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All these years I thought I was an atheist because I just didn’t see any evidence in support of the concept of God(s). After much critical thought and application of reason it seemed pretty logical that God, at least as described by the major religions of the world, is the result . . . → Read More: James the Preacher explains why atheists are atheists. We’re too stupid to know better.]]>

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All these years I thought I was an atheist because I just didn’t see any evidence in support of the concept of God(s). After much critical thought and application of reason it seemed pretty logical that God, at least as described by the major religions of the world, is the result of wishful thinking and lack of understanding of the natural world.

But according to James the Preacher, it’s not possible that I used reason and logic because I’m just too stupid to do so. Also, I love sin too much to let it go:

In case you don’t want to watch the video it all boils down to the Bible says we’re fools for not believing in God (Psalm 14) and an old edition of Webster’s Dictionary defines a fool as “one destitute of reason, or of the common powers of understanding; an idiot”. Put the two together and, voila, atheists are too stupid to understand the concept that a Creation requires a Creator.

The problem with that argument is that it assumes the Universe is a creation as opposed to the results of a natural process. Certainly the dictionary James the Preacher is using would suggest that is the case as it sites “specifically, the act of bringing the universe or this world into existence” as one of the definitions of Creation, but the dictionary is not a scientific authority on the issue. Nor, for that matter, is the Bible. Still, the argument commonly used is that you can’t get something from nothing so there has to be a creator to have brought the Universe into existence and that creator is God.

We don’t know the full story of how the Big Bang happened yet, but we’re getting closer to it all the time and there’s evidence that it was a natural outcome that may not even be unique. Additionally, physics has shown us that something can spring from nothing and happens all the time in what would otherwise be considered empty space. If you have an hour to spare you can learn a lot about how the Universe could come from nothing in this talk by Lawrence Krauss on that very topic:

He has since written a book with the same title that goes further in-depth on how this is possible: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. If you spend any amount of time watching Krauss’ talk or reading his book you’ll note that he doesn’t come across as being particularly stupid yet, according to James the Preacher’s simplistic argument, he’s just this side of a drooling moron because he doesn’t believe in God.

The point being, there’s been a lot of effort and thought put into the mystery of how the Universe could come to exist via totally natural processes. On one side we have all of this research and experimentation that provides evidence that you can get something from nothing and the Universe may be a naturally occurring thing with no supernatural causes behind it. On the other hand we have a book largely written by bronze-age goat herders that says an invisible, all-powerful, all-knowing being decided one day, for no particular reason, to create the “heavens and the earth” and then created light (prior to any light sources) and then the sky and then put all the water in one spot so there would be land and then he created plants, and then stars, the sun and moon, animals of the sea and land, and finally man and it all took about a week. There’s no evidence to support that account of how the Universe came to be. None. Zero. Nada. It makes logical sense to accept the explanation that has at least some evidence backing it up, but James the Preacher says no, that makes you a fool and an idiot.

OK, I guess I’m an idiot then. At least by the definition that James the Preacher is using. I’m not going to bother with the second half of his argument — that atheists love sin — because it’s even stupider than his first argument and I’ve wasted more time on him than he deserves already. I just wanted to point out his mistaken assumption that Creation is the only possible explanation for the Universe. Not is it not the only possibility, it’s not even as well supported by the evidence than many of the other possibilities.

Gallup classifies 40% of Americans nationwide as very religious — based on their statement that religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious . . . → Read More: Latest Gallup poll says around a third of Americans are nonreligious.]]> Here’s some news that’ll make you feel better. The latest Gallup poll on religious views in America indicates that nearly a third of Americans are nonreligious:

Gallup classifies 40% of Americans nationwide as very religious — based on their statement that religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week. Another 32% of Americans are nonreligious, based on their statement that religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services. The remaining 28% of Americans are moderately religious, because they say religion is important but that they do not attend services regularly or because they say religion is not important but still attend services.

Religiosity varies widely across U.S. states and regions, with Mississippi in the deep South and Vermont in New England providing the most extreme example of the disparity. Fifty-nine percent of Mississippians are very religious and 11% nonreligious, while 23% of Vermonters are very religious and 58% are nonreligious. Although New Hampshire ties Vermont with 23% of its residents classified as very religious, slightly fewer (52%) residents in the Granite State are classified as nonreligious.

Granted, this isn’t to say that a third of Americans are atheists. This classification includes the “unchurched” — a group of people who still believe in a higher power but aren’t a part of any particular religion and don’t care to be. Often they refer to themselves as “spiritual.” Still, that’s better than being in the very religious category as far as I’m concerned.

