What we should be thankful for?

Compare this

with this very limited view


This distorted christian view is damaging the world.

GelatoGate

I have been following the saga of the bigoted gelato guy story unfolded remotely in the comfort of my home in Melbourne Australia.

Now that the flame has died down a little, let me throw in my observation.

Andy, the gelato's owner took down the sign only after putting it up for a short time (according to the apology issued by Andy) at the meantime the above photo went viral and his store's online rating crumpled. There are basically two camps on the atheist blogosphere - those did not accept the apology (PZ and JT) and those did (Jen and Hemant) as noted by Adam Lee

To me, an apology should be accompanied by a behavioral change to rectify the wrong. So my question is "Has the store owner demonstrated an understanding of what was the wrong and made an effort to rectify the wrong?" Another question is what is the motivation of the apology?

If the atheist community did not have the leverage of lowering his store online rating, would he issue the apology?

Of course, we can only guess at what actually was in his mind and we are not thought police. From his latest apology, Andy was also offering a 10% to customers in this week - oh, that said a lot of what was going on in his mind. To me, apology not accepted. His motivation is whitewashing and damage control. As JT Eberhard put it, he should have said something along the following lines.

Bigotry is unacceptable. Offense is not the same as breathing life into prejudice. Punishing somebody for disagreeing with you or thinking your beliefs are silly is immoral. Making a donation that will actually help make the world a better place rather than inviting us to patronize your business for an insignificant discount.

Another point I would like to raise is the immoral concept of the Christian forgiveness. The immoral teaching that one can forgive oneself and move on is absolutely wrong. The offended has the right to forgive and move on, but the offender doesn't have any right to forgive himself/herself. When a wrong is done, it is done. There is nothing that can be done to undo the wrong. Remorse is the first step to recovery and to become a better self. Understand what was wrong and make positive steps not to offend again. We can learn from mistakes only when we are still in school (an artificial environment created to tolerate mistake to happen without serious consequences). In life, mistake is mistake. One has to live with the consequences of any mistake. In this case, I cannot see any sign Andy would be doing to become better. He has not started the first step.

I went to a church concert

I knew what was going to happen last Saturday, but I went along to support one of our friends who was singing. The most impressive point to me is the amount of immoral messages that were mixed into the lyric, the whole shit about Jesus dying for our sin etc. One of the song is about eternal life and of course it must be via blind faith in Jesus that anyone can have eternal life. Not that I want to live forever, but if there is any chance of extending our healthy life span, it won't come from religion, it will come from Science.

The cells in our body divide time and again. During such division, the copies may be corrupted by radiation or the chemicals that are in our bodies. Cells have several strategies: repair the damage, give up the ghost (the new cell) or stop dividing. Those cells which stopped dividing are called senescence. Recently, scientists have discovered by removing senescence cells in mice, these mice have an extended healthy life span - not longer life span! [source]

I don't have faith in science. I trust only evidence. This is early work and its application to human are tens of years away. But as human knowledge progress, the use of religion is getting less and less. Seriously, has religion passed its used-by date? I certainly think so.

Atheist Calls Religious People 'Idiots' On British Debate

Pointing out a fact (that religious people are idiots) is not silly nor rude. This society has given those claiming to have the truth an unfair privileged position which they do not deserve. Blind faith is blind, dangerous and totally unproductive. We should get rid of the dogma that these people holding unsupported belief as somehow clever or intelligent. The fact is that they are not. Their logic does not work!

After posting this, will I get the same kind of comments directed to Kate Smurthwaite

Dear Apologetic...

Dear Apologetic,

I like to discuss with you why I think your apologetic position about the bible is untenable.

The bible is either
A. literally true,
B. metaphorical, or
C. partly literal true and partly metaphorical.

You obviously do not take position A because of the various contradictions in the bible to our best observed facts.

If your position is that the bible is metaphorical, then you have to also take the position that god in the bible is also metaphorical and hence you are just an atheist like me - who do not believe in the existence of the bible god.

