They Will Not Control Us

You are not the prisoners of context. You are not the prisoners of your own bodies. You don't have to be.

You can transcend this interaction. You can transcend stimulus-response. You can transcend your impulses and urges.

Set yourselves free. You have the key to your attitude. How will you confront the world? How will you defend yourself from the onslaught of circumstance?

You have the power to change. You have the power to stop. You have the power to start over. Will you allow yourselves the opportunity to become something greater than yourself?

Christians say that Jesus died for your sins. What exactly did Jesus change? Did he change the environment? Did he change the laws of genetics? Did he stop complexity arising from simplicity?

How did you and I get here? We evolved. To such great hands does the creator of the Universe entrust its creation! Our current state is the direct result of doing whatever we could to survive.

Fighting, fear and fate. These are the masters of billions of years of natural selection. We have been engineered to survive. You have been engineered to become amoral beings. To be or not to be.

That is the sole moral law of our universe. Every act you consider good is only designed to ensure a fair chance of survival. Every wrong you do is wrong because it hurts another survivor. What's the difference?

Everyone wants to survive. What's fair to me is what I could get in my position if I were you. It's easy to deny someone else. It's preferable to look out for number one. Let me repeat: to be or not to be is the moral law.

However, you are not the hostage of fortune. This is the good news. You can be better by cooperating. You can transcend your fortune. You can defy fate. You can master probability. Do you want to transcend your own mere survival?

We can create a better legacy. You do not have to be controlled by your environment. You do not have to be consumed by your urges and impulses. You each have the ability to question everything you do. Inquiry is the ultimate path to transcendence.

______________________

This post found inspiration in Muse's song "Uprising" and in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

Is Faith More Reliable Than Science?

“Science is not only less reliable than faith, but faith is used in science."

Did I miss the science Crusades, the science Thirty Years War, or the science Spanish Inquisition?

How reliable is your faith, exactly? Are you a Christian? If so, what kind of Christian are you?

If you’re a Catholic, you may believe that your god directly revealed himself to a line of men who frequently embodied corruption, nepotism, and hypocrisy.

If you’re a Protestant, you’re already admitting that your faith is not 100% reliable, because why would there need to be a Reformation if faith is generally reliable?

If you’re Orthodox, how do you explain the abundance of Protestants and Catholics if faith is so reliable?

If you’re any kind of Christian, then how do you explain the plentiful and confusing abundance of contradicting interpretations of the same exact sacred texts?

If you're a Muslim, which tradition do you adhere to? How do you explain the existence and persistence of other sects? Why is your faith so fragile? Your holy book is even written in the same universal language, and you still have many of the same problems as the Christians.

You think faith is reliable? The wise walk by sight, not by faith.

An Indifferent Universe: The Original 'Original Sin'

Here's a thought experiment:

"Sin is the fault of humanity, but it had to be that way, and fortunately, we still have free will.

How do I know this to be true?

Well, for hundreds of millions of years, various animals and plants endured enormous levels of suffering before humanity existed. So it is difficult to claim that the direct actions of humanity are responsible for suffering in our world. However, one could say that suffering was predetermined for humanity. Essentially, it must then be our fault that the suffering of the world was predetermined for us. So everything's our fault (even if it's not), and we still have free will (even if we don't). Christianity makes complete sense."

Obviously, I'm being sarcastic here.

We can now determine that there was never a Paradise - that there was never an Eden - and that the "original sin" of humanity is merely our own existence in an indifferent universe. Sure, Christian tradition can try to pin the blame on a species which only arrived on Earth during the most recent instant of geologic time, but the growing evidence across nearly all disciplines of science can easily refute such a bold and unsupported assertion.

How can I prove that the only reason a god would permit evil is to bring about some other end? How can I know that this is not the only possible world that it is feasible for a god to create? I most likely cannot fully prove either of these things to you; what I may be able to demonstrate adequately is the incoherence of Christian dogma when its doctrines are contrasted with the harsh, vivid realities of our existence.

Believing in Belief

I have interacted with many evangelical Christians over Internet blogs and forums. One common claim I have heard is that I was never really a Christian.

If you have read my story on this blog, you'll recall that I was raised as a Christian and deconverted because I decided that the evidence for its validity was severely lacking.

