Agnostic Universe

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how many words is a video worth? I like finding well made videos about nonbelief since they serve as wonderful examples and tools for communicating what I believe. Here are two recent finds I enjoyed that I want to share.

Coffee with Bernie is a good dialog describing the nontheist point of view. Watching the back and forth between belief and nonbelief is more compelling than just presenting one view or the other by itself.

So now that you’ve heard arguments against belief in gods, now what? This next video is a good one with the honest dialog, beautiful pictures of the universe, and the music at the end. Science Saved My Soul is something that I personally find emotionally moving. It’s an agnostic religious experience. The jealous god of the Bible dreamed up by our primitive ancestors is pathetic in comparison to the majesty of the universe itself.

Another great cartoon from Atheist Cartoons keeping on the subject here lately about morality. The Bible is a worthless book for determining an exact definition of ethics and principles to live by regardless of its truth value for creation. It could be that I might believe the Christian God is not real but then think that their book and religious teachings are useful and good, but I don’t.

I’ve said in previous posts I think humanity already has what is good that our primitive ancestors put in their religious books and we don’t need any of these primitive books to confuse folks on what is right and wrong. God hates fags? God wants people stoned for various offenses? Just look at the other Ten Commandments in Exodus, otherwise known as the Ritual Decalogue. Read it for yourself and tell me how great this self-identified Jealous God really is. There’s some interesting requirements God set out for us humans. For example, I’m a first-born son so apparently I should have been redeemed. I don’t know what that entails so fortunately I found a Jewish tradition of Pidyon HaBen that covers it. Since I was raised Catholic and not Jewish, I’m guessing for Christians Jesus redeemed everyone and is why the Old Testament rules are safely ignored. That’s why there wasn’t a redemption ceremony where I was paid for in silver, but even though I received a lot of Catholic teaching as a child I don’t recall much information on the Old Testament and what no longer applies. I’ve since gone the next step and ignore the New Testament as well.

It’s nonsense like all of this that led me away from religion and to the acknowledgement that nobody knows what the heck they’re talking about. The ancient writings of our primitive ancestors in the Middle East are as useful as the ancient writings concerning the gods of Greek, Roman, Norse, Native American, etc. origins. They’re all in the same religious fiction category in my library. Go ahead and read those writings for examples of ethics and human principles, but just know that they are the ethics of the people that wrote them and not of the gods they claim to represent.

I posted this as a comment reply to The Golden Rule post but it’s long enough to elevate to an actual blog post.

I assume humanity works through our standards of good in any given situation as an imperfect society of fellowship with our laws to guide us. A “standard” is universal and applies to all situations. “Thou shall not kill” is an absolute standard of good that should prevent you from using deadly force as a police officer or defend the country as a military member, but most bible believers judge for themselves when this supposed absolute standard of good actually applies. All religions don’t have a standard of good that contradicts the rest of humanity because it is all of humanity that shares in the universal guide of the “golden rule”. It is just a guide and is not perfect in itself. If I were a twisted individual that enjoyed pain I should not follow “do unto others…” and inflict pain on other people.

It’s funny you think I said Americans are not good and even quote the word “not” as if I said it. Saying a country appears to be nicer and safer than mine doesn’t mean the United States is not also nice and safe. I just said that Japan appeared to be higher on the scale of a “good society.” There isn’t a specific standard for a good society unless you want to try to make something up with crime statistics and the amount of individual freedoms enjoyed by the people if such things can be quantified.

We are all evil? It is the saddest thing for me to read when I come across it and is definitely one big thing I find wrong with religion. I believe most people are good and you believe everyone is evil. We use our inherent good as a society to collectively determine what is good for our societies. It isn’t perfect but our tribes have managed to graduate to governments and laws that work fairly well for some of the basics of good. If someone steals from me or murders my family (we can agree on those being bad, right?) then police, courts, jail, etc. all step in and take care of this. Hopefully the police could step in and prevent murder of my family but taking care of the murderer is the action that stops that person from killing again.

What does religion do in all of this? Here is the religious standard of good and how it operates. We are all evil sinners so religion offers forgiveness for the murderer. If they can only find Jesus then the murderer should be set free to live for Christ and kill again in his next moment of weakness. It’s not his fault because God made us as pure evil. What kind of nonsense is that? I don’t think most people have evil thoughts and urges. Let’s continue down your thought process that the bible is the standard of good. The 10 commandments should become law for this country and our most severe punishments should be for violating them since this is the top 10 list. So if I have another god before your god or create false idols I should be punished more severely than being a murderer if the commandments are ranked in order of importance. I should be punished for the thought crime of coveting. All parents should be honored so I think that does away with child protective services and the crimes of child abuse. These are just some applications of your good from the top of my head.