The interesting part is of course the position that some parts of the bible is true and some is metaphorical and you believe that god exists - that's the true part at least. Think about this: How can *anyone* distinguish between metaphorical parts and truths in the bible? The bible itself does not expressively say which part is metaphorical and which part is not. We need an *external* agent (meaning evidence outside the bible) to determine which part is true and then the rest is metaphorical.

Now show me, using evidence besides the bible and derivative works from the bible that the bible god exists. Over the past 2 centuries, no one has even been able to do so, else we would not still be discussing this thing.

Without any evidence to show that the bible god exists, what would be the most *simple* conclusion one can draw?

Yours,

An atheist

If I am a boss...

If I am a boss looking for someone to do some manual tasks, I would not mind how s/he thinks, what and what not s/he believes in as long as s/he is physically capable of doing the tasks.

If I am a boss looking for someone to do some tasks which involve logic, evidence-based reasoning, I do not care if the applicant is physically disabled as long as s/he is capable of thinking logically based on evidence. A religious applicant automatically disqualified him/herself by believing in an imaginary friend who looks after everything.

If I am a voter and there are candidates who want to be leaders making many decision for me, a candidate publicly announces his/her religion affiliation has just disqualified to get my vote. If s/he truly believes in an imaginary friend in the sky, s/he is mentally not capable of leading the country. If s/he does not truly believes in god, but pronounces that s/he is to "buy" vote from the religious, then s/he is not honest and I cannot trust his/her ability to make decision unbiased.

Religion to coexist?

This is a christian propaganda. See if you can find out what's wrong with it.

Answer: (highlight the following white space to see.)

Christians have traditionally killed many non-christians - check your history re; crusades and inquisition. So saying the Christian poses not threat to the others is completely rubbish.

Religions bound people into cages with arbitrarily doctrines based on poor imaginations of people many years ago. Human is ONE species and we are mutually interdependent. We coexist regardless of religion. We kill each other when religion becomes the dividing line. We do not need religions to coexist. We need no religion to coexist.

Dear Atheists: Why the long face?

Let me try to answer "Father" Tim Moyle. My answer are in black and his words in blue.

Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussion about religion? The language of many of atheist contributions in public debate is laced with venom and dripping with sarcasm.

There are exceptions and of course many atheists to do not bother to post their views on blogs so there is no telling how they feel. But comments by atheists in the public square usually depict the religious as being ‘malicious’ or ‘venomous’ with the aim to  enslave the ‘feeble minded and weak.’

Of course, I cannot and should not answer this "angry" accusation for other atheists.  After all, atheism is a lack of belief. Atheists are not a homogeneous group in any sense. In this blog and in many comments I put on public forum, I do sound angry.  Moyle is exactly right that I am angry.  I am accusing people like Moyle of spreading unsupported claims as if it were true, I am accusing these professional liars of deliberate deception.  I am angry at the people poisoning young minds with superstition and fear.

Venom is something that is oriented towards death; Christians and other religious people are oriented towards a different direction. We speak not to the culture of death that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light that ends with the gift of eternal life.

For example, the Catholic Church in its human incarnation is sinful (as is every other human institution) corrupt and often acts differently from what it teaches. But 2,000 years of experience has permitted the Church to experience the waxing and waning of the faith in different part of the world at various time before. We do not despair these difficult times because we have been here before … and we will be here in the future.

Christian doctrines may have given people relief, just like drinking alcohol can temporarily make one drunk and forgets the immediate pain. By diverting attention from this life, people are given false hope in a non-existent eternal life.  Life is unfair and we do not need religion to make it worse. Why are some children born in war-torn country?  Why are some children born into hunger and despair? Why are some children born with disability? I acknowledge this unfairness and unjust.  I do what I can to help only because I feel good helping people.  I am not expecting any rewards, not from fellow human nor from the non-existent god.  If there were a god, a just and loving god, why the suffering?


The Catholic Church was, has been and will continue to be a power seeking organisation.  The tactics have always been intimidation, crack down opposing voices, ruled with all the power it can coercive.  The sole purpose of its existence is to accumulate wealth and amass political power.  It has been doing this for 2000 years.  But it is time for this to end.