But was I an actual Christian? At first, this question annoyed me greatly. I believed that this claim was nonsensical and absurd at best, and that it was a stinging personal insult and rebuke at its worst.

However, I have now realized that the answer to this question is not entirely black and white. Of course, that conclusion alone should not surprise me. Few things in our existence are entirely black and white.

What shocked me is the realization that I may not have been an actual Christian before I deconverted.

I am trying to remember what exactly it was that I believed in during this time. Did I believe in a higher power? Did I believe in the Bible? Did I believe in the community of my church congregation? Did I believe in the power of faith or belief itself?

Why do these questions matter? These questions are critically important because they attempt to define what Christianity is, and in doing so attempt to determine what exactly it means to be a Christian (or to be a religious person of any persuasion) in today's environment.

I did believe in a higher power. I prayed to my God before meal times and before I fell asleep at night and while I was in church services. Did I believe in the Bible? Yes and no. I had not read all of it. I believed that some of its claims were figurative and that some were literal. I don't think this made me any less of a Christian. I viewed the creation story in Genesis as figurative while acknowledging the reality of evolution, though I fully embraced its claims about Jesus and his supposed sacrifice for humanity. I believed in the eternal existence of heaven and hell, though I had no idea who would end up in each place (I had not made up my mind about universalism or other approaches, but I knew that the Bible said that Jesus was the only way, and I could never get past that reality).

However, as much as I believed in the technicalities of Christian dogma, I also believed strongly in its pragmatic aspects. I believed in the power of faith. I had faith in my government and my society and my family and my friends -- and in God. I also believed in the power of the community in my church. I knew that they were basically good people. I saw my church as a positive influence in my life and as a positive influence in my community.

A nagging question pervades my thoughts: did I really believe in Christianity or did I believe in being Christian? Did I have a belief or did I believe in having a belief? Was I part of a belief community or was I a believer? I don't know the answer.

I don't know if I really was a Christian before I deconverted.

However, if I was not really a Christian, than most of the people in America who proclaim Christianity as their religion probably are not Christians, either. Of course, this assumes that there is an objective definition of what a Christian is, which is probably not accurate.

The major question is this: what do you believe in?

Do you believe in belief? Do you believe in community? Do you believe in faith? Do you believe in charity? Do you believe in good works?

Do you believe in Christianity because it provides an outlet for your other beliefs which you already have, or do you believe in it because you are a sincere follower, you've thought about it at length, and you really do believe that its claims are accurate?

It appears that many people in the world practice Christianity not because they have extensively researched the issues and determined that it is better than all the other religions and spiritual traditions in the world, but because it provides a framework for their other beliefs about themselves and the world which they have adopted from society and family and tradition.

And of course, the same thing is more than likely true for Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and practically every other religious tradition on the planet.

I am tired of asking and answering "what" questions about religion. Now I am much more fascinated with the "why" questions. Why do people believe? Why do individuals believe a certain way?

Was I ever a Christian? Maybe not. Is anyone ever a Christian? Maybe not. Have you ever been a Christian? Maybe not.

Do you believe in a book? Do you believe in a revelation? Do you believe in belief?

Religions often try to be none of these things and all of these things at the same time, for everyone. The whole process of examining religion just confirms my opinion that the religions of our world are human-originated social constructs and not divine manifestations.

On the Nature of Spirituality (Part One)

As an atheist, how do I understand spirituality? How do I understand the religious inclinations of individuals?

Some sources have suggested that certain people have varying predispositions for the mystical or the spiritual.

For some people, "god" is reality - god exists for them and for them, he is indeed real. That is not necessarily a disconnect from reality -- for some people the mystical is as plain as daylight.

Then again, for schizophrenics, many things are also plain as daylight. But I'm not here to make that comparsion. I want to emphasize that this is a tough topic to negotiate: there are many complicated causes and effects of the practices of spirituality and mysticism.

Most of us are inclined to believe in the supernatural, for whatever reasons we may have, whether psychological, cultural, etc.

Some of us describe ourselves as "spiritual but not religious". Some of us are more accurately "religious but not spiritual" -- like a lot of people who profess that they're Christian or Jewish, etc. but rarely worship and only nominally think about and participate in their religion.

Some people really do have a self-proclaimed "spiritual" sense but don't believe in any particular religion, like Sam Harris. It would also be helpful to consider Carl Sagan's perspective on awe and wonder in our lives when considering this particular form of "spirituality".

