuck in the Nineteenth Century you might think it means I support unregul...

I have previously addressed the Problem of Evil in a another post but I'm not sure I really addressed the Christian apologetic of divine command theory. In its most simplified form, Yahweh can never be evil or immoral because he's the god. This god quality automatically makes everything he says or does automatically moral because of who he is. Because we do not have this god quality we have no right to pass moral judgment on anything he says or does. No matter how evil or immoral any action (or inaction!) he takes it is automatically made moral by dint of his authority as the god. If we do the same evil, immoral thing citing Yahweh's action as precedent we are still evil and immoral because we do not possess the god quality. The Profit of the Church of the Fridge wrote an incredible essay comparing the morals of Superman against the morals of Yahweh and I highly recommend it. The Christian answer to the Problem of Evil is that there's no problem at all. Just ignore...

I truly believe that religion is a personal matter, a decision we all make about what reality is and how it works. As an atheist I don't believe religion has anything valid to say on the matter based on my observations of reality versus claims religions make. But I can't force anyone to agree with me and refuse to support public policy that would criminalize religious belief or worship. When someone tells me that they approach politics with a religious mindset I can't help but roll my eyes. This is an example of what we're talking about when we refer to beliefs informing actions: how do you expect to formulate good public policy if your foundation of truth is a fantasy? I can't stop people from voting that way but I can uphold secularism in which people are entitled to believe whatever they choose but can't use our laws to coerce compliance with religious belief. I draw the line when people try to inject religion directly into politics. It is a direct violation ...

I've argued this before but the topic is still hot so I'm going to approach it from a different perspective. Believe it or not, Muslims are not inherently bad or evil. It's one thing to challenge their claims and criticize their actions when they behave badly, but that's not what a lot of the criticism is doing. I don't like vilifying Muslims as a group for a number of reasons. One is because they're not a majority in my society the way Christians are, so it's not as easy to punch up. Were I living in Iran or Saudi Arabia that would be a different story, but that would carry its own set of problems worthy of criticism in their own right. Vilifying Muslims in a Christian-dominated society doesn't promote secularism or anti-theism so much as give shade to Christian agendas. Even if you're not intending to promote Christian supremacy, unintended consequences are still a thing. If we want a post-religious society then I strongly believe that secular...

The incomparable Matt Dillahunty recently posted the video of his lecture at Baylor University regarding what he calls "the problem of Divine Hiddenness." It's an excellent talk and I highly recommend it. At timestamp 13:59 he brings up the question "why create a world where you put thinking beings, give them a brain...where critical examination of what you see in the world is consistently the best way to find an accurate model of the world?...and then to say that the most important piece of information is one that doesn't fit that paradigm?" I've examined this before in my comparison of the conflict between faith and knowledge, but since Matt doesn't take much time to address the typical excuse of "faith" here I want to revisit the topic. While he correctly points out that "faith" isn't an answer because it can be used to justify any claim, he's set up a question that invites more scrutiny. Whatever god allegedly created...

One of the fundamental flaws I often criticize about religious belief is when believers want their cake and eat it too. Specifically, I refer to when their arguments rely too heavily on special pleading. And no, adding caveats to the definition of a god does not bypass special pleading. I can redefine chocolate as the essential first cause of the universe, but that doesn't make the definition valid. But other examples of special pleading include arguments like this: god is mysterious, unfathomable and uknowable but somehow believers are granted special knowledge of who this god is, what it is and what it demands. Believers typically justify this via "special revelation," that they or their religious founders have been granted special knowledge by that god to carry out the divine will. Each religion and sect claiming special revelation typically considers the special revelation other religions and sects as heresy or at least attributed to human error. But since there are ...

I've been slogging through a post taking another look at Pope Francis I as he enters his third year as the Supreme Pontiff, but the murder of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill demands a response. I disavow this act of bigotry. Violence is not justified by atheism or even anti-theism. I will happily do violence to your default assumptions about religion, but not to your body, your rights or your freedom. There is no justification for killing someone because of their religious beliefs. However, it seems that the primary motive in this case was just as petty: Police said in a statement Wednesday morning that a dispute about parking in the neighborhood of rented condominiums may have led to the incident. “Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking. Hicks is cooperating with investigators,” Lt. Joshua Mecimore, a police spokesman, said. Do I really have to express just how stupid it is to end anyone's l...