When priests were found abusing children, abusing the trust parents have on them, molestering minors and doing those deeds they publicly denounce, the church move these people around - providing more victims to be abused instead of making them face up the crime, putting those responsible in the proper authority.  The only objective was to protect the Church. When the priests have raped too many children, they file a bankruptcy protection. [source]  I would argue to go after the Vatican and return the amassed wealth to common people.

Why are believers so confident? It’s because even though we have suffered the wounds of sin from various clergy, we know that they not the totality of our experience. There have been times when we stood as a paragon of grace for believers. Even today there are times when the voice of the Church has truly spoken to the core of many, moments when the transcendent presence of God is visible despite our sinfulness and brokenness for anyone who has both the eyes and heart to see it. It is these moments, brought about through the faithful ministry and efforts of almost all clergy who has taken up the yoke of service, which makes possible and strengthens the convictions and fidelity of many believers today.

As an organisation, it is inevitable that there are bad apples. To be a responsible organisation, it is important to find these bad apples and allow natural justice to be applied.  The act of moving the accused priests around, providing them with more victims is far from any moral person would attempt to do.  Yet, this happened.  Not in one county, but in all the countries that such abuses were reported. I don't know if great minds think alike, but evil minds did.

I have never had any feeling of "transcendent presence of god".  Why god, who wants everyone to worship it, left me out?

Believers are told, as shown here, that they are sinful. Sinful for being born!  Sinful because a fictional character was tempted by a talking snake into eating a fruit which god forbid to eat.  An all knowing god would have known that before it created human.  This is just a story to enslave the feeble mind. A story to give power to the priests because they are the messengers of god.  "You better listen, you sinful human.  I am god's messenger and you better do what I tell you to do."

But I think that there is a more primordial reason for the ‘bad  mood’ of so many atheists.

Atheists tend to see the state of their personal world as being  limited to the best they can achieve. Life’s injustices will never  ultimately be surmounted and they are limited to a ‘what you see is what you get’ assessment of life’s trials. Believers know that things will be better. They know that following the teachings of the church can bring them closer to that promised ideal in the here and now, and that any justice denied them by the events of  their personal lives as a result of their fidelity to God will be theirs to enjoy in the life to come.

It is easy to understand how this fuels the anger that many atheists. When one must content themselves with an atheist creed that necessarily means they will never experience ultimate justice, peace or love; they cannot look past the annihilation in death.

No wonder they’re so grumpy.

Yes, I understand that I can only do the best that I can. That's life and I do not have the delusion of another chance of life. I understand this world is unfair and unjust.  I can live with that. And I have to live with that because there is no other choice.  Religion does not give us another choice nor chance anyway. It is delusional to say there is an eternal life waiting for you.

It is better to face up to the reality instead of hiding my head in the sand. It is better to be positive and do the best as the circumstance prevail. There is no ultimate justice.  Peace and love is here, now and real. We can enjoy peace by not getting into wars with others, we can embrace love with our parents, spouse, children and friends.  When death comes, I can face it, bravely knowing that I have done my best and I have been enjoying my life - whatever the circumstances have thrown to me.

The greatest crime one can commit is to spread false hope, unsupported claims and take advantage of the feeble and weak.  That's exactly what religion has been doing.  This is, itself, a good reason for me to be angry at those to continue to commit this crime.

Revenge of the godless geeks - The Amazing Meeting 2010

The title linked to a piece by Chrys Stevenson about the Amazing Meeting 2010 just held in Sydney last week. The meeting has three main objectives:

the first, to save lives; the second, to inform the public about the dangers of untested or discredited medical treatments; the third, to prevent the poor, poorly educated and vulnerable from being defrauded.

The important message is of course we should base our decisions on evidence. Evidence-based nursing is an important topic in *any* modern nursing school today. I was wondering why. Will it be important to stress evidence because many student nurses came into the school already indoctrinated with religious belief which promote superstition and false hope without evidence?

Nature

Is Nature obeying some sort of law?

