Are Atheists Better People

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
~ Jeff Burroughs

I predict the continued growth of atheism in America is going to make for some very interesting times. The putative leaders of the Christian Right in America have spent years trying to cast themselves as the victims in a secular society, the facts behind this assertion are kinda slim though. It’s been my experience and observation that the only way that secularism/atheism bothers religion is when it has to fight them (metaphorically) to keep religion where it belongs…out of people’s faces and out of our government.

Atheists are well-behaved and we seem to play well with others overall.

Atheists are not in the news, like the Christian right, for getting caught doing things they tell others not to do.  You know…those nasty little sexual things.   🙂

Atheists almost always co-exist peacefully with religious believing family and friends.

Atheists pay taxes just like the religious believers do.

Atheists are waaay under represented in jails and prisons…we’re actually pretty moral people.

Atheists don’t start wars on behalf of atheism…unlike religion

They do join the military however, and contrary to clichéd belief, they are found in foxholes.

Atheists believe strongly in America and the whole American Constitution, but particularly the First Amendment that separates church and state.

Atheists are secularists who support a government free from influence by any religion. We are not anti-religious, we are Non-Religious.

Atheists don’t take up a lot of space. The non-religious/atheist/agnostic members of American society only add up to a little less than 18% of the whole population…but we are growing.   🙂

Atheists make good neighbors. Chances are, if you live next door, or work with an atheist, you will  never know it.

Atheists in general, are much more supportive of women’s rights and for their right to control their own bodies and lives without church or state interference.

Unlike the religious right people, atheists don’t like to get into other peoples business and dictate how they should live….what they should do or not do.  You know…like who you should marry.

Atheists are not known for going door-to-door to convert people to our way of thinking. We are however, known to help our friends and neighbors with no thought of there being a heavenly reward in it for us.

Unlike many of the present Republican presidential candidates and the religious right in general Atheists do not advocate or align themselves with groups who want to take over our government and reshape America into a religiously ruled theocracy…you know, kinda’ like the Middle Eastern Islamic states.

Atheists, unlike the Republican Right, the Tea-Party, and the religious right, do not go around with guns in meetings and say the President will never take their guns away, or wishing the president would fail and generally disrespecting the President and the office.  Or call him ni_ger behind his back

Atheists mostly do know a lot about religion, as many were raised in a religious family, and they tend to research and know their positions really well.  In recent national polling about religious knowledge, atheists knew more than any religious sub-group.

Hmmm…could it be…could the atheists actually be better citizens and better people to know than theists???  I know I never disrespect, with malice, someone for believing the ‘wrong thing’…I just like to get into friendly arguments/debates with them.

And remember…Atheism cures religious terrorism

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Texas Tries To Kill Science In Its Schools…Again

Once again the Texas Board of Education (TBOE) is flirting with adding patently religious material to its instructional materials to be used in science classrooms.  The battle of course is really about evolutionary theory and the Texas religious rights continuing battle to get religious dogma into their public school classrooms.   In 2009 the Texas Board of Education said that students should be taught “all sides” of current scientific theories, and that “all sides” is code for the religious side, or teaching that the earth was created 6,000 years ago by the Christian God Yahweh in 6 literal 24 hour days.

Of course they want the students to side with them and reject the actual scientific proofs and be good little Christian boys and girls so they can assure the cultural reproduction of the fundamentalist creationist ethos.

To achieve this end the TBOE has seemingly partnered with a little known company called International Databases, LLC that is based in New Mexico (said to be a one man operation).  The material that is being considered is obviously slanted towards creationism and/or Intelligent Design (same thing) and dismisses scientific truths. TBOE materials relating to this can be viewed Here

Texas Freedom Network has more data on this story here.  International Databases LLC is listed on Google as:

Stephen O. Sample, President
International Databases LLC
7205 Triana Pl. NW
Albuquerque, NM 87114

I don’t think the creationists are EVER going to give up on trying to get their bull-crap religious dogma into public schools.  These people have to be confronted and shown to the world to be 5th columnists trying to take over our schools and eventually our countries secular government.
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Christians Are Whiners

The Christian complains about an increasingly secular world, but the Republican Party is controlled by right wing evangelical fundamentalists.  No atheists allowed

The Air Force academy in Colorado is run by right wing evangelical fundamentalists. You either bend to what they want or you are an outcast and stand to lose your appointment.

