March of the Missionary

Rejoice benighted savages

Raise your voices loud in song.

We’ve come to tell you of our god

and how your lives are wrong.

Give thanks and pay us homage

Do us service ,raise us high

We are the voices of creation

Only we know what happens when you die.

You say you’ve got your own gods?

A history and tradition all your own?

You’ve been bewitched by demons!

And without us you’d never have known!

We’ll save your souls and make you right

If you’ll do exactly as we say

Dress and speak and act as we

And pray always as we pray.

Repent of your many blasphemies

Know your worth is less than none

Beg my god for mercy evermore

Or your torment is never done.

My god is a god of mercy

He’ll save you from your sinful mire

But if you do not submit to him

He will punish you with fire.

We will bring you peace and salvation

And the love of our living lord.

We’re going to give you Jesus

Either with the book or with the sword!

Atheism: One Step Toward Salvation.

“Do you have anything positive to add? You don’t like god or religion or theism, we get it. Where is your proposal for fostering peace and unity? How does your belief encourage acceptance and connection with our fellow humans? Where are the inclusive ideas that make Atheism better for everyone?”

The above is me paraphrasing something I read recently, though it wasn’t new or unique and I’ve read or heard many versions over the years. It is something Anti-theists, outspoken atheists and non-theists hear a lot of.  The implication that we’re cold angry people mad at the world and content to kick sand out of spite is not an uncommon viewpoint. Unfortunately there are those Atheists out there that actually do fit this view. I’d say however that by and large this depiction of atheists and especially activist atheists is an overly simplistic falsehood maintained to marginalize and dismiss an uncomfortable point of view.

It’s true, I don’t like the ideas of god, religion or theism, but as for “we get it” it doesn’t seem as though you do. I don’t take this stance to rebel or offend. It’s not because I’m an anarchist or due to my corrupted or absent morals, and it certainly isn’t because I imagine myself smarter or in any way superior to the believer. The considerations that make me an atheist are numerous and varied but the primary drive of my anti-theism is the very fact that religion, and indeed all faith, divides, deludes excludes and insulates. I am an atheist because I seek those virtues listed above, and because history demonstrates that faith and religion are the single greatest barriers to acceptance, unity and education that our species has ever faced.

I reject any idea that requires the suspension (or compartmentalization) of critical thought. I distrust any system that can look down on reason as a lesser thing than assertion or faith. I oppose any view which has the inherent ability to allow it’s adherents to pretend that there is some inferiority between the genders, or asserts that a person’s sexual preference marks them out as evil or damaged. Perhaps most importantly I recognize that to decry these acts and attitudes while supporting belief systems that promote and profess them is hypocrisy.

How does atheism promote unity and acceptance you ask? It doesn’t, not on its own anyway. Atheism is a gateway, it’s the path to the acceptance of the fact that there’s no magic secret, no ghost in the machine. At its finest, in my opinion, Atheism should lead to the twin truths of Humanism and Rationalism. It should lead a person to understand that only through the acceptance of evidence, the cultivation of knowledge and the taking of considered and rational action can anything of worth actually be accomplished.

Quite simply acceptance and inclusion are encouraged by accepting responsibility for ourselves and our world and by levelling the playing field, making the criteria for “truth” and “right” the same for everyone. Humanism shows us that we are the architects of our reality; that change, reform, and salvation must come not from some outside source but from ourselves.  Rationalism requires that we open ourselves to accepting reason and science as our guides. By these methods we are more likely to take proactive steps, and come to more uniform and consistent conclusions. Thus we are more in control of our circumstances and more united ideologically. By holding to testable, verifiable truth rather than declared (and utterly subjective) divine revelation, we declare ourselves open to having our views challenged and our conclusions falsified. These ideals can only lead to a more elevated group consciousness and a more cooperative, peaceful coexistence with our fellow humans. When we base our views on reason rather than faith it helps us to see the world for what it is, it allows us to better match our solutions to the actual world.

There are those who advocate pretending beliefs don’t matter or that all opinions and ideas are equally valid and plausible. This is their answer for and guiding our species into the future, to just let anyone think whatever they like and to pretend that beliefs don’t have consequences.  It seems to me however that the best way to unite, uplift and heal our species, and our world is to judge our ideas, our beliefs and our actions by the light of fact and the criteria of reason and commonsense.

