Meaning of Life

By Rational Logic ~

Some Christians say that the atheist viewpoint on life is that it is ultimately meaningless. They quote Richard Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow who hints at such when he says “We are going to die…. how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state…? That prior state he is referring to, is of course is nothingness. If you ultimately return to nothingness and the whole universe will one day be nothingness does that mean life is ultimately meaningless?

To many Christians, William Lane Craig included, feel that if there is no god with no ultimate purpose then everything is ultimately meaningless, even “depressing” according to Dr Craig. And yet, when you look at a beautiful red sunset and a tear rolls down your eye, or you listen to music that uplifts your spirit, or watch children at play and smile, do you feel that life is meaningless? Of course not. It is these very things that give life meaning.

Christians have a different problem on their hands. For a great many unfortunate people in this world, life does indeed seem meaningless. Millions die each year of starvation, disease, war and disaster. If it is the ultimate plan of God that gives meaning to life, yet the vast majority don’t get to go to heaven because they either didn’t believe in god, or believed the wrong god, or the wrong doctrine of the same god, then where is the meaning for them? I think when Christians say their god gives meaning to life, what they mean is God gives them meaning for their life. There is no over arching God gives meaning to life.

Ultimately, the universe does not care whether you live or die. If you want meaning from life you have to find it within yourself. Certainly a non existent god or gods won’t give meaning to you.

Let's be Really Honest

By Carl S ~

Do fundamentalist Christians buy vibrators, condoms, birth control pills, pornography? Amazon, ebay, Paypal and Home Shopping Network won't tell. Do they have abortions? But they'll show up in force when they want to make public statements against their own personal choices. After mass tragedies, families and community members buy huge amounts of stuffed animals and flowers, purchased in mourning, to honor the victims. Those are primal responses, originating long before the burial practices of ancient Egypt! And not one Christian is aware the pagans initiated this response: toys and implements were originally buried with the deceased to be used in their afterlives. Now, thousands of years later in a market economy, lamentation, grief, and loss are sales opportunities for businesses taking advantage of the lucrative business of religion. (Doesn't this remind you of Christmas?) After these things, comes the ceremonial praising of a god by survivors, the prattle of victims being “in a better place, with God, becoming angels.” It's no wonder why a non-believer invented the Celebration of Life to be used in place of religious ceremonies.

With or without religions, we act from our nature, despite every attempt by religion to control it. Our lives do not require merely existence, but need experimentation, so we make a lot of junk, like belief systems, before we arrive at something workable. Humans became pawns to religions as soon as they created them. When creators think they have mastery over them, things get seriously out of control. This is bound to happen, since doctrines are gambling ventures contrary to our nature. This happens despite the fact life itself is usually gambling. In order to survive, we just can't help but tempt fate or thwart the wills of gods.

Life is good when we experiment with it. This goes beyond mere temptation. As children, we see how far we can push a parent before we get a reaction. You may steal a candy bar from the store, eat a forbidden fruit to find if it makes you wiser. You might experiment by using any way possible to get solutions for diseases defying our best efforts at eradication. It's called science, derived from “scientia,” meaning: “to know.” The pompous clergy, who condemn scientists, are getting the best of what science has to offer in medical care and technology. No prayer healing or low-tech broadcasting for them!

With or without religions, we act from our nature, despite every attempt by religion to control it.When you got sexually involved for the first time with the right or wrong person, ignoring the warnings of your religion, (touted as that big part of your “whole life”), was it terrible, that “loss of innocence?” Your religion tells you humans were punished by being expelled from an earthly paradise of Eden. So? We're not cut out for a protected “Eden” existence; we'd be bored to death! We dare to “sin.” So? We lie - sometimes we need to lie to find out what's true, just by observing nature alone. So? We notice sex is essential for emotional health; virginity's just a phase. You got a problem with that? Clerics lie continually; their followers don't have a problem with that.

Experimenting can get you mixed up in the wrong crowd, but, if you choose your terms, may cause you to reject them and head for the healthy lifestyle. Experimenting with blasphemy and pornography, like experimenting with new musical forms and writing styles, seems inevitable when they succeed. We tempt life, we mold and manipulate it, (like every other animal does, and in ways no other animal can).

