The Damned

A bit of shameless pimping here – check out my brother’s new Metal Art Sculptures site!

Faith and intellectualism are two opposite ends of ideology of an individual. In faith, the person believes in the matter without questioning its authenticity. this amounts to blocking the intellectual component of the person's personality. In intellectualism, the persons verifies the authenticity of a matter before him/her and believes only when the matter is found to be true. In this way of believing, the person makes full use of his/her intellect and in the process sharpens it further.

Intellect is the most precious attribute of a human-being making it superior to all other species of life on earth. So, it is distinctive of humanity and without this or without making use of it, the human-being is like any other animal, or in other words, the intellectualism is true humanism.

All matters of God, religions, spirituality, etc. demand faith of people without questioning, or without any intellectual intervention by the person, so are contra-humanity. And conversely, atheism is the real humanism. All faithfuls are just like beggars who live on others' mercies.

All humans have curiosity as a natural instinctive attribute, and curiosity includes knowing a thing in its depth trough use of logic and/or intellect. Use of logic and intellect is intellectualism and need no blind faith. Thus, atheism is an instinctive gift of nature for all those having intellect, and conversely theism is artificial and anti-instinctive.  

A couple of weeks ago I suggested we stop using the word ‘spiritual’ when describing feelings of awe, wonder, connectedness etc. and use ‘sublime‘ instead. The main thrusts behind my argument were that:

1. Spiritual is defined and understood by most people to have religious connotations.
2. Attempting to re-cast ‘spiritual’ in a less religious light is, in my mind, a pointless, frustrating waste of time.
3. ‘Numinous’ – a word that tends to be favoured by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins has the same difficulties (to a lesser extent, but still the same religious connotations exist.)
4. In my mind, sublime perfectly fits the bill (read my post for my rationale).

PZ Myers is wondering if we should use a new word – ‘Scientility’:

Describes the sensation that a scientist or amateur of science experiences when he/she observes an amazing phenomenon, for which his/her qualifications or knowledge makes them experience it a greater degree of appreciaton and joy than people without that knowledge.

I’m sticking to my guns – I still much prefer using sublime. First, because I think it’s an awesome word that already has the meaning we want to convey. Second, because I do not think the emphasis should be placed on science-based experience/knowledge, but rather that a more broad-based secular word (like sublime!) is what is needed. And third, because I’m just not very fond of the proposed word.

What do you think?

Edit: I spent some time perusing the comments on PZ’s site and it looks like I am not alone with my preference for ‘sublime’. Might they have read my post from last week?

I’m amazed at the ability of the Godfull to miss the point and make false statements and generalizations about how atheists become atheists.

The thought is on my mind because a theology student recently asked me to answer some survey questions (he’d been assigned an “interview an atheist” project). I’m not sure if the questions were his own, or if they’d been fed to him by a professor, but the bias in them hurt my brain and caused me to feed on baby flesh.

Anyway, while all the questions had bias (I may post the others later), one in particular got my goat:

James Spiegel wrote in The Making of an Atheist that most people are atheists or agnostics because either one or both of the following are true: (1) there was a major disaster earlier in life that made the person angry toward God (perhaps a death of a loved one or disappointment with some people in the church), (2) the person simply does not want God to be a part of their life. Do either of these descriptions fit why you think there is no God? When did you become an atheist/agnostic, and what would you say brought this about?

Not Enough Options

The claim that there are only two options is incorrect. Including those mentioned above, I can think of four possibilities (I’m probably missing some):

1. A person could grow up in an atheist household and know virtually nothing about religion or god.
2. A person could use rational thinking and an examination of evidence and history to conclude there is no god.
3. There was a major disaster earlier in life that made the person angry toward God (perhaps a death of a loved one or disappointment with some people in the church (part of the original question).
4. The person simply does not want God to be a part of their life (also part of the original question).

Analysis

1. Why does the author see only points 3 & 4 as possible reasons for a person being an atheist? Is it because he is a shallow thinker? Or is it because he is purposefully misleading his readers?
2. Both reasons 3 & 4 mischaracterize what it means to be an atheist:
   • Definition of an Atheist: A person who does not believe in the existence of deities (Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, Greek & Roman gods – among thousands of other deities – all included).
   • Author’s Definition (my interpretation): A person who has been alienated from, or is angry with God and who, as a result, has decided to force god’s existence from their minds by an act of mental will.
   • The author’s definition seems very similar to a person who is angry with their father and decides to shut him out of their lives. Note that, in this example, the father still exists, but he is avoided or ignored or pushed far away from the person’s daily life and thoughts.
   • The author’s conceptualization of what an atheist is, is a grossly ignorant, dishonest misrepresentation of the concept. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in deities. It is not an emotional rejection of something a person knows to exist.

One More Thing

It is entirely possible for a person to begin their journey toward atheism based on an emotional/traumatic event, but to arrive at their destination based on rational thinking. In other words, emotion can be the trigger that leads to further investigation, that leads to a weighing of evidence, that leads to a non-emotion based abandonment of belief.

