Kevin DeGraaf’s Blog

Austin Cline has posted an excellent article about the myth of atheistic intolerance, and that has led me to think about my own position on the matter. I have been accused on many occasions of being too harsh, too dismissive, and/or too mocking toward religion. One such complainant explicitly denounced my position as being that of “fundamentalist” atheism (an appellation which is self-evidently logically incoherent). Other correspondents have urged me to be less disrespectful toward their blind-faith positions.

While I have tried to direct my reproachful critique toward theism itself, rather than at individual theists (”you have a silly belief” vs. “you are a silly person”), my experience has been that religious adherents, whose very identity is linked almost inextricably to their faith, seem to be unable or unwilling to recognize that distinction.

Christianity occupies a position of power in this country, and that fact has given rise to a widespread popular consensus that Christianity should enjoy an exemption from scrutiny. Any criticism of its doctrine, any suggestion that it might be inconsistent with reality, any idea which threatens to displace “faith” from its privileged position as the defining characteristic of one’s entire worldview — these and other insinuations are virtually guaranteed to cause an immediate, swift defensive reaction. I’m intolerant, I’m disrespectful, I’m closed-minded, I’m hateful, I’m an evil fundy. The list goes on and on, and the common theme is that I should just shut up and stop criticizing religion.

Hell, no.

I will not refrain from calling religion exactly what it is: medieval, superstitious, incoherent nonsense, incompatible with reality, dreamed up by scared human beings seeking explanation and comfort, encouraged by opportunistic humans seeking to control others, and used in furtherance of all manner of evil ends (opposing science, oppressing women and gays, causing holy wars, promoting in-group/out-group divisions, killing defenseless children, cheating the gullible, and scaring people into compliance through the grotesque absurdity that is the doctrine of hell, to name just a few examples).

I do not, will not, and indeed cannot show any deference toward a belief system that seeks to undermine reason itself to make room for the acceptance of unprovable and, in many cases, downright ludicrous propositions.

You Christians know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all other religions are full of crap. You know that Islam and Mormonism and Hinduism and all the others are complete nonsense because (1) your own doctrines say so, and (2) your rational mind is free to come to that obvious conclusion because it is not blinded by any Muslim or Mormon or Hindu dogma.

What you need to realize is that Christianity is no different. Burning bushes and wine-conjuring, donkey-stealing, fig-tree-smiting, virgin-impregnating superheroes are no more rational than flying horses and magical golden plates.  Religion is both utterly absurd and ominously dangerous, and those of us who recognize this owe your ideology no deference whatsoever.

I was hit hard by the flu this week. I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday stuck at home, hanging on for dear life as my body took radical steps to rid itself of these wonderful little guests. Many of my extended family members have had the flu recently, and as one of them aptly put it, “you want to DIE but can’t!”. I was able to return to work today and confront the mountain of tasks that had piled up, but if past illnesses are any guide, I won’t be at 100% for another week or so.

I thought it would be fitting to use part of my illness-induced downtime to start reading a new book: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins (yes, that Dawkins).

Can any cdesign proponentsists explain to me why any intelligent engineer would create bodies that are vulnerable to viruses, or that defend against them in such grotesque ways as vomiting, diarrhea, fever and malaise (preferably without any cop-outs that involve talking snakes and naked ladies)?

Also, today being “Good” Friday, I would like to bring to your attention this post at The Learned Pig.  Excerpt:

What’s so “good” about a Friday that commemorates someone being nailed to a piece of wood and left to die?

Hudsonville, Michigan, where I attended high school, has attracted media attention over its mission statement:

The City Commission and Administration of the City of Hudsonville strive to serve God through the strengthening of family and community life and are committed to excellence in providing quality municipal services.

The city’s position was defended by the Grand Rapids Press.

I just sent an email to the city’s mayor, Donald VanDoeselaar:

As a former resident of Hudsonville, I’m disappointed to see the city espouse such flagrant disregard for the bedrock Constitutional principle of separation between religion and government.

Our country is a secular democratic republic, not a theocracy. Everyone is free to worship any deity, or no deity, as he/she sees fit. The proper role of the government is to attend to civic business, not to favor any establishments of religion.

If you want to worship an invisible man in the sky, that’s your business, but you have no right to officially endorse such belief in your capacity as a public official, or to use taxpayer funds to promote such an endorsement.