Fun with “FunMod”s

             There’s a term that myself and some others have recently begun using: “Fundamentalist Moderate” (or FunMod for short.) I mentioned them in my last article “Definition Swap” but I see so much of this kind of thinking that I feel  they and their attitudes warrant a more thorough exploration.  A FunMod can identify as either a theist or a non-theist but in practice they’re neither. Their concern is with a radicalized form of moderation that declares that all experience and truth are subjective. They believe that every viewpoint is valid, but more than that they assert that every viewpoint is equally as valid as every other.

Consider what that outlook really means, ask yourself this: are the hollow earth theory and the theory of gravity equally valid propositions? Should evolution and faith healing be given equal weight?  Are crystal therapy and conventional medicine on the same level of veracity?   A position based on evidence, logic, and probability is not the equal of one based solely on subjective wishes or fanciful  interpretations of a handful of old books, or on anyone’s personal relationship with the universe. Truth is only true if you can verify it, if you can point to some objective reason why it’s true.

These people defend all religious belief and cultural attitudes as harmless, and declare that it is actions, not beliefs that should be condemned. As an example, they would say that the suicide bomber who detonates himself in the name of Allah is solely to blame for the destruction he causes, that he has perverted the spirit of the religion. Of course you would have to ignore the specific injunctions to do violence and the prescribed rewards for doing so in the religion’s text to take that position, but these Fundamentalist Moderates don’t seem to have any problem with that.

They’ve constructed an artificial boundary between belief and action as though our thoughts do not inform our behaviours. The fact of the matter is that what we think effects what we do. If you believed that your actions were justified, and even mandated by what you consider the ultimate authority what actions wouldn’t you take? Isn’t it clear that the belief, if it is genuine, must result in action, or at least (albeit often tacit) support of that action?  How can anyone pretend that that isn’t a consideration?

The FunMods will chorus “Blame the person not the belief” but which person do you blame? Do you blame just the bomber, or the bomber and his imam?  Do you blame the culture that produces them, or the religion that dictates the form of that culture? Would that suicide bomber have detonated himself if he hadn’t been indoctrinated for years with stories of paradise and sacrifice, of god and his demands for complete faith and global conquest? Maybe he would have.  I don’t think so, but regardless we can agree on the fact that the largest group of suicide bombers are religious can’t we? Religion not only is the motivation it demands to be recognized as the motivation and purpose for everything. To pretend otherwise is to close your eyes to an unpleasant truth because you don’t like it.

To me this way of thinking is at least as dangerous as fundamentalist theism. Why dangerous you ask? The answer is: because superficially this kind of relativistic thinking sounds inclusive, high minded, and politically correct. It comes across as open-minded, peaceful, and it removes all need for conflict. In short it’s the kind of doctrine that people will be quick to adopt without thinking through all of its consequences. The simple fact is if you declare all truth subjective you remove any mechanism for debate or reform and destroy any incentive to study or learn. What’s more, you make study and learning all but impossible, just as you make all science, engineering and construction impossible.  After all under this type of thinking who is to say that a foot is really twelve inches? Or that 2+2 isn’t 5?

The fact that these people don’t or won’t see the dangers inherent in religious thinking is a matter of serious concern in my opinion, yet it’s not the only one. Another concern is that thought processes matter. Why we think things is important, the “how”s of arriving at truth are important. If you can accept that every proposition is valid you lack the ability to make substantive judgements. If you can claim that evolution and creationism, for instance, are equally valid you lack the ability to reason logically. A growth in this kind of thinking bodes poorly for the future regardless of which myth system is dominant.

The fundamentalist theist declares that their faith is the one and only truth, that their holy doctrine are the blueprint for right living and that deviating from that truth is sin and blasphemy punishable in various ways. They declare that their truth is absolutely the only truth. In their own way the FunMod is worse, they declare that there IS no truth, that truth is illusion and only opinion has any meaning.

It is vital for people to recognize that there are objective truths and it can be dangerous to pretend there are not. Objective truths are the real, meaningful, satisfying truths which let us grow, invent and expand ourselves. They’re the truths that lead to knowledge, understanding, and true wisdom. That’s not to say that subjective truth doesn’t have its role to play. In fact, Subjective truth may be the seat of individuality and perhaps even creativity I suppose but Objective truth is the throne of reason, the domain of science, it safeguards us from baseless assertion and provides a touchstone which unites us all.