There is a fundamental hypothesis of nature: nature behaves consistently. By this I mean no matter who do a test, when the same test is done and where the same test is done, the result will be the same under the same conditions. Other than that, the nature is chaotic. However, human are clever enough to find order among the chaos.

Science is a systematic ways of removing personal and observational biases, isolates the variables and tries to make a pattern out of the chaos. So far we have been quite successful. Human has figured out many physical laws - models of reality which can explain many observed facts. These physical laws can predict - based on the consistence of the nature. These laws are short-hand for describing a large number of observations. We may use language like nature obeys the law of thermodynamics. The fact is that we have figured out a law (by careful observation of nature) to describe one aspect of nature. A better way should be the law of thermodynamics describes an aspect of nature.

With this in mind, the argument of god as a creator changes. God does not create nature's laws. Nature's laws are human's model of the reality. We may find better model to describe the nature - which happens regularly and is called scientific discovery. The behaviour of nature remains the same. Only our description of nature which has changed.

During such a process, science and god should not be in any conflict. In fact, whether there is a god or not does not matter. That's the position of Einstein. He believes that there may be a god who created the universe and then let the universe runs its own course without further intervention.

The rest of this post is my hypothesis of how religion gets formed.

The starting point is that human has an urge to find pattern and explain things. In the old days when human knew little about how universe behaves, when thunder strikes, when there is earth quarks, when there is ellipse of the sun, people, being less knowledgeable, felt fear and anxiety. Some invented the god concept. God became a knowledge-filler, explaining superficially the natural events. These stories were transmitted orally, exaggerated and mystified. later these stories were hijacked by religion, organisations for the purpose of controlling the common people.

The sad side of this is the dogma propagated by religion. The tragedy is that many believe the story to be literally true. The harm is that many were falsely led to acting out some commands from god and committed atrocities to humanity.

Frankly, we should have grown out of the shackle of religion. Science has shown us how simplicity can lead to complexity. Science has enabled us to send men to moon and back safely. Science has enabled us to radically changed the surface of earth to suit our life style.

Human, as society animals, has basic instinct for co-operation. On the other hand, human brain has also evolved to learn to cheat on others. Human has selfishness. Human are short-sighted. After all, why should not we? In the time of the universe, we are just a blink of eye. Sometimes, we do things which actually harm ourselves without realising it. Among all these weaknesses, we do not need a religion to tell us what is best for ourselves. There is no use for a blind to lead a blind. Religious dogma is old - too old to be useful. New understanding is better as a guide than old exaggerated and mystified stories. Stories, such as creation, have been proven to be completely wrong.

To justify the old stories, new understanding of reality is being condemned, being prosecuted, being denied and being misrepresented. This is not helping anyone except those who have selfish reasons to maintain the status quo. Some are mistakenly led to defend their religion. While they conduct their life logically and evidence-based for every aspect of their life, in matter related religion, all these are thrown out of the water. That is totally unnecessary. Drop the religion baggage. Unit. Let not be divided by religion. Both theists and atheists are human. We are brothers and sisters. Try embrace rationality, apply reason and treasure the luck we have as the most evolved species on this planet earth.

The Burden of Proof: How Atheism Has Adopted a Worldview That Science Never Intended

Josh Schrei wrote in the Hoffington Post arguing for some form of value of religion.

Atheists obviously don't know the value of spiritual practice, because they don't experience its value. Its a bit like someone who has sat idle in front of a computer for most of their lives telling a soccer player that there's no value in soccer. Coming from a non-soccer player, the statement means absolutely nothing. There are 4 billion+ people in this world who practice some form of religion. They are not all -- every single one of them -- enslaved by fear or ignorance as some atheists seem to imply. Clearly many of them are getting some personal value out of it.

Truth is not a popularity contest. With billions dollars pouring into the religious propaganda machinery, continuous expansion of wealth gathering and power grasping by religion is obvious. The illusion of people getting value out of religion is just an illusion. Granted socialising with like-minded people, having some quiet reflective time and doing some repetitive tasks (prayers) can help reduce some of the modern life stresses. Similar activities, without the illusion of a god and without the side-effects of religion gathering more wealth and more political influence could be organised in more healthy ways, such as get together with friends, read and discuss books of common interest, play some music, sing some songs or offer a hand for the needy.