You are good without god. We are not evil. I don’t need Christ to stop my hand from stealing from you, killing you, or any other evil deed that you think we all are compelled to do since we are evil. Simply providing “Christ” as the ultimate standard just will not cut it. Humans do disagree at many points, and we work through it situation by situation. If it were perfect then one true church would currently rule the world and we’d only need a single priest to serve as judge and jury over all evil deeds. You can ask god and the Pope how well that one works out for us all.

Standards of good are human standards that don’t come from a god. “You have to share in my religion to be considered good” is such a ridiculous notion. I’ve visited Japan and it’s a country with amazing people that I would point to as an excellent example of an overall good society. Yet, the majority of Japanese are increasingly secular and follow no religion. They keep associations with Shinto and Buddhism as a matter of tradition rather than belief.

Article 20 of their 1947 Constitution states:

“Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority”

Well, doesn’t that sound familiar? Separation of religion and the state was mandated by the occupation of Japan because of the role of State Shinto in furthering Japan’s military aggression in Asia before and during World War II. Isn’t that a fair warning for maintaining a seperation of church and state? It’s sad that many Christians and Muslims would look at Japan and the religion of the people to say that the country is worthless and immoral based solely on their belief. However, in my short visits I found the country to be nicer and safer than many areas of the United States. Nobody has a monopoly on “being good” based upon their primitive religions.

I’m trying to actually catch up on some old things I wanted to post about. I’m not an entirely consistent blogger and often look to outside content for blogging ideas. There is an old post on Daylight Atheism called Whence Comes God’s Nature? It touches on some good ideas as to why I can easily reject the religions of my fellow humans. Even though I’m rather firm in my belief that we don’t know what, if anything, exists in the realm of the supernatural since we are natural, I’m equally firm in my belief that the existing religions are simple creations of our primitive ancestors. Read the entire article at the link above but here are some of the major points I like.

God, so we’re told, is eternal and unchanging. He is pure reason, pure mind, pure spirit – no physical needs to fulfill, no past history, none of the contingent events that make human nature what it is. So how is it that he has, just like us, a complex nature with specific likes and dislikes? He did not undergo the process by which human beings acquire their preferences, so where does he get them from? Why does he prefer things one way and not another?

Read the original post for various examples of gods that would have different major traits and personalities of humans to see how weird it is to think something so supernatural and powerful would be as petty and simple as a human in thoughts and desires.

There’s an interesting parallel here with the “fine-tuning” argument sometimes used by religious apologists. They ask how likely it is that a universe with physical laws conducive to life could just happen to exist with no prior explanation. But atheists can ask an analogous question in return: Out of all the billions of possible gods, each one with a different highly specific and arbitrary set of desires and preferences, how likely is it that there just happens to be one who’s benevolent and kindly disposed toward humans? What prior cause can explain that favorable coincidence?

Out of all of the billions, trillions, etc. of possible supernatural beings or supernatural causes for all of existence to be I’m fairly certain humanity has no clue as to what that really is. But out of all of these possibilities I don’t think it’s enough to just say that I don’t believe in any of the human defined theisms. I think it is much more honest to say that all of humanity definitely doesn’t know. Even though I’m without theism (a-theist), that is why I use the Agnostic label.

Asked how Benedict was responding to the scandal swirling around the Vatican, Lombardi replied: “The pope is a person of faith. He sees this as a test for him and the church.”

Pope sees sex scandal as test

This is exactly why I have issues with the religions defined by humanity. Besides their obvious origins in the imaginations of our ancestors, they also claim to be the best source for morality and generally fall flat on their face with every turn. This simple set of words from the Pope says a lot about the false beliefs held by religious people. It’s bad enough to think that an all powerful god would let children suffer through abuses and rapes by men that claim to be that deity’s spokesmen. I can’t imagine a god that is real that would allow such things to happen in “his” name.

Now we have someone that claims to be one of the highest authorities on the subject suggesting that god didn’t just stand or float by as these things happened. No, the Pope’s God set the whole thing up presumably starting with abusing and raping children to the cover-ups and the scandal as it appears today. How crazy of a notion is that? The Pope thinks the whole thing is a test for him and his church of mythology.

Atheist Revolution quotes The Secular Thinker concerning the fact that believers pick what they want to believe and ignore what they don’t. It doesn’t just happen in the choosing of your religion if you didn’t let your parents choose for you. It also happens in the practice of your particular religion.