“Evangelical Christians are at it again. The proselytizing only-through-Christ bunch have now taken up desecration of non-Christian religious sites: Not Jews this time but Wiccans. What the hell goes through the minds of these evangelicals who think they can tell other religions—at a military academy no less—what to believe? At their core, evangelicals who despise pluralism are infantile.”
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/02/03/christians-desecrate-wiccan-religious-site-at-air-force-academy/

The troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq are of the same family group of fundamentalists and they threaten the lives of atheist troops.

In most of the South and especially throughout the “Bible Belt” you are mostly a social outcast if you don’t fall into the dominant Christian group of your town- i.e. Baptist, Pentecostal, etc.

In the Middle East and Much of Asia if you decline membership in the Islamic religion you are a social outcast to 98 percent or more of the population…if you’re Jewish you are dead-meat.

In China the Christian believing population is exploding so fast the government is scrambling to keep up and control it.

In Australia the churches have access to school classes and it is smiled upon by the government.

So I’m just wondering where the hell Christians are getting this bit about secularism is getting worse and worse.  Maybe in Europe, where it is predicted that nine countries will go atheist in the next few years, but I certainly don’t see it in the rest of the world.

Christians are just a bunch of whiners anyway. 🙂

“None of today’s problems are caused by Atheists – just think about it.” Cobourg Atheists

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We Shall Abolish The Orgasm

Quote of the day

“We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”  George Orwell

No orgasms, no loyalty, no love, no laughter, no art, no literature, no science.  Sounds like a religious nut jobs wet-dream. Pat Robertson and crew would be behind this 100%.  Pat of course is a Dominionist (Sarah Palin is one also I hear), whose goal is either a nation governed by conservative Christians, or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of Biblical law…primarily the Old Testaments first 5 chapters—the Pentateuch.

“In his 1992 study of Dominion Theology and its influence on the Christian Right, Bruce Barron PhD, writes,

“In the context of American evangelical efforts to penetrate and transform public life, the distinguishing mark of a dominionist is a commitment to defining and carrying out an approach to building society that is self-consciously defined as exclusively Christian, and dependent specifically on the work of Christians, rather than based on a broader consensus.^”

According to sociologist Sara Diamond, the defining concept of dominionism is “that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns”. In 1989, Diamond declared that this concept “has become the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right.”  In 1995, she called it “prevalent on the Christian Right”. Journalist Chip Berlet added in 1998 that, although they represent different theological and political ideas, dominionists assert a Christian duty to take “control of a sinful secular society.”
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism

They got their wish in 2000 (as they predicted) in electing ol’ GWB.  Of course there is still that controversy over his actually being “voted” in.  From that point the religious right had control of the Republican Party.  Its members are overwhelmingly evangelical fundamentalists.  The “teabagger movement” (who are totally controlled by outsiders) is really pissed that a black-man, who they deem an Islamic Fifth Columnist,  has control of “their America”…and he was actually “voted” in…How dare those lefty liberals.

The 2012 election cycle is going to be pretty exciting.  Keep an eye out for all those Republicans who might enter the primaries.  Really scary religious fundamentalists are waiting for their chance to take over.

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Intelligent Design and Science

Interesting find while surfing this morning. The ID people keep claiming they’re all about science, but the never reveal any.

ISSR Statement on the Concept of ‘Intelligent Design’

The authors of this statement constitute a group set up for the purpose by the Executive Committee of the International Society for Science and Religion. Through a process involving consultation with all members of the Society, the statement has now been accepted by the Executive Committee for publication as a statement made on behalf of the Society.

The International Society for Science and Religion is a scholarly society devoted to ongoing dialogue between the sciences and the community of world faiths.  It was established in 2002 for the purpose of promoting education through the support of interdisciplinary learning and research in the fields of science and religion, conducted where possible in an international and multi-faith context.

The society greatly values modern science, while deploring efforts to drive a wedge between science and religion. Science operates with a common set of methodological approaches that gives freedom to scientists from a range of religious backgrounds to unite in a common endeavor. This approach does not deny the existence of a metaphysical realm but rather opens up the natural world to a range of explorations that have been incredibly productive, especially over the last 400 years or so.

The intelligent-design (ID) movement began in the late 1980s as a challenge to the perceived secularization of the scientific community, which leaders of the movement maintained had been coloured with the philosophy of atheistic naturalism. ID theorists have focused their critique primarily on biological evolution and the neo-Darwinian paradigm. They claim that because certain biological features appear to be “irreducibly complex” and thus incapable of evolving incrementally by natural selection, they must have been created by the intervention of an intelligent designer. Despite this focus on evolution, intelligent design should not be confused with biblical or “scientific” creationism, which relies on a particular interpretation of the Genesis account of creation.