Creativities come in two forms:
(1) Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers: The Story of Success, talked about a 10,000 hour rule - in a wide number of different cognitively complex disciplines, word-class expertise cannot be attained without at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. With such amount of practice, the product of the creation, in almost any measure, shows some form of creativity for a layman.
(2) Aha moments - an instant at which the solution to a problem becomes clear, an unconscious shift in mental perspective that can abruptly alter how we perceive a problem. An 'aha' moment is any sudden comprehension that allows you to see something in a different light.  This requires two pre-conditions: (a) one has to be on the task for a extended period of time and have accumulated sufficient experience in solving problems in near-by domains, (b) extensive knowledge base. The shift in perspective is looking at the problem from a different angle, based on the understanding of a discipline different to the problem at hand. It is a sudden connection between two parts of the brian - which has been experimentally verified.

In fact, our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we've actually lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study suggests. "Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically," Dr. Kounios says. "There really are different brain mechanisms involved."
By most measures, we spend about a third of our time daydreaming, yet our brain is unusually active during these seemingly idle moments. Left to its own devices, our brain activates several areas associated with complex problem solving, which researchers had previously assumed were dormant during daydreams. Moreover, it appears to be the only time these areas work in unison.
"People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty," says cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who reported the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As measured by brain activity, however, "mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem." [source]

Pointing out Newton,.Freidrich Kekulé and Srinavasa Ramanujan got their insight "intuitive" has nothing to do with believing in a god.

There is a reason that Hindu mystics after studying, debating, and meditating over hundreds and hundreds of years came to conclusions about the nature of the universe that have been substantiated by modern physics.

I have never come across any Hindu's understanding of the universe being substantiated by modern physics. I do not know much about Hindu, but I was a student of Physics. If someone can point me to some resources to verify this claim, it will be much appreciated. However, making statement, like the quote above, without reference and evidence, does not make the argument for religion any stronger.

Finally, DaveyDavey put in a comment which I agree:

This article [linked to the title of this post] is based on a false premise. Nobody has proven what gravity is, but we all have to live by its rules. No one has proven what time is, but its effect is undeniable. We understand the universe by what we can sense and intuit, and what we can deduce from observation. While the inability to know the unknowable has no doubt driven some deep thinkers mad, most of us are content to take some things for granted even though it seems that they will never be understood. Science keeps the door open for learning more about the universe, and religion has tried for a thousand years to slam the door in our faces.

The scientific method of understanding the universe by bearing and overcoming the burden of proof is a testament to human intellectual capability. To seek an end run around the burden of proof to gain acceptance of one's view of the universe is a measure of human deceit and gullibility.

I can only add that living with the false illusion of god does not make life any easier or worse. Life, as it is, is already interesting enough, complex enough and challenging enough. There is no more reason modern society should still move with the heavy shackle of religion. The used-by date of religion has long gone. Human has finally found a method of investigation which helps us to remove our biases and helps us, the whole species, to move on with better understanding of the physical reality we are in.

Scientific literacy of USA religious

It really amaze me to find so many religious completely mistrust scientists.

If you try something, it did not work and nothing has changed. You won't use the same method again. You would try something else. That's because there is evidence that the previous method did not work. Repeating the same method over and over again will not change the outcome. If it did not work, it would not work. People know that. That's obvious. That is decision based on evidence.

How is it possible that when it is a matter of religion, things are the opposite?

We used to believe that the earth is flat. We used to believe that we are at the centre of the universe. Now both ideas were rejected because evidence just do not support such view.

When astronomers observe the stars, put the star light through a spectroscope and look at the spectrum. While similar to those found on earth, the star spectrum shifted slightly towards the red. They call this red shift. This is observable anywhere, anytime by anybody. [Granted there is a nearby galaxy which exhibit blue shift instead of red shift.] Can religious deny such observation fact? It seems to be they do. They do not *believe* that. Correct use of the word "believe" because it is not based on evidence.