I agree with this assessment:

This question, and minor variations of it, pose what appears to be an insurmountable obstacle to all Christians except for perhaps the most rabid biblical literalists. Although I have never met anyone who actually lived as if they believed every word in the Christian bible was the literal word of a divine being, I accept the possibility that such people might be out there somewhere…

…Perhaps they do not really believe what they claim to believe and simply maintain the appearance of such beliefs for the sake of the social benefits they confer (e.g., being part of a religious community, etc.). Perhaps they profess the beliefs because they were taught from an early age that this is what they are supposed to believe. Perhaps they try with all their might to convince themselves that they believe these things because doing so carries some sort of emotional benefit. What such individuals describe as a “crisis of faith” may be little more than their rational mind revolting at the incongruence between their claimed beliefs and their behavior.

What it boils down to for me, again and again, is that the overwhelming majority of those who call themselves Christians do not behave as if their souls were at risk. Few even seem to have a clear idea of what their bible says.

I also do not see an overwhelming full belief in any religion. Every belief I’ve encountered or read about is filtered through that person’s whims and desires. My own agnostic view of the universe is through my own filter, but fortunately there are no real universal truths to agnosticism other than admitting we do not know.

The believer selectively ignores aspects of their religion that they’re uncomfortable with, feel is unimportant, or do not even know about. I am so selective that I’ve completely rejected adherence to entire religions instead of just the bits and pieces. If you are someone that thinks that’s bad, then why don’t you fully believe every word of your religion exactly as it was written by primitive men?

I will quote from a New York Times Op-Ed piece titled The Religious Wars that is about some books on religion that the writer believes are a middle ground between recent athiest and theist books. The books he talk about all appear to be from the theist standpoint, but the first book provides an interesting view of the supposed eternal truth of religion by talking about the evolution of it.

First, I will quote the first paragraph that explains why the article is called The Religious Wars:

Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts. … Fundamentalists fired volleys of Left Behind novels, in which Jesus returns to Earth to battle the Anti-Christ (whose day job was secretary general of the United Nations). Meanwhile, devout atheists built mocking Web sites like www.whydoesGodhateamputees.com. That site notes that although believers periodically credit prayer with curing cancer, God never seems to regrow lost limbs. It demands an end to divine discrimination against amputees.

Now on to the first book:

This year is different, with a crop of books that are less combative and more thoughtful. One of these is “The Evolution of God,” by Robert Wright, who explores how religions have changed — improved — over the millennia. He notes that God, as perceived by humans, has mellowed from the capricious warlord sometimes depicted in the Old Testament who periodically orders genocides.

Mr. Wright also argues that monotheism emerged only gradually among Israelites, and that the God familiar to us may have resulted from a merger of a creator god, El, and a warrior god, Yahweh. Mr. Wright also argues that monotheism wasn’t firmly established until after the Babylonian exile, and he says that Moses’s point was that other gods shouldn’t be worshiped, not that they didn’t exist. For example, he notes the troubling references to a “divine council” and “gods” — plural — in Psalm 82.

In another revelation not usually found in Sunday School classes, Mr. Wright cites Biblical evidence that God (both El and Yahweh) had a sex life, rather like the Greek gods, and notes archaeological discoveries indicating that Yahweh may have had a wife, Asherah.

As for Christianity, Mr. Wright argues that it was Saint Paul — more than Jesus, an apocalyptic prophet — who emphasized love and universalism and built Christian faith as it is known today. Saint Paul focused on these elements, he says, partly as a way to broaden the appeal of the church and convert Gentiles.

Mr. Wright detects an evolution toward an image of God as a more beneficient and universal deity, one whose moral compass favors compassion for humans of whatever race or tribe, one who is now firmly in the antigenocide camp. Mr. Wright’s focus is not on whether God exists, but he does suggest that changing perceptions of God reflect a moral direction to history — and that this in turn perhaps reflects some kind of spiritual force.

“To the extent that ‘god’ grows, that is evidence — maybe not massive evidence, but some evidence — of higher purpose,” Mr. Wright says.

God grows? God changes over time as humanity and our societies evolve? Wouldn’t that actually be evidence that god changes due to the beliefs and whims of his believers instead of vice versa? God and religions change over time because we are changing and evolving and decide to adapt the fictional stories of our ancestors to our changing times. For example, slavery was abolished in spite of Christianity and their Bible instead of because of it.