Despite centuries of propaganda trying to convince everyone there's a god involved in every aspect of life, we are left with: shit happens. In the common everyday world, how do people act? According to Annie Laurie Gaylor, most people live as if they're atheists. No religion necessary. No creed. So?

What a Waste

By Carl S ~

I'll never back off from saying that churchgoers, “are only telling each other stuff.” I once told a man in his church's parking lot, “You don't really believe a man standing here can float right up into the sky, do you?” But the one thought sticking to me like a burr, means more than any other: “Life is too important to be wasted on religion.”

You'd think that's ridiculous, coming from me, one who has written on religion both here and in letters to the editor, for years. Have I been wasting my time and energy, better spent on just about any other activities, esp. pleasurable ones? Maybe. Do “true believers” have problems wasting their lives on their beliefs? Or are they only exercising their imaginations in mental masturbations? It's like wasting bottles at a shooting range in innocent fun.

I may offend and anger believers. I criticize, disrespect, and mock their beliefs, but I've never incited or encouraged them to torture, deprive another of human rights, properties and freedom to be themselves, or inflict harm on any other in any way. Can you say the same for so many followers of holy scriptures? The “good book” is a manual to commit good and evil. So, why waste time in trying to analyze tar-baby texts, written by primitive or mentally ill ignoramuses?

Religions appear to be invented for waste: wasting time in prayers, wasting the money one earns to support bullshitters, wasting childhood by imposing indoctrination belief in fantasy beings, with so many of those “good ones” examples of the worst of evil. Childhoods are wasted whenever children are taught to obey religious “authorities” to the point of becoming victims of fellatio and rape. Wasted innocent lives result when delusions wage war against reality.

Faith has no grounds for respectThink of centuries spent in time, sweat, the money and misery spent building cathedrals, abbeys, temples, etc., while the populace lived and died in poverty and serfdom. Those efforts and monies should have been spent making their lives better. How many of those “sacred” buildings now lie in ruins, abandoned by their gods and worshippers! Was it fun or entertainment, watching animals being ritually slaughtered by the thousands at a time, for a god or gods? What of the innocent tortured and killed as “witches, heretics, infidels?” What a waste. Was it worth it Jesus, or didn't you see that coming? Millions of emaciated and tortured bodies stack up. The God of the Christians was more powerful than that of the Jews. But the god was the same bloodthirsty role model for both, and did nothing to stop this. Blind beliefs drove and accomplished the Holocaust, beliefs in racism. Faith in a mass murderer, a God or a fuhrer, has consequences. What a waste they both created.

If you investigate all the faiths, all the things humans believe and have believed throughout this world, you're going to conclude: faith has no grounds for respect. Look at the millions of bizzare and unreasonable shit people seriously believe, have believed, the utter nonsense all of them take seriously- even to the point of slaughter. You're really watching macabre comedy. The “holy” examples they extoll are deluded clowns. They're the celebrities of a madhouse run by agents leading seriously deluded flocks. Sacred beliefs are follies of human imagination. If people want to waste their time and lives on them, go ahead, we say: but don't enforce them on the rest of us. We have our own lives and imaginations to create conditions for the betterment of the here, now, and future.

Naturally good and sensitive individuals waste their energies torturing their consciences with thoughts and fears impregnated in their minds by pushers of an all-judgmental god. Lives are wasted in following “his prophets,” in beliefs which deprive others of rights, because, “Those who believe otherwise are enemies?” The gods demand we waste what precious time we have to live, on them.

Is Eternal Life a Fate Worse Than Death?

By Carl S ~ 

  I live in a country with a motto “In God We Trust” on its currency. It's a stupid motto, since the “God” it refers to, as every Christian child is taught, out of all the gods, is the only one who is “creator of Hell,” and therefore, never to be trusted. Any nation which unquestionally accepts this slogan is an unthinking nation. Let's just take a look at this “Hell.”

Have those who claim to believe in Hell really thought about Hell? Have they thought of what it's like to suffer intense unremitting pain, so the only ways out are in pain killers, opium, inebriation, and if it goes on, insanity and/or death, even by suicide? You'd do anything to escape pain like that. Some pet owners, when the only future for their pets will be hopeless suffering, choose to have them euthanized. Those who get bored with inflicting torture will kill their victims. The objects of torture eventually become used-up pieces of crap to them, They're no more fun.

