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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... I didn’t like the emptiness, the disconnectedness, the lack of direction and the prospect of it all ending when I die. It wasn’t long before … I was glad to be back under the umbrella of my faith.” An honest statement, but nothing to do with God. Reich tells us that he is a believer not because he has proof of God’s existence, but because he does not like the alternative. Good, evil and self-preservation Let’s be honest. The Democrats didn’t win the election, the Republican-in-Chief lost it. George W at least has a vision, no matter how awkwardly he articulates it. Make the world more American, make rich Americans richer and ignore the bleating of those whose lives and livelihoods are destroyed in the process. Who won? Others might see inconsistency, but I was proud of these changes. At school I had learnt that if I was intellectually honest, my perspective on the world would change as new information shed light on the old. The swing of the pendulum People whose primary motives are altruistic - driven by outside needs - tend to seek out new information and change their attitudes and opinions accordingly. People who are primarily driven by internal needs tend to seek out information that corroborates their pre-existing beliefs. This has nothing to do with political perspective - both liberals and conservatives can be open or rigid in their thinking. Ann Coulter doesn't bother me If I am lucky, I will spend the next fifty years avoiding disease and disaster and spend my last days with a companion and a few friends in a small town far from violence and relatively untouched by environmental degradation. The world may be falling into chaos around me, but as the Brits once put it, “I’m all right, Jack”. |
Column 105 Pain and loss The inevitability of suffering By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 797 words Publication date: April 29, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. Suffering is universal to sentient beings. In fact, suffering – a physical or psychological reaction to actual, perceived or potential harm – cannot exist without awareness of oneself. As far as we can discern, the extent to which any being is capable of suffering is directly related to the extent of its self-awareness. More complex beings are probably subject to much greater suffering than simpler beings and simpler beings are almost certainly unaffected by pyschological suffering. An insect’s reaction to the loss of a leg is therefore considerably less than a primate’s reaction to a similar loss. A young puppy or kitten suffers when suddenly deprived of its mother but it is unlikely that baby fish or spiders notice the absence of either parent. Among animals, humans appear to have the greatest capacity for suffering. We not only feel physical or psychological pain when a distressing event occurs, but we may experience suffering on others’ behalf. We can also anticipate suffering. It is that vulnerability which makes the threat of torture particularly effective. “If you do not tell me what you know, we will hurt you or your loved ones.” Although at root all suffering is the same, each of us suffers differently. And the likelihood that we will suffer depends very much on where we are. In comparison to the hundreds of millions of people who live in misery, threatened by starvation, warfare and disease, most of those reading this column live in relative peace and comfort. We are unfamiliar with starvation or prolonged pain; we have not witnessed either man-made explosions or natural disasters, nor seen our family or friends slaughtered by mad gunmen or soldiers acting in the name of some government or insurgency. We can only imagine – and perhaps our imagination fails us – the plight of a woman in Darfur living in a refugee camp whose physical needs are being met, but whose husband was murdered, whose eldest son has disappeared and whose youngest child is crying endlessly from malaria. That does not mean we do not suffer in our own way. The woman in Columbus, Ohio, who is on the edge of a nervous breakdown because her husband is emotionally cold, the business she runs is facing bankruptcy and her eldest son is experimenting with heroin is undoubtedly suffering, On an objective scale, the African woman has undergone much more trauma than the American and her suffering may indeed be greater. Yet it may be the American who suffers more because she is less capable of enduring the emotional pain that overwhelms her. However much we suffer, and whatever the cause, at the end of the day, we know that between our first birth cry, or possibly earlier, and our last breath all human beings inevitably suffer. It is this inevitability and the fact that it has no rational cause, which allows religion to co-opt suffering and make it central to its false promise. According to the two most popular religions, Islam (which means “submission”) and Christianity suffering is God’s will. Practicing Jews are less likely to see God’s active hand behind suffering and are more likely to be of the opinion that the deity’s decision to allow suffering can never be understood. Hindus see suffering as punishment for misdeeds in past lives. Buddhism, which evolved from Hinduism, does not reject this view but places additional emphasis on the idea that suffering comes from attachment - if we were not attached to our family, our wealth or our physical selves, we would not suffer when deprived of them. Of all these viewpoints, the most rational is the Buddhist: suffering only ceases when our sense of self ceases. The least acceptable viewpoint to the rational mind are the fundamentalist Christian and Muslim. The idea that suffering is God’s will – and in its most perverted form, that God’s love is expressed through physical or psychological pain – allows Islamic terrorists to kill with impunity and Christian meddlers to deny the right to die to those who wracked by incurable painful disease. Those extremes aside, it can be argued that the illusion of faith brings comfort to those who suffer severely – the parent whose child has died young, the individual who is severely disabled. The promise of paradise provides compensation and anesthetizes the pain. But that argument is patronizing. If we are to reach our full development as human beings we have to accept the reality that suffering will always be part of our lives and most of the time there is neither consciousness nor reason behind the pain we feel. Suffering is integral to the human condition. But only fools or sadists welcome it in the name of a mythical deity. As rational beings our response must be to minimize it whenever possible, in ourselves and others.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. The 2007 General Assembly of the International Humanist and Ethical Union will held in Turin, Italy on June 17 and 18. To register, apply by May 16. More information and registration here The number of new Southern Baptists is falling. In 1950, SBers baptized one person for every 19 church members. That ratio dropped to one for every 43 church members in 2003. In October 2005 Southern Baptist Convention president, Bobby Welch, set a goal of 1 million baptisms in the following 12 months. Nine months later, 258 of the 43,465 churches reported they had held 3,494 baptisms. If all churches baptized at the same rate over the twelve month period, the church would have achieved 784,000 new members. Rational minds suspect that the actual number baptized was much lower. Source: here An earlier GWBAA column encouraged British readers to sign an online petition demanding an end to government funding of faith schools. It appears that a similar petition has gathered significantly more signatures. British citizens and residents who want to sign this second petition can find it at http://petitions. pm.gov.uk/faithschools/. The petition also has its own website: www.banfaithschools. org.uk. The current volume of signatories stands at over 12,800, making it the fifteenth most popular petition at the site. This would be great news but a pro-faith schools petition (with 16,715 signatories) is the eleventh most popular petition at the site. Information from the Brights: www.the-brights.net 
God: The Failed Hypothesis How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist "Physicist Victor Stenger has just served up a second course of delectable arguments for the non-existence of God. In his latest book God: The Failed Hypothesis, Stenger runs through the standard rational and biological arguments against any sort of meaningful deity, but he does much more. In plain, easily understood language, Stenger lays out the evidence from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics showing that the universe appears exactly as it should if there is no creator." from the Skeptics Society; read more at www.skeptic.com |
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