Not surprisingly, Missouri is the most religious state and has been for some time. Just as Vermont is the least religions and also has been for some time. According to Gallup, these state-to-state patterns have been stable for awhile now and are in part a result of a state’s culture:

Gallup research has shown that these state differences appear to be part of a “state culture” phenomenon, and are not the result of differences in the underlying demographics or religious identities in the states. For example, while Mississippi has the highest percentage of blacks of any state in the union, and while blacks are the most religious of any major race or ethnic group in the country, the Magnolia State’s white residents are highly religious on a relative basis compared with whites in other states. And, Vermonters who identify as Catholics or with Protestant denominations are less religious than Southern state residents who identify with the same religions. It appears there is something about the culture and normative structure of a state, no doubt based partly on that state’s history, that affects its residents’ propensity to attend religious services and to declare that religion is important in their daily lives.

This calls into question the oft-cited statistic that 98% of Americans believe in God. It’s a statistic you’ll hear often, but I can’t recall the last study or poll that suggests that is truly the case. Certainly polls such as this one suggest otherwise.

An awesome video by Jared Scheib and one of the finalists in the Richard Dawkins Foundation’s Ten Point Vision of a Secular America contest.You can see the rest at that link and vote for your favorite one.

I’m always amused when Christians ask me why I celebrate Christmas. Given how much of it has nothing to do with Christ the real question is why they celebrate it.

Why do atheists in general seem to jump at the chance to argue? I’m an atheist and I just find it tiring. I really, truly, believe in NOTHING except for the fact that I . . . → Read More: SEB Mailbag: “Why does it matter?” edition.]]> The old mailbag has been less confrontational as of late. And the trend continues with Brandon Postler asking a good question:

Why do atheists in general seem to jump at the chance to argue? I’m an atheist and I just find it tiring. I really, truly, believe in NOTHING except for the fact that I don’t know everything.

I’m finally starting to get up there in scientific courses at my college for personal reasons, and all I’m discovering is that after all the lectures I’ve sat through and books I’ve read, science still cannot quite explain everything. That is alright by me, but why do so many atheists take it to the extreme in arguments?

You have two questions here so I’ll address them individually.

First, the reasons why so many atheists seem eager to argue with theists are as varied as the reasons for why they are atheist. Given that, it should go without saying that I can’t speak to anyone’s reasons but my own, but if you wanted me to speculate then I’d say, in a very broad generality, the willingness to argue with theists is because atheists feel they offer a valid and worthy counterpoint to the claims being made. Many outspoken theists make a lot of extraordinary claims that should be challenged lest they take on an air of credibility they don’t really deserve. As for myself, in the early days of this blog I did it because I enjoyed the challenge and it helped me to refine my beliefs and justify holding them. These days I’m not quite a quick at jumping in mainly because it’s all too often a fruitless exercise.

As for your second question, well, I’m not quite sure what you mean by taking it to an extreme or why the fact that science doesn’t know everything would be a reason not to argue with theists. Science not knowing everything doesn’t mean the theists claims are true by default. For all we don’t know, we still know quite a lot. Enough to judge extraordinary claims from theists at the least. I’d be very surprised if mankind ever reaches a point where, collectively speaking, we will know all there is to know. That shouldn’t stop us from using science as the tool it is for determining what reality is and how it works. Or, for that matter, as a means of judging supernatural claims.

What about the rest of you SEB regulars? What are your reasons, if any, for arguing with theists?

Hmmm... God looks kinda familiar...

The Catholic church has been having a rough time of it lately. What with the pedophile priest scandals around the world and the increasing number of Catholics leaving the faith in the U.S. and Europe. Now they have more bad news coming out of Brazil which was once considered . . . → Read More: Catholic church shrinking in Brazil as more become non-religious and secular.]]>

Hmmm... God looks kinda familiar...

The Catholic church has been having a rough time of it lately. What with the pedophile priest scandals around the world and the increasing number of Catholics leaving the faith in the U.S. and Europe. Now they have more bad news coming out of Brazil which was once considered a bulwark of Catholic faith:

Brazil’s Roman Catholics shrink as secular rise – Yahoo! News.

At the start of the last decade, millions of Brazilian Catholics joined flashy Pentecostal congregations expanding in the world’s biggest Catholic country. Now, Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation finds, the country’s Catholics are still leaving the church and at a higher rate than ever, but many younger parishioners, like Maragato, are simply becoming nonreligious.