I know a few friends (this is purely anecdotal) who have rejected Christianity but still felt in touch with a certain kind of "mystical sense" and became neo-pagan or polytheist/pantheist.

It seems from the way our psychology and perhaps our society has formed, that some people have a real need for religion or spirituality or mysticism in some variety. Now, I realize that it is highly debatable whether people actually "need" spirituality or mysticism. Do people need these things the way a drug addict needs drugs? Or the way a hormonal teenager needs sexual outlets? Or the way that a lonely person needs someone to talk to? I don't know where we should place the spiritual "need" in these categories. However, that uncertainty does not negate the existence of the "need" itself. As long as atheists refuse to address this base component of spirituality, most people will not understand atheism. Religion often serves as a proxy for many emotional attachments and states. Statistics may indicate that the non-religious are no less moral than the religious, but statistics are not enough to create understanding, or evolution would be far more widely accepted in American society than it is today. As long as atheists cannot or refuse to understand the emotional basis and implications of spirituality, people will not understand us.

I believe that this spirituality is an inner component of our psychology, and that each of us interprets this differently due to cultural and environmental influences. Some of us also feel this urge more strongly than others do.

Just because I believe that spirituality comes from inside of us, instead of from some external creator force, does not mean that I casually disregard it or see it as unnecessary to our lives.
There are many emotions and such within our minds that we feel, which may or may not be necessarily "true", but that we almost all acknowledge as perfectly valid feelings, such as love, anger, fear, etc.

I fully acknowledge that many urges which originate from inside of us are negative, and that perhaps spirituality is one of these negative urges which should be eliminated, controlled, or reduced. I understand this point of view. I do not know whether or not I agree with it.

I perceive spirituality as one more emotion we encounter in our existence, just as we experience fear, love, hope, anger, happiness, and many other feelings.

For me, spirituality is a perfectly valid feeling, but I have acknowledged that spirituality probably comes from within us, and also that each of us is especially prone to use confirmation bias to mold the perceptions we have of our internal spirituality so they conform to our culture's external sense of religious piety.

Craig Hogan speculated recently that our universe is actually a hologram, based on "noise" from the GEO600 machine. This is what I think about in terms of "spirituality".

My spirituality consists largely of a fond respect for the absurdity of our universe: if it is true that our entire universe is a hologram, can we honestly say that it is any stranger than, say, SpongeBob Squarepants living in a giant pineapple under the sea?

We human beings are all spiritual in many different forms: sometimes it is expressed through our love of religion, our love of a career, our love of nature, our love of humor, our love of family, our love of certain traditions, our devotion to patriotism or to sports or to politics.

Are other atheists so cocksure that they want to take a popular stand against the essence of "spirituality"? Yes, such an opinion may be valid; it may be correct for all I know -- but now it is suicide. When theists ask us why we can live our lives in a moral way, it isn't because they think we're evil -- it's because for them, spirituality is linked to all of these other positive values.

I agree that this connection is a profoundly negative one. But rather than focusing on a complete rejection of spirituality, it would be wiser and more efficient for us to shift the topic of spirituality away from the religious sentiments which divide us and towards the emotional sentiments which we all have in common.

I have nothing against Carl Sagan's or most liberal Christians' or Jews' or pantheists' spirituality. My problems lie with dogma. I have nothing against faith. My problems lie with blind faith.

I just want people to be able to make a knowledgeable decision about religion. Organized religion has claimed a place of unquestioned privilege in the realms of spirituality and morality which I strongly feel it has not deserved for much of human history. For me, it is long past time to reclaim morality and spirituality back from the vise grip of organized dogma.

I have no problems with individual religious experiences or even organized religion itself. My main frustration is with the monolithic oppression of dogma -- fundamentalism and ignorance devastatingly at work. That is the message atheists need to convey.

Atheists are not opposed to spirituality or morality -- not opposed to emotion or feeling -- not opposed to family or patriotism or service -- most atheists are opposed to the ignorance, prejudice, and anti-intellectualism which are strongly identified with religious fundamentalism and even many guises of so-called religious moderation.

Doubt, not dogma. Spirituality, not religion. Faith, not blind faith. Healing, not heresy.

The next segment more geared toward religious believers.