The flying spaghetti monster "Why do you call yourself an atheist? Why not an agnostic?
Well, technically, you cannot be any more than an agnostic. But I am as agnostic about God as I am about fairies and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You cannot actually disprove the existence of God. Therefore, to be a positive atheist is not technically possible. But you can be as atheist about God as you can be atheist about Thor or Apollo. Everybody nowadays is an atheist about Thor and Apollo. Some of us just go one god further.
When you're talking about God, are you really talking about the God of the Bible -- Yahweh of the Old Testament?
Well, as it happens, I am because I have an eye to the audience who's likely to be reading my book. Nobody believes in Thor and Apollo anymore so I don't bother to address the book to them. So, in practice, it's addressed to believers in the Abrahamic God."
More provactively, "My sense is that you don't just think religion is dishonest. There's something evil about it as well.
Well, yes. I think there's something very evil about faith, where faith means believing in something in the absence of evidence, and actually taking pride in believing in something in the absence of evidence. And the reason that's dangerous is that it justifies essentially anything. If you're taught in your holy book or by your priest that blasphemers should die or apostates should die -- anybody who once believed in the religion and no longer does needs to be killed -- that clearly is evil. And people don't have to justify it because it's their faith. They don't have to say, "Well, here's a very good reason for this." All they need to say is, "That's what my faith says." And we're all expected to back off and respect that. Whether or not we're actually faithful ourselves, we've been brought up to respect faith and to regard it as something that should not be challenged. And that can have extremely evil consequences. The consequences it's had historically -- the Crusades, the Inquisition, right up to the present time where you have suicide bombers and people flying planes into skyscrapers in New York -- all in the name of faith."
3 comments:
And I wouldn't throw the Terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the Venecian Crusades in the Medieval into the same category. They have very different backgrounds, historical causes and both are only loosely coupled with religion.
Christian religion was founded by Jesus, who is know to be peaceful, at least mostly. Islam also claims to be peaceful, so maybe drop these arguments, they are populistic and not valid.
The Crusades were only loosely coupled with religion? I agree that they had little to do with spirituality (it was about politics and power), but the entire justification was from religion. The same can be said for 9/11. But in both cases, the people who did this believed they were doing something "moral" from the perspective of their religious beliefs.
It is the ability to justify such terrible actions with a "morality" provided by religion which forms the basis of the above argument.
We shouldn't let the extreme nature of these events distract us from the daily impact that religious morality has on us and our society. It leads to people telling others what they cannot or must do all the time.
At the medium level, there are protests outside abortion clinics, which in some cases have led to violence. There are camps where homosexuals can be treated for their problem. There are people in muslim countries who are charged with the crime of conversion to christianity.
The trivial stuff is harder to see, but it's still there. While more acceptable now, people still look down on single mothers, especially if the children have separate fathers.
There are other reasons to make judgements on some of these things (eg. many non-religious people are against abortion, but not for reasons of religious morality). But many people judge others based purely on a code of morality given to them by their religion. When these judgements lead to acts of violence, it is a reasonable argument to say that religion-imposed morality is a type of evil.
Henry has a great point about what religion has to teach us, even when we don't agree with the tenet of the existence of a God. So there is also a good argument that religious morality is not inherently evil, but only becomes that way when corrupted. I think that this is an effective argument than many others I've heard, as anyone defending religious morality from the basis of their own religion suffers from bias, and runs the risk of a circular argument.
So after (inadequately) presenting both sides, my point is that while the arguments for both sides may not be definitive, they are perfectly valid.
In the past I had my issues with Gods existence but I realised that these issues where only issues with myself and fear of having to believe in something that I couldn't prove existed or something that might occupy my time unecessarily or something that is the cause of so much death and destruction. All it took was for me to be a little open minded and do a little research and surely enough there is so much proof for Gods existence out there, and that religion is not to blame for the evil that occurs and that if one is searching for God with an open mind and heart, will find Him.
I am a practising Muslim and don't claim that I know how to interperet the Quran, although I am learning. As henry story said, "What is clear is that it is a lot more difficult to read these old texts than the fanatics ever take into account". I agree 1010%. Well this is truly valid for Islam and the Quran anyway. You cannot know the meaning of most of the Quran without having specific knowledge about things such as time of revelation, reason of revelation, place of revelation, and access to the teachings and interpretation of Muhammad (pbuh), and knowledge about abbrogation, because there are verses that where revelead after other verses to cancel them out because they were revealed about certain things that were occuring at a certain time. I am sure this goes for ther other religious texts as well.
Now as for Gods existence there is a simple proof that I like to use: Take 10 marbles and number them from 1 to 10. Place them into a bag and try and pull them out one by one in order of numbering. You can even try in reverse order if that makes you feel better. Now calculate the probabilty that you can do this. Good old permutations will help you if you don't know. I can't even count to that number. Anyway the answer if I got it correct is 1 to 3628800. Something so simple yet when you look at the world around you and how everything works in a certain order, the planets, plants, the human body and zillions of other examples, they are not so simple. Now you can see that we are not comparing apples with apples. Infact the probability of everything evolving from nothing is 0. It never happened, will never happen and nobody can make it happen without being a supernatural being with the ability to create something from nothing. That is the most logical explination. No matter how hard you try to find another reason you know you never will. Believe me I have tried... HARD, but to no avail. Now if you want to pull these marbles out in order you can cheat and peak a little, but then you had something to do with this order just like God had something to do with everything you see around you and know about today.
Lastly many athiests and agnostics have come to the conclusion that there is a supernatural force or being out there that must have created this universe. I like to use the following as an example, www.islam-guide.com and not because it is what I believe but because there are facts in the Quran that have been researched by many of the great thinkers and scientests of today and they have all come to the same conclusions. Keep in mind the Quran was not revealed to an educated people and there definatly where no scientests around in arabia so it is revealed in simple terms for simple people yet it links up nicely and accuratley with hundreds of proven scientific facts that have only been discovered in the last few centuries using the most advanced technologies. Now an illiterate desert man would defiantely not have known all these things accuratley. Even if he tried to guess some he surely would not have been correct without the technology that we have today.
All in all religion is not the evil culprit, nor is God. It is the human being that is the to blame for all that is ban and the idiotic destruction throughout history and today.
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