We believe that intelligent design is neither sound science nor good theology. Although the boundaries of science are open to change, allowing supernatural explanations to count as science undercuts the very purpose of science, which is to explain the workings of nature without recourse to religious language.  Attributing complexity to the interruption of natural law by a divine designer is, as some critics have claimed, a science stopper. Besides, ID has not yet opened up a new research program. In the opinion of the overwhelming majority of research biologists, it has not provided examples of “irreducible complexity” in biological evolution that could not be explained as well by normal scientifically understood processes. Students of nature once considered the vertebrate eye to be too complex to explain naturally, but subsequent research has led to the conclusion that this remarkable structure can be readily understood as a product of natural selection. This shows that what may appear to be “irreducibly complex” today may be explained naturalistically tomorrow.

Scientific explanations are always incomplete. We grant that a comprehensive account of evolutionary natural history remains open to complementary philosophical, metaphysical, and religious dimensions. Darwinian natural history does preempt certain accounts of creation, leading, for example, to the contemporary creationist and ID controversies. However, in most instances, biology and religion operate at different and non-competing levels.  In many religious traditions, such as some found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, the notion of intelligent design is irrelevant. We recognize that natural theology may be a legitimate enterprise in its own right, but we resist the insistence of intelligent-design advocates that their enterprise be taken as genuine science – just as we oppose efforts of others to elevate science into a comprehensive world view (so-called scientism). See the website: Here

Intelligent design is nearly universally condemned as science and as a concept. Most people recognize it for what it really is; a wedge devise to sneak WASP religion into our school systems. The only support for it is from evangelical fundamentalists, Young Earth Creationist (YEC), and some Old Earth Creationist (OEC).

Now proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) are using ‘Stealth Candidates’ who are running for positions on local and state school boards without declaring or admitting that they will advocate teaching ID in schools when elected. They just don’t get it…and they will try anything, including dishonesty, to achieve their goals. That they would use dishonesty in the furtherance of their religious sect speaks volumes about the true value of their faith.

Most people don’t analyze this battle enough, and don’t seem to realize that the ultimate goal of the religious right is to take over our country and remake it into a religious society; kind of like the Dark Ages in Europe when the Catholics ruled, and the strength and direction of your belief…decided whether you lived or died.  A lot of people don’t realize that the religious right has taken control of the Republican Party.

Cognite tute-think about it/use your head.

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Humans Came Out of Africa

It is now pretty much accepted that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and spread north and east along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and then split into groups that migrated in every direction. Some went to Australia; some went north into the Asian steppes, thence into Europe, where they eventually displaced the Neanderthals. Evidence is primarily mutations in mitochondrial DNA found in the descendants not of a single woman, Eve, but rather a “core” of 2,000 to maybe 10,000 Africans who lived around 190,000 to 200,000 years ago. This puts science once again in the cross-hairs of the religious right or visa-versa. The religionists will thoroughly deny that the scientists know what they’re talking about, and continue to insist that the Biblical Adam and Eve were born 6,000+ years ago somewhere in the middle-east.

I suspect it’s really hard to be a Christian nowadays. As much as they would like to muzzle the continuing new knowledge that disproves their beliefs…they can’t. If they just ignores the news and don’t read anything but select Christian literature, they can keep their cores beliefs I suppose, but I would have to believe that it would make one rather one dimensional and boring to talk to. I mean the Bible stories have been passed around and talked about so much that you get tired of repeating the same thing over and over.

If you are one of the rare Christian birds that can somehow read and listen to the daily bombardment of advancing knowledge and somehow rationalize it as not applying to your faith, more power to you. I find it rather sad though that real knowledge is filtered out of your consciousness.

That leaves the even rarer Christian that hears and reads about the real world science going on and on and thinks he or she can somehow make their beliefs fit. Better yet, get a scientifically trained person who wimped out of real science because you actually have to prove and defend your position, and goes and gets a Doctor of Divinity degree, and writes books that sound scientifically plausible to the layman, but are thoroughly debunked by the practicing scientist. I have found so many Christian sites on the Internet that just lie to try to make their religious beliefs make sense in light of the real world knowledge out there.

I have talked in person to Christians who profess to believe in the inerrant Bible and they are really ignorant. They look surprised when you bring up facts to them. Don’t misunderstand me, I still respect them as unusually nice persons, but I can’t understand their being that uninvolved in the world. Christians without a doubt accept the science that underlies modern living…they believe in that and know it works. That’s as far as it goes though. Science is under the control of Satan if any of it impinges on their ‘beliefs.’

