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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 Your support for advertisers helps to provide an income for this website. All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... With no first-hand evidence of Jesus’ existence and with circumstantial evidence either missing or contradictory, it is reasonable to doubt that he ever existed. Which means that celebration of his birth lies somewhere on a scale between misguided and hypocritical. Whose birthday is it anyway? As regular readers know, I’m not a fan of children in general. One of the biggest mistakes in my life was the sixteen or so years that I spent as an infant and child. Mom loves you so much... In a free society, the behavior of individual adults is of no concern to the state or their neighbors, as long as that behavior respects the freedom of others and as long as the vulnerable are protected. I have no more objection to Christians worshipping God than I do to marijuana smokers, model railroaders or students of Klingon. One person's moderation... Ok, Yahweh, we get the point. Having usurped your father El and siblings Baal and Asherah, you’re still not secure in your position as The One And Only God. You need to enforce loyalty in your worshippers. In modern terms, commandments one to four are the equivalent of martial law – military decrees after a coup d’état. One commandment will do It is not yet certain whether a new prayer will need to be uttered at the Donning of the Condom. Something along the lines of “Oh, Lord, protect us from infection, but allow one or two sperm to creep out so that there is at least an outside chance of bringing yet another bawling infant into this crowded world. Amen” Protect us from infection |
April 2008: This site is being renovated - apologies if some links do not work. To return to the active website, click here Column 110 A natural state We all were - and will be - atheists By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 799 words Publication date: June 3, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, an eighteenth-century French philosopher, was an early atheist whose book, The System of Nature, explicitly denied the existence of God. d’Holbach pointed out that religion is not innate and that all children are born atheist. Which raises the question as to whether a child who grew up ignorant of the concept of God would nevertheless come to the conclusion that a God or gods exist. Let us assume that we could raise such a child or children with adults who helped develop their ability to reason but who steadfastly refused to raise or answer questions about the existence or non-existence of a deity. At some point the child would probably ask about the origin of the universe. Depending on her age when she first began to think about it, a typical question might be “Who made the stars?” – to which there are several possible responses. While Christians would say “God” and atheists would reply “nobody”, our hypothetical parent, unable to influence the child in any way, should respond that it would be better to ask “How were the stars made?” or “How did they come into existence?” The child’s question is natural, but it assumes that the stars were made by a conscious agency. The adult’s response subtly redirects the child’s thinking. It focuses on the key question as to the origin of the stars, but presumes nothing about the existence of a supernatural being. Encouraged to develop a strong reasoning mind, by the time our little girl reached adulthood, she would probably have come to one of several opinions about the universe. The idea of a being beyond the boundaries of the universe might have crossed her mind, but with no evidence or reason for its existence, she would almost certainly consider the idea ridiculous. She could only conclude that she lacked the knowledge as to the precise origins of the universe. She would certainly see no need to create a God to explain morality. It does not need a supernatural being to tell you that it is wrong to do harm. And the idea of an afterlife has no need of a deity. In fact, a democratic heaven where everyone’s soul floats happily in the ether is vastly preferable to the brook-no-opposition Kim Jong-Il dictatorship that Yahweh proposes. 2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama reportedly grew up in an environment similar to that of our hypothetical child. Born to wealth, preserved from evil, age, ill health and unhappiness, and, it appears, unfamiliar with the myriad gods of Hinduism, Siddhartha only confronted the reality of the world as a young adult. After six years wandering northern India and meditating on the nature of life Siddhartha, the Buddha, achieved Enlightenment – release from suffering was to be found through a middle way between self-indulgence and self-mortification. Siddhartha made no reference to God or gods. Whether the creator of the universe, the arbiter of morality, the King of Heaven, God was – and will always be – irrelevant. The fact that millions of Asians today worship the Buddha as God is disappointing but does not distract from Siddhartha’s basic point – there is no God and there is no need to invent him. A couple of millennia later, the French philosopher Voltaire was more pessimistic – if God did not exist we would have to invent him. Both our young girl and our ancient philosopher point us in the same direction – the absence of God. This, not religion, is the natural state of humankind. And if we look carefully around us, we can see that underneath the lies and hype that flood over the world from Jerusalem, Rome and Mecca, atheism is alive, well and flourishing. True, there are some “strong” atheists, the Richard Dawkins, Samuel Harrises, Christopher Hitchens and others who loudly denounce the hypocrisy and dishonesty of religion. But there are many more “weak” atheists who neither believe nor broadcast their disbelief. They are everywhere, even in Church, where they bow their head and sing hymns for the sake of peace with their neighbors, their spouses or parents. I have a sneaking respect for weak atheists, even those who attend Church. They know that the best attitude to religion is to neither give in to nor resist it. It is to ignore it. You say that Jesus is the Son of God. Whatever. What’s for dinner? A recent New Yorker article suggests that as many as 20% of the human race may be unbelievers. In the time of Baron d’Holbach, fewer than 2% would have seriously considered the idea that the universe was God-free. We have progressed considerably in the last two hundred and fifty years. We may not all be atheists now, but if we can survive this century’s upheavals, in a few generations we may well be.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. According to an Associated Press story, the split between two faith-based political groups has intensified, with the new leader of the Christian Coalition of Alabama suing the organization's old leader. Randy Brinson, the new president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, claims in a lawsuit that John Giles took the assets of the Christian Coalition of Alabama when he left to start Christian Action Alabama and won't return them. In Brinson's view, Giles is setting a bad example for Christians interested in Alabama politics. "This is not the way to engage people of faith in the political process," Brinson said. Giles calls Brinson's suit "frivolous and baseless" and said a close examination of the suit will show that the new Christian Coalition of Alabama is in the "palm of gamblers." Montgomery Circuit Judge Gene Reese, who's handling the suit, has not yet scheduled any hearings. story spotted on religious news service Crosswalk The Barna Group, a Christian research and marketing company, has admonished Americans for their failure to maintain orthodox Biblical prespectives. (Since views are subject to interpretation, we are, of course, talking about the BG's opinion as to what is orthodox. Other Christians might disagree...) According to the Group's survey, "Currently two-thirds of Americans believe that God is best described as the all-powerful, all-knowing perfect creator of the universe who rules the world today (66%). However, this proportion is lower than it was a year ago (71%) and represents the lowest percentage in more than twenty years of similar surveys. "Few adults possess orthodox views about Jesus and the Devil. Currently, just one-third of Americans strongly disagree that Jesus sinned (37%) and just one-quarter strongly reject the idea that Satan is not a real spiritual being (24%). Each of these beliefs is lower than last year and among the lowest points in nearly two decades of tracking these views. "The other changes in beliefs include greater reluctance to explain their faith to other people (just 29% strongly endorse this view, compared with 39% in 2006) and the willingness to reject good works as a means to personal salvation (down to 27% from 31%)." It's true. There is light at the end of the tunnel... |
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