Category Archives: Atheism

Why Worry About a God That Isn’t There?

Posted on by
8

You don’t call yourself an a-unicornist. Or an a-Santaist. Why call yourself an a-theist?

I get this a lot.  “Why do you worry about something you don’t even think exists?  Why call yourself an atheist?”

That’s a reasonable question.  People with no God belief may not call themselves atheists for lots of reasons.  Maybe they prefer another name like freethinker or agnostic.  Maybe they want to focus on what they do believe in and so think of themselves as humanists or naturalists.  Maybe, as the cartoon suggests, not believing in God is as irrelevant to their lives as not believing in unicorns or Santa Claus.

But I do call myself an atheist.  God belief impacts society in ways that unicorn belief or Santa belief could never do.  In the list of Christian excesses below, see if you agree that only religion—and not mere belief in mythical creatures—could provoke these actions.

  • The Pope says that condoms shouldn’t be used in Africa to stop the spread of HIV
  • U.S. preachers provoke anti-gay legislation in Uganda
  • Some churches forbid birth control
  • Stem cell research is held up
  • Young women are urged not to get the HPV vaccine that protects against cervical cancer
  • In-vitro fertilization, which has brought four million children to parents unable to conceive, is attacked by the Catholic church
  • Some Christians push for Creationism to be taught in science class, for Christian prayers to be said in public schools, and for the Ten Commandments to be displayed in courthouses
  • Christian belief seems to increasingly be a requirement for public office, despite the fact that the Constitution makes clear that no religious test shall ever be required
  • … and other excesses that come to mind for you.

If Christianity could work and play well with others, that would be great, and I’d find other activities to occupy my time.  But it doesn’t.

If you’re a Christian reading this, you may respond that your church doesn’t do this.  In that case, agree with me!  Agree that Christianity—in some versions, anyway—crosses the line and must be kept in check.

Artwork credit: Mike Stanfill

God Doesn’t Exist: Believers are Products of their Environment

Posted on by
9

What fraction of Muslims were not raised in a Muslim environment?  What fraction of Christians were not raised in a Christian environment?  What does it say about the validity of religious claims that people typically take on the religion of their culture?

When someone gets a religious vision, why does it have elements from that person’s religion and not some other religion?  Why do Hindus not get visions of Mary or Jesus or Christian angels, and why do Christians not get visions of Hindu gods?

To avoid the charge of special pleading, Christians must argue that they were just extraordinarily lucky to have been born in a place and time in which the correct religion happened to be available.

Religion is like language.  I speak English because I was raised in America.  I didn’t evaluate all the languages of the world before I picked the best one; it was just part of my environment.

Any Christian will tell you that babies born to Muslim parents are almost exclusively Muslim for no more profound reason than that they were raised in a Muslim environment.  Why should it be any different for babies born to Christian parents?

Christians aren’t Christian because Christianity is true, but because they were born into a Christian environment.  Christianity is a cultural trait, not a reflection of the truth.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Related posts:

God Doesn’t Exist: Christianity Looks Invented

Posted on by
4

Let me propose this axiom: a human-invented religion will look radically different from the worship of a real god.  That is, human longing for the divine (or human imagination) will cobble together a very poor imitation of the real thing.

Let’s first look at an example in the domain of languages.  Imagine that you’re a linguist and you’re creating a tree of world languages.  Each language should be nearer languages that are related and similar, and it should be farther from those that are dissimilar.  Spanish and Portuguese are next to each other on the tree; add French, Italian, and others and call that the Romance Languages; add other language groups like Germanic, Celtic, and Indic and you get the Indo-European family; and so on.

Here’s your challenge: you have two more languages to fit in.  First, find the spot for English.  It’s pretty easy to see, based on geography, vocabulary, and language structure, that it fits into the Germanic group.  Next, an alien language like a real Klingon or Na’vi.  This one wouldn’t fit in at all and would be unlike every human language.

Now imagine a tree of world religions.  Your challenge is to find the place for Yahweh worship of 1000 BCE.  Is it radically different from all the manmade religions, as unlike manmade religions as the alien language was to human languages?  Or does it fit into the tree comfortably next to the other religions of the Ancient Near East, like English fits nicely into the Germanic group?

You’d expect the worship of the actual creator of the universe to look dramatically different from religions invented by Iron Age tribesmen in Canaan, but religious historians tell us that Yahweh looks similar to other Canaanite deities like Asherah, Baal, Moloch, Astarte, Yam, or Mot.  What could he be but yet another invented god?