This is all well and good as long as these Christians are established and productive citizens, but as I wrote about yesterday, what happens to their children if those children are brought up believing that modern science is wrong and unacceptable to believe in? Some secular colleges are turning down Christian school graduates for not being able to think critically and logically enough to survive college teaching.

“Information is religion’s greatest enemy, and in an age when information is just a few keyboard strokes away from anyone with a computer, this is going to pose a greater threat to Christianity than anything it has yet ‘survived.‘ “–Farrell Till

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God, Religion, and Republicans

“I am now convinced that children should not be subjected to the frightfulness of the Christian religion…. If the concept of a father who plots to have his own son put to death is presented to children as beautiful and as worthy of society’s admiration, what types of human behavior can be presented to them as reprehensible?” — Ruth Hurmence Green

I might add; a God that from time to time asks the faithful to kill their own offspring to prove their faithfulness, or allows torture of the faithful to prove a point to His evil (who’s the more evil here?) opponent. This Christian/Hebrew God is not a ‘God of Love’ as Christians like to say, he is a God of Murder, Torture, Genocide, and Jealousy. One only needs to read the Old Testament to prove that. The people running around preaching that ‘God is Love’ are brainwashed, and they are trying to do the same to you.

The people of an evangelical fundamentalist bent are raising their own children to be ignorant in a world of constantly advancing science and understanding. They are teaching their offspring to ignore the stuff that makes our world livable and possible in times of high population pressure and diminishing resources. They will have no clue when they are adults…much as some fundies are today.

Their wish from what I can understand from hundreds of websites readings and live conversations is to take over the secular governments of the world and establish religious rule…just like the Muslims essentially want to do. And they keep hoping the world will end soon, or predicting it’s imminent demise. That’s really creepy.

They will be happy to pass laws to outlaw homosexuals, heretics, blasphemers, religion that does not conform to their commandments, pre-marital sex, to allow censorship in what we read and speak about, how we dress, what, or who, we can worship, what movies can depict, who we can associate with; in short they want to legislate yours and mine morality and conduct. Kinda like Hitler.

The Republican Party is already controlled by these subversives, at least according to Bill Moyer on PBS
I have a quote from him on one of my other blog posts which I will duplicate here.

“True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals … it’s the American way, encouraged and protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America’s great political parties. The country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is, and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.”-Bill Moyer

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around breaking the 10 commandments or any civil laws…Now…but I do read books that would be considered heretical under theist rule. I also speak out about how crazy Christian theology and Bible is. That alone that would get me put in jail if the religious right (evangelical fundamentalists) gets their way. In times long past I have broken numbers 3, 4, 7, and 10 of those Christian commandments, and (well, actually I keep breaking 2 of them) although I regret them, I do not think people should go to jail for some of them…murder, theft, and false witness…yea, go to jail for them, but not for coveting your neighbor’s wife, or cussing, or not going to church. 🙂

Anyway, the Christian rights stated ambition is to take over secular rule of the world and have religion guide our future…and they have already succeeded in taking over the Republican Party.
I wonder what’s next.

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Religious Attitudes in Mexico

Antonio Lazcano is a biology professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico in Mexico City. He has studied evolution and the origins of life for more than 30 years and as a student at the university he majored in prebiotic evolution and the emergence of life. He has authored several books in the Spanish language, including ‘The Origins of Life’, published in 1984, that became a bestseller in Mexico. He has also been a professor-in-residence or visiting scientist in France, Spain, Cuba, Switzerland, Russia, and the United States He was reelected president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, in 2005, the first Latin American scientist to occupy this position.

He has an article in the journal ‘Science‘, which is a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, wherein he comments on the acceptance of evolutionary sciences in Mexico and it’s relationship to the dominate Roman Catholic Church.

He relates that Mexicans in general have a commitment to the idea of evolution, as the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII endorsed the evolutionary principles that Darwin had proposed, in the mid-nineteen hundreds. So, contrary to many peoples belief, the people of Mexico do not suffer under a strong anti-evolutionary theocratic peer pressure. The Church realizes that the science behind evolution is valid, and tends to not interfere with peoples secular beliefs.

He comments that opposition to his teaching of evolution is practically nonexistent, and he has only been challenged twice. “Only twice during my 30 years of teaching about evolutionary biology and research into the origins of life, have I encountered religious-based opposition to my work. In both cases, it came from evangelical zealots from the United States preaching in Mexico.” He continues. “One of the little recognized U.S. imports into Mexico is a small flow of creationists, who, through religion, are trying to impose their fundamentalist beliefs and hinder the teaching of Darwinian evolution in all levels of schooling”. My emphasis.