Ultimately, the red shift is one of the key factor pointing to an expanding universe and hence supported the big bang theory.

Using the god hypothesis - that god created the universe and everything in it in 6 days, what does that god hypothesis gives us? Nothing. It does not explain the red shift. It does not explain why when the TV stations are turned off, you see the random noise on the TV screen. On the other hand, the big bang theory explains both the red shift and the cosmic background radiation, the direction of the latter to 1 part in 100,000. If the flood has really occurred during the time of Noah, it would be unthinkable that men at the time would be able to build an ark large enough to hold 2 of every animals on earth. It would not be done today. The size specified in the bible is hardly large enough! It is definitely impossible some 3000 year ago, both in terms of the material and the ability to travel around the world to collect all the animals. If the flood water was global, where has the water gone?

In light of these contradictions, what I would expect from the religious is that they will claim the stories in the bible are metaphorical. We should not interpret every word of it literally. You guess what, no, many still claims the bible to be true literally. OMG! (Oh, my goodness!)

I have a heart of stone...

The religious always introduce some terms which I cannot understand. One of this is "soul". Another is many religious accuse atheists, like me, have a "heart of stone" and cannot accept their gospel. How can I soften my heart to accept non-sensible ideas?

A commenter on Ray Comfort's blog post this:

My question is specifically, what made/makes you able to soften your heart and let the God in and not me? Is it a physical, biological, mental mechanism that is holding me back, or is it a spiritual issue i.e., my soul.

If it's the former, what is it? A brain tumor? A pituitary issue? Hammer toe? Lack of natural rhythm?

Or if it's the latter, my soul. How does that work? Why does my soul cause me to reject God? What controls my soul? Are we all a completely blank slate when we are born and our souls are shaped by experience? How does my brain interact with my soul? What are the defining features that all souls share, and what features are individual to me?
If I am not a blank soul, what is my starting state? What do I(everyone) inherently have and what do I acquire over the course of my life? Clearly, if this is the case, I did not start with a inherent belief in God, as I have never believed, as far back as I can remember, I have been a non believer. My parents are believers, all of our neighbors and friends etc ... So you can't say I was brain washed into my non belief. Where did my lack of belief come from? If it was there from the beginning, it's not my fault, it is part of soul. If it's something I learned, why is my soul capable of non belief and what is my soul missing that yours isn't that would allow me to come over to your side?

Laws

There are 4 types of laws:
1. Law of Physics - laws which you cannot violate no matter how hard you try.
2. Fiat Law - laws which when you violate will result in some of your privileges removed (eg locked up in a prison)
3. Social law - People around you will feel unhappy/uneasy if you break it.
4. Personal law - Feel free to break and nobody cares.

Religion should be a personal law. Which religion you like to subscribe to is a matter of your personal choice. If you break the laws of your religion, nobody really cares.

It becomes ignoring when religious people want to make their personal law a social law. When winter solstice becomes christmas, the novelty display causes tension among people. This is basically a contest of personal law with fiat law. The logical conclusion should be that the public spaces is free from religious display. Puritan era is an example of religion entered into the social law space.

When religion enters into the domain of fiat law, human lives are lost and bad things happen. Examples include the conflict in the Middle East, the oppression of people in countries when a religion is part of the state (e.g. Iran) and the historical Crusades.

Is following logic a person law or social law? The debate between Puritan Lad and myself indicates that logic is essential for communication. The debate broke down and I did not want to continue because Puritan Lad just could not see the obvious logical flaw when I pointed it out couple of times. I felt very frustrated and saw no point of continuing.

God owns everything?