Experts say this new twist poses a more potent threat to Catholic leaders than earlier losses. Now, the church isn’t just competing against the Pentecostals, but courting people who have decided organized religion has no part in their lives.

“It’s the most important phenomenon in this study, the abandonment of religion and the Catholics,” said Fernando Altemeyer, a theologian at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. “A considerable part of the Brazilian youth today are agnostic.”

Such news does warm my old atheist heart. I can think of no Christian denomination — with the possible exception of the Westboro Baptists — more deserving of having its membership numbers collapse than the Catholics.

The number of people under the age of 20 in Brazil who say they follow no religion is growing three times more quickly than those 50 and older, with 9 percent of young Brazilians saying they belong to no religion, according to the study. That mirrors a similar trend in the number of people leaving the Catholic Church.

This seems to be a growing trend everywhere. More and more of the younger generations are becoming non-religious. Some of them are seeking out their own personal version of spirituality, but more and more are becoming atheist and agnostic and it’s got the Catholics running scared. Just 30 years ago the Catholic church was embraced by 90% of Brazilians, today that number is down to 67.4%. Still a majority, but probably not for much longer the way things are going.

So what’s the primary cause of this decline? The study’s authors think it’s the improving quality of life in Brazil:

“As the economy has improved, people have more access to cinema, theater, to just take a trip,” said Silvia Fernandes, a sociologist at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro who focuses on those who switch religions. “So we’re seeing that people no longer need to go to church for social reasons if they have these other options.”

Altemeyer said the ability of the previously impoverished to acquire goods like TVs and computers means even more distraction.

“The improvement of people’s life conditions is adding to this phenomenon of secularization and the rejection of religious institutions,” Altemeyer said.

Having access to computers and the Internet is probably a big part of it. When you’ve got instant access to the knowledge of the world you don’t have to rely so much on church leaders to tell you about reality. Plus you can find out about all the other people who manage to live good lives without relying on belief in a higher power to do so. Plus it doesn’t help when you cling to dogma that is detrimental to people’s quality of life:

Experts say the changes have accelerated as many women turn away from the Vatican’s prohibitive views on contraception and abortion, which remains illegal in nearly all cases in Brazil.

“The Catholic Church is literally losing its future, and the loss of women and young people is the most important driver of the fall,” Neri said.

The situation is so bad for the church in Brazil that the Vatican has announced their next World Youth Day will be held in Rio de Janeiro in hopes of slowing or reversing the trend of young people leaving the church. They’re already doing everything they can think of to stop the losses, but so far it’s not having much impact.

With any luck this trend will continue around the world and it won’t be too long before the Catholic church fades into irrelevancy. Now, if we can just get the same trend going with Evangelicals.

If you’re . . . → Read More: There’s finally a group that’s hated more than Atheists: The Tea Party.]]> Being an atheist brings with it a certain amount of… disapproval… by the general public. It’s something that I, and many other atheists, have mentioned on more than one occasion. Polls regularly show that atheists are less electable to public office than Muslims and are often ranked as having the lowest approval ratings.

If you’re an atheist who’s been bummed that our popularity is in the toilet, here’s a bit of news that should help cheer you up: The Tea Party has a worse approval rating than Atheists.

Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a favorable opinion and 46 percent had not heard enough. Now, 14 months later, Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 percent.

Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

Which is really weird when you think about it. The Tea Party seems to hold an inordinate amount of sway in the Republican party right now so why is it so unpopular with the general public ranking right down there with the Christian Right?

Probably because it’s more or less the Christian Right with new branding:

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

Scratch the average Tea Party member and you’ll find a far-right Christian fundamentalist working hard to move America towards a theocracy. Given this is it any surprise that the likes of Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry are doing so well in their bids to be the next President. At least among Republicans.

The silver lining in the cloud of the Tea Party’s dominance of the Republicans is that it may very well keep them out of the White House:

Yet it is precisely this infusion of religion into politics that most Americans increasingly oppose. While over the last five years Americans have become slightly more conservative economically, they have swung even further in opposition to mingling religion and politics. It thus makes sense that the Tea Party ranks alongside the Christian Right in unpopularity.

On everything but the size of government, Tea Party supporters are increasingly out of step with most Americans, even many Republicans. Indeed, at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, today’s Tea Party parallels the anti-Vietnam War movement which rallied behind George S. McGovern in 1972. The McGovernite activists brought energy, but also stridency, to the Democratic Party — repelling moderate voters and damaging the Democratic brand for a generation. By embracing the Tea Party, Republicans risk repeating history.