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Related posts:

God Doesn’t Exist: Christianity Relies on Indoctrination

Posted on by
10

What would happen if we categorized Christianity as an adult activity?  It would be like smoking, drinking, voting, driving, sex, and so on—things that you must be mature enough to handle wisely.  This adults-only Christianity would die out within a few generations.

We all have inside us what could be called a “Nonsense Detector”—that common sense that helps us believe as many true things and reject as many false things as possible.  For example, present most American adults with a case for Islam or Hinduism or Sikhism, and they will be extraordinarily unconvinced.

As adults, we’re far better at sifting truth from nonsense than we were as children.  And that’s why Christians must be indoctrinated as children, before their Nonsense Detectors are mature.  This is the idea behind the Jesuit maxim, “Give me a child until the age of seven and I will give you the man.”

I think most Christians would admit this.  Imagine a conversation between the father of a 6-year-old child and the grandmother.

Grandma: “Little Johnny is old enough for me to take to Sunday School now.”

Dad: “You can take him when he’s 18, but I’d prefer he stay out of church until then.”

Grandma: “But 18 is too late!  By then he’ll be set in his ways.  He won’t accept the truth then.”

What kind of “truth” is it that must be taught before people are mature, before their Nonsense Detectors are fully functioning?  Grandma realizes that only before someone’s Nonsense Detector is operating correctly can the beliefs of religion be put into someone’s head.  This is a very poor stand-in for truth.

That Christianity must have access to immature minds to survive is strong evidence that God doesn’t exist.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Related posts:

(Hey—how’m I doing here?  What do you think of the blog so far—the quality of content, the topics, the length of posts, the frequency?  Please post a comment or send me an email at bobtheatheist@gmail.com to let me know.  Thanks for coming on this journey with me!)

God Doesn’t Exist: Historians Reject the Bible Story

Posted on by
21

You’re probably aware that the person making a claim has the burden of proof.  In the courtroom, for example, the prosecution has the burden of proof.  There are no ties—when neither side makes a convincing case, the side that failed to carry its burden of proof loses.

The same is true for people who claim “God exists”—they have the burden of proof.  That makes it easier for atheists.  But now I want to make a positive claim: that atheism explains reality better than Christianity.

I plan a series of posts making arguments in support of the claim “God doesn’t exist.”  Here’s the first argument: historians reject the Bible story.

You never find the details of the Jesus story in a history book, like you would for Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.  Why is that?  Why is the Bible not cataloged in the library in the History section?

Christians correctly point out that the historical grounding for the Jesus story has some compelling points.  For example, there are not one but four gospel accounts.  The time gap from original manuscripts to our oldest complete copies is relatively small.  And the number of Bible manuscripts is far greater than those referring to anyone else of that time.

The enormous difficulty, however, is that historians reject miracles—not just in the Bible but consistently in any book that claims to be history.

Remember the story of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon?  The historian Suetonius reported that Julius saw a divine messenger who urged him to cross.  This is the same Suetonius that Christians often point to when citing extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Jesus story.

Remember Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor who reportedly ordered the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem?  He was himself divinely conceived, and he ascended into heaven when he died1—or so the stories went.

Everyone knows about  Alexander the Great, but legends about his life grew up in his own time.  Did you hear the one about how the sea bowed in submission during his conquest of the Persian Empire?

Strip away the miracle claims from Julius Caesar or Caesar Augustus or Alexander the Great and you’re left with precisely the story of those leaders that we have in history.  But strip away the miracle claims from the Jesus story, and you have just the story of an ordinary man—a charismatic rabbi, perhaps, but hardly divine.

Christians argue that we should treat the Gospel story like any other biography of the time, and I agree—but I doubt they will like where that takes them.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

1Charles H. Talbert, What is a Gospel? (Mercer University Press, 1985), p. 32.

Other posts in the God Doesn’t Exist series:

A National Registry of Atheists? Y’know–Like Sex Offenders.

Posted on by
2

The Thinking Atheist has created a very polished rebuttal to this proposal from a pastor.

Yeah…he’s a nobody, but Florida “pastor” Michael Stahl has provided a great excuse to remind others just how many atheists and free-thinkers affect our lives and cultures every day. Stahl has suggested that known atheists be categorized on a list he called “The Christian National Registry of Atheists.” Imagine what kind of names, past and present, such a list would provide.

Another resource is W.A. Smith’s Who’s Who in Hell (2000), a 5 pound, 9 ounce tome listing humanists, freethinkers, naturalists, rationalists, and non-theists throughout history.

My only concern is that Stahl might well respond that these intellectuals and changemakers are indeed who he’d like to see marginalized!