I would add that this is a good example of the ‘Ugly American’ in action. How much arrogance and self-conceit does it take for these fools to interfere with another countries scholastic standards? What craziness do they posses that makes them think that…they alone…have the all answers, and must climb in other peoples face to spread their insanity?

Professor Lazcano says that their history has not recorded any major controversy over the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, in 1859. The fact that the Roman Catholic Church does not advocate the literal reading of the Bible as the evangelical fundamentalists do, probably contributes to this.

Places that have a predominately Catholic background such as France, Spain, Italy and most Latin American countries are secular in their outlook and politic, and are able to maintain an extended form of secularism while also being able to support religious freedom. Catholics in Mexico do not read the Old Testament as literal truth, but as a way that creation may have happened. Thus it is possible for Catholic Bible readers to believe in a supernatural origin of life and not have to reject Darwinism in order to maintain logical consistency in their theocratic scheme.

Professor Lazcano says that he and his associates are often invited to speak about life origins and evolution in public and private schools, including those run by Catholic nuns and priests. He says that students and professors see no doctrinal conflict between their own personal faith and Darwin’s scientific ideas. “They even found hilarious the idea of teaching creationism based on biblical literalism.”

He feels that most Mexicans find it hard to understand the hold that religion has in America, and many are baffled by the lax attitude of American politicians to the religious right that manage to influence and undermine the public educational system. “In contrast, Mexico still maintains some anticlerical attitudes, and public education bears the secular trademark of the Enlightenment, whose introduction into the country was facilitated by some prominent priests and Jesuits.”

His closing sentence is particularly relevant to the creationist / evolutionist argument. “Our understanding of the origin and early stages of biological evolution still has major unsolved problems, but they are recognized by the scientific community as intellectual challenges, and not as requiring metaphysical explanations, as proponents of creationism would have it.” My emphasis Amen

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Religion and Slavery

A person who often replies to this blog…and me…are in a discussion on slavery in the Bible.

I feel that by condoning the practice in many places in the Scripture, the Bible is letting us know that Christianity and the Bible is not ‘Divinely Inspired’ or the actual work of a God.

For those who want to look it up, here are a few places to go:

Exodus 21:4-6 Guidelines for buying, selling, treatment, etc.
Deuteronomy 15:15-17 Handle your maid slaves
Exodus 21:7-9 Sell your daughters into.
Joel 3:8 Sell off your sons and daughters
1 Timothy 6:1-2 Masters are worthy of honor
Matthew 10:24 and John 13:16 Masters are better, maid slaves be submissive in ALL ways
Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22 ‘Slaves obey your master’
10 Commandments, numbers 4 and 10 recognize and therefore give tacit approval to slavery.
Matthew 8:5-13 Jesus heals Roman centurions slave while praising centurion.
Luke 12:47 Jesus recommends the beating of slaves.
Matthew 24-25 Jesus reminds slaves they are not better than their masters.
Neither the Old nor New Testament condemns slavery. By not condemning, there is tacit approval given.

There is Christian Apologetics out there that try to minimize what they were teaching and practicing.
It took secular leaders and common people to finally get together and condemned it. As you know a war was fought over it…surely a God would know this, and put a verse in the Bible to call Christians together to end slavery…never happened.

If you put yourself into the position of the writers of the Scripture and realize that they were brought up seeing slavery all around them. Their fathers and grandfathers and so on were brought up with the practice all around them. Some of them were slaves maybe. There was no thought that slavery is a BAD (unless you were one) thing…that a God would not allow it, or condone it. So they wrote slavery into the Bible as common everyday stuff.

One of the lines of apologetics for slavery follows:

“Another crucial point is that the purpose of the Bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society.” http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-slavery.html

I believe that yes…religion, God, and the Bible’s purpose IS to reform; not only society, but also man himself. This Bible is used all the time as an example to reform man and society. Jesus was set up to be a shining example of how a human should be.

So the Hebrews did not realize when they wrote their ‘holy text’ that slavery wasn’t normal, it wasn’t a Godlike thing to do, and a real God would not condone enslavement. This of course speaks to the Bible not being inspired by God, but written by man.

And lets not forget all those Old Testament babies being bashed against the walls, and the pregnant women being run through with a sword…at God’s direction. No amount of apologetics can explain these actions as the works of a loving God.

The only reasonable explanations for all of the carnage, rape, murder, torture, and slavery that is recorded by the old Hebrew scribes and Paul is…it is a product of human minds…not a God creature.

“Once there was a time when all people believed in God, and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages.”

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