You’ll probably have to go to the actual website to read this, but i thought it would be pretty appropriate for lightening the mood around here.
My Big Bro posed a question to me in a comment on the last blog post, and i decided my response necessitated a new post. So, to recap, the question was:
I’m curious as to why you have [been reading so many books about religion] and what you’ve come up with.
Well, i guess it started because i began reading the atheist blog Unreasonable Faith, which led me to watch some YouTube videos featuring Richard Dawkins, and the stuff he had to say gave me a lot of hope that maybe other people see things the way i do. So i read The God Delusion, and i got a lot of flack for it, since Dawkins is apparently “arrogant” and his ideas are “illogical.” Thus, i’ve picked up other Atheist books in order to broaden my knowledge on the subject, though i’m still getting through the big NY Times bestsellers, and some might argue that they’re more sensational then sensible.
I think they’re brilliant. But at the same time i’m getting tired of hearing the parts about how the Bible features all sorts of cruelty and contradicts itself anyway. I’m not really interested in the Bible. I’m interested in God and why people cling to the idea of his existence despite a complete lack of evidence.
People will look at some little coincidence in their own life as “evidence” for God’s existence, and overlook all the times they’ve prayed for stuff that didn’t happen or – what i think is the biggest point of all – the question of why God would have made us at all, just to jump through his little hoops and heap praise upon him and join him in the playground of Heaven after our trial-run on Earth. People just want existence to have meaning and death not to be final. But they don’t consider that life might be just as stunningly beautiful without a divine plan, and that death might be just as easy to deal with if we realize that we’ll be only as aware of our state after death as we were before we were born.
Also, people think that without God there’s no reason to be good. But first of all, there are millions of people who have committed atrocities in the name of God throughout history, and millions who continue to do so to this day; bombing abortion clinics, toppling the Twin Towers, genitally mutilating girls and baby boys, burning women alive for the crimes of their brothers. Teaching their children to feel guilt and shame. And those who choose to be more like Jesus have done just that – made a choice. If you can choose to follow Jesus rather than the God of the Old Testament, you can figure out for yourself that it’s not okay to cheat and steal and kill.
I’ve gotten pretty passionate about all this, because 1. i’ve been judged negatively and held at arm’s length by certain people just for standing up and owning up to being an atheist. I agree with Dawkins that atheists need to speak up and come out of the closet so that people can put their stigmas to rest, as we’ve all made strides toward doing with respect to gays. There’s something wrong with the fact that atheists pretty much cannot get elected to the highest offices in this nation. And 2. i really think that people are missing out on some important stuff in life by deluding themselves with the idea of the importance of God. We can be good people and stop fearing death and enjoy life to the fullest and connect deeply with one another without attributing everything to some imaginary entity watching over us like Santa Claus. We’re not children anymore, so why cling to such a juvenile point of view?
I just finished a book called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett, which was suggested to me by Nathan, who read an article about it and thought it would be right up my alley. It’s the memoir of a Christian missionary and linguist who spent many years among a tribe in the Amazon called the Pirahã, studying their unusual language and trying to teach them about Jesus. They ended up inspiring him to become an atheist, but the book doesn’t really focus on that fact.
It’s largely about the language, and the culture that influences it. The Pirahã have no words for numbers or colors, and the author and his family failed to teach them how to count to ten in Portuguese in eight months of instruction. There are other absurdities about the language which undermine Noam Chomsky’s theories about linguistics. The second half of the book goes on about this a bit much, but it was interesting nonetheless.
While only a small portion of the book is dedicated to the discussion of religion, the final sentence of the book suggests that what he observed about the lack of religion among the Pirahã may be the most important thing he learned from them over the decades spent among the tribe. I neglected to write it down, but it goes something like, “The Pirahã are happier and more stable than any Christian or other religious person that i have ever known.” What little Everett does say about religion and the objectives of missionaries is eye-opening, and terribly interesting.
I also finished The End of Faith by Sam Harris this month. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Dawkins’s The God Delusion. It made its own good points, but i felt that the discussion of “spirituality” (which is really an allusion to extreme concentration achieved through meditation and altered states of perception from drugs, but nothing having to do with a metaphysical spirit) was rather irrelevant and confusing. I think Harris should have left that for another book on so-called atheist spirituality. I’m trying to read such a book right now, and it seems so far to just be a defense of certain aspects of religion.
I’m also reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I was hesitant to pick it up, since Hitchens seems rather arrogant in the videos i’ve checked out on YouTube, but i figured i’ve read two books by the so-called Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse, so i might as well keep going. The book is well written and illustrates with jaw-dropping fact after fact how religion really does poison everything. (And that’s the subtitle, not my own assertion. Though i’m beginning to agree whole-heartedly.) And we’re talking present-day stuff, not just the Crusades and Inquisition and all that.