So isn't Hell evidence this god has failed?Faith is a habit of denial and avoidance. It's willful ignorance. And yet it is held up as something to be respected! As Eric Hoffer said, “It's startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.” But the god of Christianity will never have enough satisfaction in torturing.. He tortures by delegating. Which makes him Satan. You can beg for mercy all you want, but the torturing won't stop. You're ignored and forgotten and left to suffer for as long as he wants you to, and that means forever. For what? Those who worship and praise their alleged “all-loving and all-merciful father,” accept his Hell without blinking an eye. If Hell is hopeless, it makes its creator/maintainer, also hopeless. They are proud of this? Somebody should teach them to think about their Hell.

Unthinking people believe their god is almighty, though he's unable to influence the mind of a man enough to convince him without a doubt he truly exists, so he's sent to Hell for not believing! That's fucked up. So isn't Hell evidence this god has failed? (As in one of my past posts, “How to Read Scriptures,“ he admits to failing.) If Hell still is acceptable, then this particular god is incapable of learning why keeping it in operation is a horrible mistake. Hell just must be absolutely forever since its god is: “yesterday, today, and the same, forever.” You can’t have one without the other. Doesn't this mean those who defend him, no matter what evils he creates or inflicts, are also incapable of learning? Something’s wrong with their minds.

From Philip Appleman's poem, “Five Easy Prayers for Pagans":

And forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice --
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise --
make the bad people good
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.

So, to hell with “Hell.” Or, for that matter, “Heaven.” On the subject of an alleged “afterlife,” here are some things I consider: Even if there were such places, I wouldn't be alive to experience them. What is a fate worse than death? It would be having to live forever. And I've thought about the one question we should ask a believer of any faith. “What do you remember of what happened during the two hours before you were born?” Is it any wonder why believers refuse to think?

Answers to Christianity

By Rational Logic ~

Time and again common questions are asked of non believers by Christians. I answer these in this section. Note, many of these questions contain a personal perspective so answer from non believer to non believer will vary.

1) Are you absolutely sure there is no God?

No. When you dig deep into the philosophical nature of knowledge (Which the phrase “are you sure” implies) we cannot honestly say we absolutely know anything. You might be very convinced, but that doesn’t mean you know in an absolute sense. This question also reeks of a pascals wager inference which basically says you should believe in God just to be safe. If you believe and there is no God, no harm done, if you don’t believe and there is God then you spend eternity in hell. There are massive problems with Pascals Wager that I explore in detail in other sections.

So while I am not absolutely sure there is no God, I am fairly confident there isn’t one. Certainly not the God Christians propose, as there is no evidence for such a God. Claims made by Christianity can be falsified (Shown to be untrue). The same goes for any of the Abrahamic Gods.

 

2) What happens when you die?

That’s it, you die. As far as we can tell, once a person dies they are gone. Their consciousness ceases, and their physical body decays.

3) What if you are wrong and there is an afterlife?

Much like question 1, I’m not absolutely sure there is no afterlife, but if there is then I’d be pleasantly surprised. If the afterlife existed and also a hell then that would prove that the God who created said hell is an immoral dictator who punishes people eternally for the simple crime of not believing on bad evidence. If that is the sort of God you wish to worship, then so be it. At that point I could only rest knowing that I had been honest with myself and others to the best of my abilities.

4) Where do you get your morality from?

Not the Bible! I get it from the same place as anyone else which is the human ability to feel empathy towards others, and ability to make conscious informed decisions about what is good and right. We can see what happens when a person lacks empathy – they commit terrible crimes, or hold horrific views of others while justifying it as moral because an ancient book says its bad. Homosexuality is probably the best and most visible case of a dichotomy between emphatic morals and biblical morals, though there are many other cases. The problem with this question is the inference that only God can give people morals. Yet Christians do not stop to think that this lowers humans to worse base morality than other animals. If God is the only thing that gives you a moral compass then you are, but a puppet on a string who is at the mercy of what ever mortal code God imposes at any time. And if God is the only thing keeping you from being immoral then you already are immoral!

5) If there is no God can we do whatever we want?