Be wary of any viewpoint that tries so hard to be inclusive that it includes even the most inane of concepts. Do not become so enamoured of tolerance that you tolerate willful blindness and purposeful obfuscation. Don’t pretend to believe that atrocity and hatred is just a misunderstood cultural expression or that it’s you who’s in the wrong when you judge it evil to oppress your own people because of their sex. Don’t pretend you don’t know there’s a truth just because some people are offended by it. Have the courage to recognize that your feelings don’t define existence, and humbly approach reality on its terms and you’ll begin to learn how and why things really work.

Definition Swap

There is a large and multi-pronged effort out there to define certain words in such varied and nebulous terms as to rob them of any concrete meaning whatsoever. The word in particular I want to address is “God” but it is not alone, “Truth” is another excellent example of the sort of selective redefinition I’m talking about. Both of these words are used so often, and in so many differing, contradictory, and utterly subjective ways that one could be forgiven for thinking that they don’t actually have objective definitions at all.

I say one could be forgiven, but never excused; misinformation no matter how well meant or innocent of intention should never be excused, it must be unapologetically corrected. “God” with a capital “G” can safely be defined (at least by the dictionaries I checked) as “The one supreme being, creator and ruler of the universe.” The concept of “God” is a creation of the Old Testament, which is the defining and original source of the idea of monotheism. It is responsible for the very idea of a single all-knowing all-powerful deity. Before its advent the capitalized “God” did not exist. Before its spread the only concept of deity was that of “god” (note the lowercase) or rather of “gods”. These were lesser, limited creatures with finite abilities and knowledge. This word “god” is a word you don’t really see much in the world anymore, having been largely stamped out by the proponents of its capitalized cousin.

As I said in the opening the effort to change the definition of God is multi-pronged. Pantheists like to claim things like “God is the universe!” while moderate Christians or fundamentalist moderates like to say “God is love” or “God is the best parts of ourselves” and spiritualists and mysticists add to the clamour with “God is energy!” and “God is the laughter of little children” or whatever you like in substitution. They all have different definitions, or redefinitions, but their motivations for changing the definition are all basically the same.

I do not think that the perpetrators of this definition sleight of hand choose their words at random. I think that the words “God” and “Truth” were chosen for very specific reasons. The word “God” morphed from its true definition referring to the all-powerful monotheist god Yahweh to become the anthropomorphized spirit of every good thing once people began to recognize the unquestionable monstrousness of the original character. As we advanced as a species we learned more, we grew more moral and more sociable and unsurprisingly the personality of God laid out in the Old Testament lost its luster for some. Rather than move on from the mythology entirely however some simply kept the parts of god they liked, and discarded the rest. The evolution of the definition of God is exactly the same sort of selective interpretation that fundamentalist moderates use when deciding which parts of their various holy books to advocate and which to dismiss.

Now we come to the second word I mentioned, another victim of constant redefinition and rebranding, the word “Truth”. This word we hear all the time, and most of us would probably say we have a good idea of what it means. I think it’s fair to say that at its simplest and most direct truth means “that which is in accordance with reality or fact.” This definition of truth is the basis of all knowledge, scholarship, science, and critical inquiry. It’s what makes mathematics work, it’s what makes planes fly…and there are large groups of people in the world who want you to believe that it doesn’t exist. They’ll tell you the all truth is subjective. They’ll say that we each have our own truths and that they are all equally true and all equally valid. “It is overly simplistic,” they’ll chorus, “to assume that something is false just because there is contradictory evidence.” If there is no objective standard for truth, if everything is true then there is no basis for criticism and no mechanism for challenge or reform. This is exactly the type of atmosphere religion and theism in general require to not just survive but thrive.

So with “God” safely sanitized to fit their particular attitudes or proclivities and “Truth” relegated to the realm of opinion it becomes impossible say that ANY definition is incorrect because it is true to them. So the pantheist who declares that the universe is God is just as right as the fundamentalist moderate who says that god is love. It is faith without conviction, it is Old Testament fan fiction.

A lot of atheists will be quick to say “the bible isn’t evidence.” I do it myself all the time. Yet I will concede that the bible is better evidence than your unsubstantiated personal relationship with infinity. Subjective truths are very real and very valid, we all have them. A rational reasonable person learns to differentiate between the subjective truths of their individual reality and reach deeper to the fundamental real objective truths of reality.