God owns everything. That is is the biblical view: “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it” (Ps. 24:1). God delegated ownership and dominion of property to his Image, man (Gen 1:26–28). God sanctioned the protection of private property in His law—the Ten Commandments—including a prohibition of theft (Ex. 20:15). Jesus (Matt. 19:18) and the Apostles (Acts 5; Eph. 4:28) upheld this law. [source]

What is expressed here is a very dangerous view. We now know that this planet earth is a symbiotic system with every parts linking to every other parts. The input is the sun's energy. Just as an example, consider water. Within this system, everything gets recycled. Waste water flows to wetland, plants and micro-organisms remove the pollutants and the water eventually flows to the ocean. Sun's energy evaporates the water to form clouds which float over to land and become rain to replenish the fresh water supply.

In the last 200+ years, we human have messed up the system. We have dug out a large fraction of all the stored carbon and emit them into the atmosphere. According to the bible, we own the earth and we can do every thing allowed by the out-of-date rules in the old books. Unfortunately, the earth's atmospheric cleaning systems - the rain forests - were being destroyed at the same time supported by the same out-of-date ownership concept. Large quantities of green house gas do not get removed in time and is building up rapidly. This concept of ownership is becoming a dangerous idea. The fact is man does not own the earth. We live on the earth. We depend on earth to provide us with air, water and food.

The above quote comes from the promotion of a book. When the underlying concept of the book is morally wrong, we don't need to read to book to know the conclusion it draws will not be sound.

Good reasons to NOT believe in any god

I never was, am not and never will become religious. My father let me grew my curiosity. I stubbornly chose to study the "hardest" subject in my undergraduate course. I took up to the maximum allowed courses during the three years of under graduation and enjoying it to the best I could.

Since I started this blog, I have been exposed to a lot of challenges and none have changed my view on religion - religion has passed its used-by date long time ago. People also questions my scientific attitude and says that I should be an agnostic. No, I am an atheist. If you claim there is a god, you provide the proof. If there is no evidence of such existence, my default position is there is no god. I cannot be agnostic towards pink unicorn, imaginary flying dragon, ...

My family urges me to be "polite" towards the religious and stop ridiculing religion. I am sorry I cannot, but I appreciate their concerns. Intellectually, religious ideas cannot stand up to the standard of evidence I have been trained to require. Religion is an idea virus, spreading and damaging the host - human society.

Religion, as a business, is unfairly subsidized by tax payers. Religion does not fulfil its corporate citizens' obligation to pay tax. The huge amount of money collected by religion is only channeled back to promote religion - and more income. Charity? Does it not there are charities working without any religious banner? When a priest of a church in Melbourne suburb spend a little more in helping the poor, what did the church do? Try to force him to retire! [source]

Religion is not a harmless thing people choose to do at their private space. As the saying goes, "if I do not know there is a god and Jesus, I don't go to hell when I die. WHY you tell me then?" Religion is political, trying hard to grip any political power and have no intention not to exert its unwarranted power and wealth. How many people have died in the name of religion over the centuries? How many more need to die in the future?

Without raging wars (this is only hypothetical because USA ex-president Bush alleged that he was told to invade Iraq by his god), religion is still doing a lot of harm. Richard Dawkins, in comparing the Catholic church to the Anglican, put it like this:

What major institution most deserves the title of greatest force for evil in the world? In a field of stiff competition, the Roman Catholic Church is surely up there among the leaders. The Anglican church has at least a few shreds of decency, traces of kindness and humanity with which Jesus himself might have connected, however tenuously: a generosity of spirit, of respect for women, and of Christ-like compassion for the less fortunate. The Anglican church does not cleave to the dotty idea that a priest, by blessing bread and wine, can transform it literally into a cannibal feast; nor to the nastier idea that possession of testicles is an essential qualification to perform the rite. It does not send its missionaries out to tell deliberate lies to AIDS-weakened Africans, about the alleged ineffectiveness of condoms in protecting against HIV. Whether one agrees with him or not, there is a saintly quality in the Archbishop of Canterbury, a benignity of countenance, a well-meaning sincerity. How does Pope Ratzinger measure up? The comparison is almost embarrassing.

Is Anglican church any better? May be. But it is still a parasite to the society we can do without happily.

Peace!

Atheist teacher

Is it OK to have an atheist teacher?

Sorry, wrong question. Let me try again. Is it OK to have a christian teacher?