In psychology there's a concept developed in the late seventies called the cycle of abuse in which domestic violence follows a continual pattern of tension, explosion, reconciliation and then back again. Those three were later broken down further into fourteen identifiable stages, but that's not the worst of it. Children who witness or suffer such abuse are more likely to become abusers themselves. They learn that this sort of behavior is correct and even necessary and they propagate it to other people in their lives as they grow up. It's tragic, but it doesn't end there. For the most part throughout history atheists have been the abused more than the abuser. People really don't like it when you don't share their beliefs. But as I've previously explored atheists are just as human as believers and subject to the same human foibles. Believers like counter our criticism by bringing up abuses wrought by atheists, and it would be dishonest to deny it. Ther...

So many people have so many misconceptions about atheism and nonbelief. Many people have made up their minds and will not be moved. So be it. But just because you have an image in your head about what an atheist is or purports to be doesn't obligate me to conform to your expectations. So here's what atheism means to me. Atheism does not mean I'm a scientist. I am not an expert on biology, chemistry, cosmology, geology, physics or anything else that people care to invoke as proof that their god is real. I am a science enthusiast, meaning that scientific discoveries fascinate me and I try to keep abreast of current trends and discoveries made by the scientific community but that doesn't make me a scientist. I am at best a layman on scientific matters and am necessarily limited in my understanding. I don't have the answers to every question in the universe, but I do understand one thing about human knowledge: the fewer assumptions we hold as default the less likely ...

One of the problems frequently encountered in religious debate is that everyone has a different definition of the god(s) they believe in. This creates a moving target for the atheist expressing skepticism regarding those beliefs. There are at last count something on the order of three thousand different gods that humans have worshiped; here's a non-canonical list of them. In addition, there are thousands of sects within various religions all claiming to worship the same god but attributing different personalities to them effectively creating new gods in the process. Then there are Deist gods who are undefined but nevertheless divine by nature and pantheism which holds that the universe and everything in it is some sort of manifestation of godhood. It's exhausting. So here I will go through a top-level list of gods I don't believe are real.      1. I don't believe in any gods that are responsible for the creation or function of the universe. If you have evid...

Sacrilicious: adjective : a description of something so sacrilegious that it's delicious to behold. Portmanteau of sacrilege and delicious. example: The Loophole by Garfunkel and Oates is positively sacrilicious! What I want to know is this: why is this not a thing? Come on, Oxford! It's time to step up!

One of the most common claims made by Christians is that the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God. How do we know that the Bible is divinely inspired? Why, the Bible says this about itself. Of course, what this means varies depending on the Christian you talk to. For some it means the Bible is perfect and inerrant, that any time we find something wrong in the Bible it's us who is making the mistake because the Bible can't be wrong about anything. For others it means only parts of the Bible are divinely inspired and the confusion comes because we have to sift the human error in the Bible to find the parts that are genuinely inspired. The first claim, that the Bible is perfect and inerrant is easily refuted. Looking at the conflicting creation accounts in Genesis, the story of the Hebrews in bondage to Egypt , the prophesied destruction of Tyre by Babylon or the attempts to tie both Herod the Great and the Census of Quirinius to Jesus' birth in spite of Herod d...

I encountered someone who complained that whenever atheists tell jokes it's always about religion, never about atheism or atheists. He eventually clarified that we never allow anything funny and offensive about ourselves. I have to concede the last point; I can't think of any jokes about atheism or atheists that I would find offensive. Here's what I came up with: Q: What did the atheist say after walking into a church? A: Mind if I smoke? Q: How many atheists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One, and it's not funny! Q: Why did the atheist die at the bottom of the cliff? A: He didn't believe in gravity, either. I realize it's a short list, so I invite anyone to come along and suggest some more. Bonus points if I find it offensive to atheism.

This has been coming up a lot lately, so I decided to put it down somewhere I could easily reference it. This observation is in no way new or original, only the phrasing is uniquely my own. Did you ever do those obnoxious math proofs in school? Add X number plus Y number to get Z result. Now show the proof. Did you ever get points knocked off because your proofs contained errors, even though you arrived at the correct result? In morality as with math it's entirely possible to come up with good answers for the wrong reasons. And like those math proofs, you can't actually be sure you got the right answer because it doesn't add up. That's why I don't trust morality that isn't grounded in reality. People can and do claim their gods demand all sorts of things. They demand sacrifice, they demand worship, they demand obedience, etc. Occasionally people hit on useful things like "love thy neighbor as thyself." But just as often they use it to justify...