Something like what my feet look like
I was hoping to post my own actual x-ray here, but the medical records department hasn’t gotten back to me yet. I went to a podiatrist on Tuesday, and they took x-rays of my feet and told me what i pretty much already knew: that the only solution to my bunion problem is surgery. The pain went away as soon as i’d made my appointment, however, so i don’t plan to have surgery until it becomes a chronic issue.
I’ve started back up with running and i’ve been set back a little for not running in three weeks, which is only a little disappointing since the weather has been cold and crappy in that time anyway. Now, hopefully, spring is here to stay and i’ll be taking some real strides in getting back up to running three+ miles at a go.
In other news: VEISHEA is this weekend – let’s hope it’s not as rainy and cold as it was last year. The painting class is almost over and i have a long way to go on my last painting. I’m not loving it quite as much as i’d hoped i would.
I’m more than halfway through The God Delusion and i absolutely loved the first three chapters. The fourth chapter is the central argument of the book, and it goes something like this: If you believe that the complexity of the things found in nature implies that there had to have been an intelligent designer, then you must also ask ‘who designed that designer,’ because such a designer would necessarily have to have been an even more complex entity. I think it makes perfect sense, but the whole idea of God is metaphysical, magical – it has nothing to do with reason, and that’s exactly why – unfortunately – it can’t really be argued with.
I think there are plenty of great arguments for Atheism, and all of them are thoroughly covered in the book, i’m just not sure why Dawkins chose this one as his cornerstone. I’m reading currently about why morality and ‘goodness’ are inherent in human understanding and not reliant upon religious convictions, and that’s one point i really wish more religious people could understand. That, along with why the atheistic life is just as meaningful and worth living as one dictated by religion.
Sorry about this post going completely from one topic to another. These are just the things that have been rolling around in my head lately, i guess.
Ahh, it was a lovely, lovely weekend. Saturday night Nathan and i got all dressed up and he brought me roses and took me out for a nice dinner before Grant & Renee’s semi-formal cocktail party. I’m still waiting on photos, but hopefully i’ll have something to show from that event before too many weeks pass. It was fun–i got pretty tipsy and said some silly things, but it wasn’t the first time.
Seeing each other every-other day just isn’t cutting it for us anymore, so Nathan and i went out again last night. We went to see Religulous, which was nothing if not entertaining.
Commedian Bill Maher says it’s time for we who doubt to speak up about it, so i suppose i’ll go ahead and voice my opinion on the film.
First of all, I’m pretty certain this film isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about what they believe. Religion is deep-seated, and I haven’t come across any particular creative work yet that i think could single-handedly change a person’s entire outlook on life. Atheists and Agnostics generally seem to think that the way they see things is so obviously correct that they fail to open anyone’s eyes by really exploring and working out the questions. Secular works tend instead to tout a certain point of view as fact the same way religion does.
This particular documentary, being conducted by a commedian, is certainly entertaining for those of us who already understand where he’s coming from, but i think the way the questions were asked was moreso poking fun at people than really trying to understand what they believe and why. He interviewed people who seem to take their religion to the extreme–Televangelists, the self-proclaimed reincarnation of Christ, a man who helps homosexuals become heterosexual (and although he was himself gay once does not believe that anyone is inherently gay), a man who portrays Jesus at a theme park in Israel, etc. I’d be interested in hearing more from the theologians and the average people on the street.
I’d love to see this movie turned into a television series, because i think that Maher made a good point in the end–that religion is really the cause of most of the death and destruction in the world–but didn’t illustrate that point thoroughly enough. It was a fun film that came to a sobering conclusion, and it seemed slightly disjointed. I see the connection, but it wasn’t really shown to me. The idea that people must be skeptical of religious ideas because of the tragedy that we really create or allow to be created in the name of God reminded me of Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith, of which i’ve only read a couple chapters. It’s a heavy topic, but horribly important.
Interesting points raised by the movie:
- Most people agree that the gospels of Mormonism and Scientology are ridiculous. God is a human being who lives on another planet..? There are aliens inside all of us called Thetans?? But we accept the stories of Christianity whole-heartedly: A virgin birth. Rising from the dead. Talking snakes and burning bushes. Aren’t those equally ridiculous?
- The story of Christ is older than Christ. It bears striking similarity to the stories of prophets of older religions. I’d never heard this before. A carpenter born on the 25th of December to a virgin performed miracles, had twelve apostles, was killed and then rose from the dead. Nope, not Jesus Christ, but an ancient Egyptian myth.
- Atheism is a luxury. When you’re in real peril–hiding in a foxhole, for example–you reach out for whatever gives you comfort, and in almost all cases that is God, in one form or another. A higher power. We who have little to fear may have the luxury of not clinging to something greater than ourselves. I’ve noticed this lately, but never heard it put quite this way. It makes sense.
Personally, i’ve seen and heard plenty that paints religion in general as being pretty much ridiculous. I agree with it, and apparently about 16% of people now agree with it. But i still feel like part of a very small minority that thinks that the idea of God or a great spirit or a higher power of any sort is probably also ridiculous. I want to hear people talk about the root of this thing, which is God. Is it really only fear that drives people to believe?