This is very similar to question 4 with the inference that without God there is no absolute morality therefore killing and raping isn’t objectively wrong. Again, if you think this then you are already lost – even if you are a born again Christian! We can’t do whatever we want, nor should we. Most people have the innate ability to imagine and feel what it would be like being raped or killed and so knows that is a terrible thing that they wouldn’t wish on anyone. What is interesting though, is what people who claim to have God on their side are capable of. Hitlers religious views are shrouded in the mists of time. This real opinions lost to history. But we do have his writings, and in them he indicates strongly that he believed, at some stage, in the Bible God. It is likely as he became more unhinged he replaced God with himself. Religious to the end. An important fact to note here is that belief in any God has never stopped bad people from doing bad things, just as non belief has never stopped good people from doing good things.

6) If there is no God how does your life have meaning?

This question makes me sad, because it implies that the only thing giving people who believe in God any meaning is their belief. They care not whether that belief is true or not. My life has more meaning since not believing in God. Why is this? Well If there is no God how does your life have meaning?instead of believing I am a predestined son of God going to Heaven for Gods glory one day, I realize that I have but one lifetime to experience life itself. To be the best person I can, to care about others, to live and let live. Once you realize this life is the only life you get, it makes it all the more meaningful. We don’t sit around waiting for God to come take us to heaven. We enjoy life and embrace if for the few short years we have.

7) Where did the Universe come from?

Do you mean the local observable universe, or all possible universes? The cosmos as a whole? We don’t really know, and if there is one thing people hate its not knowing. Our best current science indicates our universe came into space and time from a singularity 13.7 billion years ago. Had any thing existed before, will anything exist again? We just don’t know, and I don’t know is sometimes the best and most honest answer to give. The implication of this question is that it all had to start somehow, and the Christian answer to that is God. However if we apply the same logic then we have to ask the question: Where did God come from? At this point most people will do some hand waving and declare that God doesn’t need an explanation, he always existed. This is special pleading. If the question of where did the universe come from demands an answer, so the the question: Where did God come from?

8) What about miracles?

There are no genuine recorded miracles that can be confirmed, that are not explainable by natural causes. The Biblical stories are just stories without any way of verification. Personal testimony and witness is one of the worst for of verification. Why? Because the human mind is susceptible to all manner of dysfunction that makes people think, see, and hear things that are not real. Also miracles are report across all religions, not just Christianity. We cannot therefore isolate Christianity and declare it is special. How does the Christian respond to other religions miracles? Strangely enough the same way a non believer responds to Christians claims of miracles – doesn’t believe until verification is provided. If you believe in miracles then ask yourself; why has God never healed an amputee? Cancers are healed, keys are found, people are saved. Yet a limb never grows back. Why? Because all other ‘miracles’ occur naturally, even if they are improbable. Improbable is not the same as impossible. For a miracle to be confirmed it would have to be impossible to occur naturally.

9) How come every society has religion?

Rather a strange question considering that if God was real, and has truly revealed himself to everyone as is claimed in the bible, then one might wonder why there are other religions. The real answer however lies in evolution, and mans discomfort with not knowing. The evolutionary side comes in with the ability for humans to formulate answers to questions we can’t answer. We hate not knowing, so we come up with an explanation. If a natural one is not readily available we will create a supernatural one. Lightening: Bolts from Zeus, earthquakes: God is angry. Crops failing: punishment for not pleasing a God. As time has progressed, so has religions. Religion shows up outside a belief in a particular God: political ideology comes close to religion at times, as does cultural movements. Humans find it advantageous o gather around others who share the same beliefs -this creates a bond in societies where everyone knows what everyone else believes in. When this is taken away people get extremely uncomfortable. That is why societies across the world have created religions.

10) Do you really believe the world would be better off without religion?

I find this a complicated question. Religion has done much harm – and the religious need to acknowledge that. However, religion has also done much good. Some people need a religion in order to function in their daily lives. It gives their lives meaning. Certainly the belief in a higher power has taken people off the streets, and given them purpose and meaning. Given the resources and numbers available to religion this is perhaps not surprising. The day may come when secular resources are just as well equipped for dealing with peoples needs and religion ceases to play such an important role. I certainly think that if fundamental literalist religion disappeared the world would be better off. These are the religious views that allow people to fly planes into buildings, and deny science in the face of facts in order to cling to a literal interpretation of their particular holy book. These versions of religion certainly do much harm and humans would be better off without them.