Indoctrinating young children to the unproven god is serious crime. As a teacher of over 1/4 of a century, I have kept my personal belief separate from my teaching activities. [I was bought up in christian primary school and catholic secondary school, yet taught in buddhist school!] And I am regretting that!

I taught Physics, a mathematical scientific discipline which values enquiry, evidence, tests and experimentation. There are theories and theories get disproved or modified. This is real and this is based on evidence. In class, I rather spent my time in motivating my students, enriching their curiosity than going through the content matter. My students could always read the textbook at their time as many times as they like.

Every now and then, some students would be able to answer questions about what they learnt in class perfectly, but in real life, they still go about their daily life like Physics is just something they learn for passing examination.

One trick is to lend a radioactive source to a student so that he/she can play with it at home. I would take out a glass bottle from a lead container using a long-handle forceps and ask if anyone would like to it home by put the bottle in his/her pocket. Inevitably, there is always some students who have forgotten all about the risk of radioactivity I was talking moments ago and reach out with their hands for the glass bottle. That's where things get interesting from a teacher's point of view. Of course the glass bottle contains nothing radioactive and it is illegal for me to let radioactive material out of the laboratory. But that is a good way to start a good discussion.

I regret I did not make my atheism clear to my students [and I have stopped teaching more than 15 years]. If I have the foresight of knowing how religious is damaging the intellectual world, I would have use my atheism to discuss more about Science and the true nature of scientific enquiry.

Back to the question at the beginning of this post, the answer to the first question is YES and the answer to the second is NO!

[This post is a reflection after reading Hemant Mehta's post. I hope Mehta would have the opportunity to make his atheism clear to his students and give his students a chance of cleansing from the religious pollution.]

Words

The beauty of words is that we can combine conceptually contradicting words together. Examples: calling bald a hair colour, vacuum a thing and atheism a belief.

Another annoying feature is to associate features to imaginary objects as if it were true: god is eternal. Since god is imaginary, it can have any feature as you like including it is coloured green!

Reality requires evidence. Anything which excludes itself from this fundamental reality check is imaginary. It may serve some purposes, just like fictions serve to illustrate, inspire and amuse. Taking the imaginary god seriously and acting like god is real is NOT reality. I am very puzzled why so many seemingly intelligent people would be religious.

Heaven is Earth

Ray Comfort sometimes pretends that he knows Science and constantly writes about how evolution is flawed. Accompanying his recent description of heaven is a waterfall scenery. As I have written before, heaven is hotter than hell and it is at 525 degrees Celcius. See here.

The description of "pleasure" in heaven was the creation of primitive men who knew nothing about things too far or too small to see. These pleasure include sex (with whom? or just randomly anyone? where love fits here?), lost of memory of the past, no pain, no tears, no diseases, no suffering, death and no futility. That's why you can have sex!

The way I think about this is quite different. I am already in Heaven. A world much better than those primitive men who wrote the bible would have imagined. While there are still incurable illness, occasional pain, tears and loss, we are living in a world which is so much more stimulating mentally (we can read almost everything ever written anywhere - thanks to the explosion of information technology), less demanding in labour for providing food and a generally civilised accompany of fellow human. Of course there is ground of improvement. If the religious can keep their mouths shut and let the scientists continue their work, the improvement will come earlier.

As the conscious species of this planet, we are the lucky one. We are on the lucky branch of the evolution tree. When I die, I am happy to return to nothingness.

Let enjoy this moment rather than wish for a life in a non-existent heaven.

Why Religious are hindering our progess?

On the other hand, those who know God (as apposed to those who simply "believe" in His existence) can be sure of many things. This is because God is never wrong. Ever. He is absolutely trustworthy in that which He says. We can therefore know absolutely about our origins, and we can know absolutely what is right and what is wrong. There is no "probably" when it comes to His immutable promises. - Ray Comfort

The above quote is typical Ray.

That kind of belief system hinders progress. There are lots of unknown yet to be discovered. The lazy system of assigning unknown to a god means there is no more need to find out the truth.