Many in the Tea Party have ties to Christian Dominionism and are looking at both Bachmann and Perry as a means to their ends of converting our secular government into a theocratic one. If you thought George W. Bush’s reign was bad, try to imagine what a Bachmann or Perry administration would be like. Hopefully the disapproval of the general public for the Tea Party and it’s policies continues to remain high.

“What has changed everything?” asked the apologist from Campus Crusade for Christ International as he spoke on “Unshakable Truth, Relevant Faith” at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C., Friday evening. His answer was, the Internet.

“The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, . . . → Read More: What’s the greatest threat to Christians today?]]> According to Christian apologist Josh McDowell it’s… THE INTERNET! Duhn duhn duhhnnnnn!

“What has changed everything?” asked the apologist from Campus Crusade for Christ International as he spoke on “Unshakable Truth, Relevant Faith” at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C., Friday evening. His answer was, the Internet.

“The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it or not,” said McDowell

[...] “Now here is the problem,” said McDowell, “going all the way back, when Al Gore invented the Internet [he said jokingly], I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that’s exactly what has happened. It’s like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance [of information] has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics].”

via Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians – The Christian Post.

You know what? He’s right. Faith largely thrives on ignorance. If you don’t know what caused something to happen or how something came to be then it’s pretty easy to accept “Goddidit” as a viable answer. The more you know the smaller the gaps that are left for God to hide in. With knowledge there is little need for faith. Which is a good reason why the Church (as a general thing) has so often over the history of mankind worked so hard to suppress scientific advances in knowledge if it has even a remote chance of contradicting official religious teachings. Can’t have some uppity scientist with his facts and evidence saying that the holy literature has got it all wrong! That stuff comes straight from God, dammit!

McDowell, who lives in southern California with his wife Dottie and four children, said atheists, agnostics and skeptics didn’t have access to kids earlier. “If they wrote books, not many people read it. If they gave a talk, not many people went. They would normally get to kids maybe in the last couple of years of the university.” But that has changed now.

Around 15 years ago, the apologist added, when Christian youth ministries were raising money for youth projects, the big phrase was, “If you don’t reach your child by their 18th birthday, you probably won’t reach them.” What is it now? “If you do not reach your child by their 12th birthday, you probably won’t reach them.”

Again, he’s right. Which is part of why there is so much focus on getting ‘em when they’re young. You gotta start fillin’ those empty heads up with nonsense as soon as you can before they’re exposed to all those facts and theories and shit. Indoctrinate them early enough and teach them to disrupt their classes with stupid questions about the curriculum and chances are good you’ll have an True Believer™ for life! But if you let those poor little bastards onto the Internet where all those nasty skeptics and atheists are just laying in wait to pounce on them with science and facts before you’ve inculcated them they’ll stand little chance in ignoring reality. Worse, they might grow up to be Liberals!

Fortunately, Mr. McDowell says there are things you can do to combat this great menace of our time:

“First, we have to model the truth. If you don’t model what you teach your kids, forget it. If they don’t see it, they won’t believe it… Second, we have to build relationships.” Just as truth without relationship leads to rejection, rules without relationship lead to rebellion, he said. “Kids don’t respond to rules. They respond to rules in the context of a loving, intimate relationship.” And third, he said, we have to use knowledge. “You better arm yourselves to answer your children’s and grandchildren’s questions…no matter what the question is…without being judgmental.” Kids’ greatest defense, he said, was the knowledge of truth.

Surprisingly enough, I again agree with him. In fact, I think his first point is very important. It’s one thing to talk the talk and another to walk the walk and I think a lot of Christians fail to practice what they preach. If more of them followed the teachings of Christ found in the Bible then Christians probably wouldn’t have as bad of an image among everyone else. Christ had some decent ideas that started with the old standby of leading by example. Having a good relationship with your kids is good advice regardless of your belief system and it definitely helps when trying to install your values in them.

The last one is amusingly ironic to me, but I do agree with it. Granted, what he considers to be proper knowledge and what I consider it to be are probably vastly different things, but it’s still good advice. And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of Christians who wouldn’t benefit from reading their Bible a little more closely. At least if they’re serious about actually doing what Christ said to do.

So, yeah, the Internet has made all sorts of knowledge — good and bad — available at the click of a mouse and it can and does lead to an undermining of faith. It’s also allowed us atheists and skeptics a much broader platform to present our views and arguments in direct competition with the theists. Without the Internet I’d never have the reach that I do when I decide it’s time to blow some hot air around and I’m only a modest blogger compared to many out there on the Net. It’s a good time to be a member of the loyal opposition. Not only is our message getting out to more than ever, but it’s being listened to.