(Hat tip to Austin Cline.)

Mitt Romney is a douchebag.

Exhibit A: As a member of a religion so insane that Christianity looks somewhat rational by comparison, Mitt had to perform a careful tap dance two months ago on the subject of faith. Had he emphasized his Mormonism too strongly, or taken the alternate path of overly downplaying the importance of his religion, Romney would have alienated the slack-jawed mouth-breathers of the Religious Right (a crucial segment of the Republican electorate). Behold, the power of political pandering:

Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

How wonderfully generic. “Vote for me — I believe in a Big Sky Daddy (TM) just like you do! (Sort of…) We’re not so different, you and I, especially compared to those damn dirty atheists.”

As a decidedly non-religious person, I was surprised to learn that I oppose freedom. I must be a part of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy (TM) to overthrow democracy. Hmmmm.

Exhibit B: Good riddance — the crazy Moron Mormon is withdrawing his presidential bid. Rather than bowing out with the grace, style and decorum one might naively expect from a would-be leader of the free world, good ‘ol Mitt got off a particularly sanctimonious parting shot:

“Frankly, I’d be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win” if he stayed in the race, he said. “I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

Is this asshat actually implying that electing a Democratic president would be surrendering to terrorism? Unfortunately, the implication is quite unmistakable.

News flash, genius: damn near everybody (except for the stupidest one-fifth or so of the country, i.e. the uber-loyal Republican base that overlaps neatly with the aforementioned Religious Right) has figured out that the Republican occupation of Iraq was, to put it gently, a colossal clusterfuck that has ended up creating far more terrorists and anti-American sentiment than ever before.  The “vote for us or TEH TERRORISTS WILL 9/11 GET US!!!!!!!!!!! 9/11 OMGWTF9/11BBQ!!!!!” line of bull is wearing very, very thin.

The people rest their case.

A certain dangerous cult is currently being Google-bombed, and I am more than happy to help expose this dangerous cult by creating repeated links that say “dangerous cult” and point to a dangerous cult.

All religious belief is irrational, but Scientology is straight-up insane and evil.

CNN has posted an article stating that “Utility crews have nearly completed restoring power to homes and businesses in Oklahoma, where as many as 600,000 customers were blacked out by last week’s storm.”

What do you suppose this article’s headline was? “Oklahoma power nearly restored”? “Utility crews work tirelessly in Oklahoma?” “Oklahoma storm damage mostly repaired”? Nope: “Prayers answered in Oklahoma“.

Underneath the headline, where you might expect to see a halfway-relevant stock photo (perhaps a downed power line or an iced-over utility pole), they showed a child praying.

What happened to responsible, fact-based journalism? Isn’t the point of the news to, I don’t know, actually investigate the situation and report what happened? Is there any evidence whatsoever that prayer (as opposed to utility crews busting ass, around-the-clock, out in the cold) actually accomplished anything?

It’s one thing to have a quiet personal worldview that attributes every positive event to “God did it!”, but for a major “news” outlet to trumpet that opinion as the headline of a story boggles my mind.

Maybe CNN’s next headline could read “Magic 8-Ball saves stranded family” or “Zeus sends the stock market soaring”…

The following blog post was brought to my attention this morning: Should Women Discuss Doctrinal Issues Amongst Each Other?

I do not feel that women should be recieving teachings, drawing conclusions and beliefs in areas of doctrine, nor trying to teach other woman (or men!) in areas of theology. [...]

If you as a wife are off studying things for yourself and coming to your own conclusions without the direction, blessing and oversight of her husband, it can easily lead to disunity in the marriage along with the wife feeling superior to her husband and overriding his authority. It can also easily lead to the wife being led astray and decieved.

The primitive, backwards misogyny of these statements left me reeling in disgust. The moral Zeitgeist that lives within civilized society has made tremendous progress since biblical times, and one of the central themes of this post-religious enlightenment is that all people, regardless of gender, deserve freedom of thought, expression, and actions. This principle stands in stark contrast to the biblical sentiments expressed by the author of that post. (The Christian denomination in which I was raised almost tore itself apart over these same issues a decade ago.)

As moral humans in the twenty-first century, we need to emphatically reject any ideology, dogma, or worldview that asserts that some people deserve less freedom simply because they happen to be of a certain gender or race.