In my case, I became an atheist at 40 years of age after a lifetime of trying to believe. Certainly, there were troubling events in my life, but they did not solely lead to my atheism. My decision to abandon belief in god was based on the combined impact of these major findings (among others):

1. That religions do not adequately explain the problem of evil.
2. That there is no evidence for any god or deity.
3. That the existence of thousands of religions – all claiming to be the exclusive holders of truth and none of them providing compelling evidence for their claim suggests that none of their claims are to be trusted.

It’s important to realize that, for a long time, I really wanted to believe but, the more investigation I did, the less I was able to stomach the Kool-Aid.

One More, One More Thing

We are not mad at God. We simply do not think your god exists. Would you accept my claim that you are angry at glow-in-the-dark, spacesuit-wearing six-legged chickens? Or that you are mad at the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

No? Well, now you know how ridiculous we view your claim that “atheists are just mad at God”.

I’m going to start this post by saying I’ve never cared much for rap music. I suppose I could use the excuse that I’m a an over 40 year-old, white, raised-on-a-farm Albertan Canadian, but I know others in that same demographic who love rap so, so much for that excuse.

Last week, Baba Brinkman was on my favorite Skeptical podcast – Skeptically Speaking with Desiree Schell and now, suddenly, I really like rap music. Well, I really like Baba Brinkman’s rap music, anyway.

So that leads me to think that my disconnect with rap has been because what the rapper’s where saying didn’t resonate with me.

Well, what Baba Brinkman has to say resonates with me.

What does Brinkman rap about? Rationality! Freethinking! Science! Evolution! And Darwin baby! DARWIN!

Baba Brinkman is getting the word out about these things in a new manner, and to a new audience. For those who don’t ‘get’ things like the theory of evolution, his songs are terrific consciousness raising experiences and, for those of us who do ‘get it’, they are powerful anthems.

You can find Baba Brinkman:

• on his website
• on CBC Radio 3 were you can listen to him online (my favorite one is ’Natural Selection’) and, from there, buy his music on iTunes.
• on his Skeptically Speaking interview
• and on youtube where you’ll find a good selection of videos including the one you see embedded below – the Rationalist anthem “Off That”.

Today, me, my wife and our two children attended a conference for families dealing with children afflicted with Type 1 Diabetes. We attended because my seven year old son has been a Type 1 diabetic for close to two years.

While the kids took advantage of the rare opportunity to play with others with similar challenges, my wife and I attended some excellent sessions. I was especially excited by one that was given by a University of Alberta researcher doing fascinating work on islet cell transplantation (very hopeful work!).

In contrast to the rational tone struck in the researcher’s session, some of the others – especially the Keynote – were much more emotional. I was expecting this. After all, coping with diabetes is very emotional business. Even after two years, I still have moments of extreme anger, sadness, helplessness and frustration around my son’s diabetes. Worrying that he could go to sleep and not wake up (i.e. go into comma) due to severe hypoglycemia is not fun. Neither is knowing that high blood sugar levels could eventually add up to major damage to my son’s vision or kidneys or heart… among other things.

I hate diabetes and I hate it even more that my son has it. Today I learned that I am not alone in that hatred.

However, today I also learned how prolifically my being an atheist sets me apart from how people who believe in God view their child’s affliction.

I do not ask “Why him?”. Not ever.

But that very question was asked (or at least implied) by several people over the course of the day. It started with the Keynote speaker who frequently invoked God in trying to give comfort to us. “God has a plan” he’d say. “Your child’s diabetes is God’s way of strengthening your character” he’d say.

His speech was followed by a very helpful Q&A session where a young father asked, “How do you answer your child when he says, ‘Why me’?

And all the God-talk began again, and all I could think was, “Why is this question even being asked?”.

The question made me realize how my atheism so markedly sets me apart from those who believe in God or who are ‘spiritual’. To me, the question was non-sensical – but it certainly was not non-sensical to the people doing the asking and answering. To them, it was quite important.

For me, the answer to the question is simply and solely mathematical. Here is how I would have answered my fellow father…

“The reason our sons have diabetes is that one in four hundred children get diabetes and, unfortunately, our children drew the short stick in the statistical lottery. Our sons becoming diabetic is no different from the fact that one in eight women get breast cancer, or that one in four men are bald by the time they are 30. There is no ‘why me?’ to these statistics – they simply describe the fact that shit happens in predictable frequencies within the population.”

For me, this statistical explanation is enough. And, if you ask me, it’s a far more comforting way of thinking compared to trying to understand why God would cause or permit this sort of suffering to be inflicted on a child. Most importantly, the answer satisfies my son – especially when I can attach it to the fact that he’s very fortunate not to have been born 100 years ago, before the discovery of insulin therapy.

That aside, I can totally understand why a religious parent would have trouble coming up with an answer to ‘why me?’. I think it’s because deep down, they themselves subconsciously know that the answers a belief in God requires (e.g. “Diabetes is God’s gift to you” etc) are far from comforting.

In fact, those kinds of answers do nothing less than to paint a picture of a cruel, twisted God who inflicts pain and suffering on innocent pre-schoolers who do not have the mental capacity to even begin appreciating the ‘gift’ their God has so graciously provided.

No wonder these parents don’t know how to answer the question. Neither would I.