As I mentioned, when I read that blog post, my first reactions were anger, disgust, and even pity — after all, if it weren’t for religion, this woman would not feel burdened by archaic, misogynistic dogma and could feel free to express her opinions, on any subject, without subjecting them to the verification of her “man” first.

But now that I’ve thought about it for a while, I’ve decided that I simply don’t care. To each, his/her own. If this woman is so wrapped up in baseless delusion that she wants to ignore the progress of morality over the last two millennia and instead infantilize herself by clinging to a “sacred” text that commands her to be submissive to her husband, fine. Let her persist in her self-created mental prison. She doesn’t deserve our pity.

It has been requested that I prepare Christmas wish lists. I’m posting them here for the convenience of friends and family, but I wouldn’t turn down unsolicited gifts from blog-reading strangers, either.

Thinkgeek

Amazon

(And, for the record: no, I don’t think it’s hypocritical for atheists to celebrate Christmas. Celebrations of the winter solstice have been practiced far longer than has Christianity, which just co-opted these festivals and inserted mythology about a magical baby. In any event, the modern Christmas holiday is thoroughly secular anyway — trees, lights, cookies, shopping, Jingle Bells, Santa Claus, and flying reindeer don’t carry much religious significance.)

I thought I’d share a recent reply to a particularly irritating godbot:

It sounded to me that you were saying that the burden of proof was on the Christian for stating positively, “God exists.” and that the Atheist who states negatively, “God does not exist.” is under no obligation to support his/her statement as truth

I do not assert that “God does not exist”. As a general rule, atheism is simply the lack of belief in deities.

There are some atheists who make a positive assertion that there definitely is no God. These so-called “positive” atheists typically support this claim by pointing out that certain properties attributed to the Christian God are logically incompatible, e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.

While they make a good point, I espouse the “negative” atheist position, which rejects the positive assertion that there is a God (on the grounds that no reliable evidence has been presented in support of that claim) without making the opposite positive assertion (that deities absolutely do not exist).

In other words, your Christian God is just another name on a very long list, one which includes Allah, Buddha, Zeus, Thor, Baal, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, and that leprechaun on boxes of Lucky Charms.

These mythical entities cannot be proven to exist, nor can they be proven not to exist; either way, the response of any rational person is to withhold belief in them, until and unless supporting evidence comes to light.

I reject the claim that the Bible is the inspired word of a holy god. As a result, according to several people with whom I’ve had ever-so-enjoyable dialogues, I have no basis for morality. One even went to far as to say that without belief in a god, “sexually violating a three-month-old girl is as morally value-free as brushing your teeth”.

What would it be like if I did base my morality on the Bible? From a recent post at God Is For Suckers!, we can get a general idea:

• The punishment of all women because Eve dared to eat from the Tree of Knowledge
• The destruction of nearly every living thing, because God got it in his head that “the wickedness of man was great”
• Completely uncriticized slave-banging and otherwise legitimizing slavery as a legal activity
• A Bible hero offering up his virginal daughters to an angry mob (and them subsequently raping him)
• God insisting that Abraham be willing to stab his son to death on a sacrificial altar, and surely traumatizing the kid in the process
• Members of the YHWH’s favorite family avenging a single act of rape by tricking an entire city of men into getting circumcised and then killing them all
• After killing a young man the Lord deems wicked, killing his brother for not wanting to impregnate his sister-in-law
• God randomly trying to kill his right-hand man, Moses
• The plague after plague unleashed on the Egyptians - including the slaves and animals - because God hardened Pharaoh’s heart so he wouldn’t let the Israelites go and have a picnic in His honor. And making an annual celebration of the killing of every firstborn Egyptian.
• Yahweh claiming ownership of every firstborn male, including of the human variety, with the seeming implication that he wants them sacrificed in his honor
• Meting out punishment not only on infidels, but on three or four generations of their offspring
• Repeated calls to execute people who work on the Sabbath
• A 9/11-sized massacre of fellow Israelites because they dance around a golden idol
• Endless descriptions of reasons and methods for absolving human sins by ritually sacrificing animals, including rituals where one animal is soaked in the blood of its butchered brethren
• The Good Lord burning two children alive for lighting some incense, and then forbidding their father - His #1 priest - from grieving the loss