A response similar to mine appears in the Letter to the Editor section. I will repost it here because it is a good one:

There seems something facile about Robert Wright’s suggestion that the fact that “god” grows better over time reflects evidence that there is higher purpose, or Karen Armstrong’s notion that pushing reasoning powers to their limit, stretching language and living compassionately produce a transcendence that should be interpreted in a religious sense, and I am surprised that Mr. Kristof presents their arguments as if they offer some rational middle ground for discussion.

“God” has gotten more moral over time because even organized religions have been dragged forward, often kicking and screaming, by human reason, which itself has been pushed forward by our discoveries about nature — discoveries that belied obviously false notions about superiority of one race over another or the need to impose divine vengeance to respond to simple, explicable acts of nature.

While it is surely true that faith itself may exist beyond the bounds of rationality, what Mr. Kristof should be praising is reason and not faith.

If one wants to find transcendent examples of pushing reasoning to its limit and stretching language to the end of its tether, one could do worse than to read the books of my colleagues Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris.

Lawrence Krauss
Tempe, Ariz., Nov. 26, 2009
The writer directs the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University and writes frequently on science and religion.

The previous post on the question of asking if gods exist came from an e-mail. It was ambigiously written in such a way to imply the person was an unbeliever of some kind but I was not the least bit surprised by the return e-mail. I suspected it was from a typical religious liar that has to resort to lies, half-truths, and confusing information to try to open up a dialog. They do this to try to share their ideas with you in some vain attempt to validate their own beliefs by getting others to agree with them. He may not be certain in what exactly he believes but ultimately the person does believe in a god of some kind.

Here is part of the return e-mail:

I have been a bit deceptive to you because I came across as an atheist or agnostic – but I am neither. I am certainly not religious, but I do say that there is a God, with reasons (real reasons that you can see with your own eyes). You see, I used to be agnostic then deist – but then I put all beliefs aside and said to the night sky, “Whoever you are, please speak to me. I will assume nothing about you, and I will only accept what you tell me about yourself.” This was my beginning (back in 2005). The kick in this is that I call God, “Yahweh”, but not the warrior God of the past, but the ethical God you could only find written in Micah, Amos, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Isaiah, Hosea, and a few others…. blah, blah, blah.

This person professes to annoy the religious by not being a believer in religion. He has a blog and quotes scripture in it even though he claims to not be religious so he obviously believes in these writings even though he’s very selective in which ones. He apparently thinks he’s special with some special knowledge about it all even though he’s smart enough to say you can’t take these religions as a complete truth and even knocks them as false idols. What’s funny and sad is that he doesn’t see that his belief is yet another false idol.

This is from his blog:

People would rather have a thousand beliefs and no proof, no evidence, no moving God – and they prefer an invisible stone to praise. It is certainly what God gives them over to. It is quite obvious that Yahweh has given people over to their invisible stones to save them in their days of trouble and death… which has proven to be no salvation at all. They would prefer to worship the useless magician/idol inhabiting their minds, and never know the living God who saves life and spares my bones.

It is quite obvious to me that this person is yet another religious person with his own invisible stone to praise that like the old joke is “unique like everyone else’s”. He’s smart enough to see the useless magician/idol inhabiting the minds of others but because of his flawed perspective he doesn’t see that his own “living God” is just more of the same. I still don’t understand how these people are so willing to take that leap of faith to believe in a god they specifically define for themselves and at the same time say other believers are so very wrong in their own leap of faith. I always see this as more proof that none of the believers have any real knowledge and it’s just more fiction and delusions.

You may have heard of the person that tried to literally live following all Biblical rules for a year. You can read about his adventure here: Agnostic puts Bible to the test – literally

You can read through the article for yourself to see some of the odd rules pulled directly from the Bible that yielded 72 pages of how exactly to conduct yourself on Earth. He started and ended the year as an Agnostic. He concluded that “In the end, he said, he believes every person of faith picks and chooses what to follow in ‘cafeteria’ style, whether they are aware of it or not, and that there’s nothing wrong with it.” I whole-heartedly disagree. If something as important as creation and religion is true then it would not be just fine for people to pick and choose from their God’s directions. You’re either in the program or you’re not.

He concluded with this observation:

‘A lot of them made a lasting impact, actually,’ Mr. Jacobs said. ‘One was certainly gratitude. I said all these prayers of thanksgiving, and when you start to say them, you start to realize the hundreds of little things that go right every day instead of focusing on the three or four that go wrong. … I still say prayers of thanksgiving.’

He said he had too many doubts about some of the hot-button issues, including Bible references to creationism and homosexuality, to shake his agnosticism. Yet he developed a new and deep respect for the Bible and religion, especially the teachings on love and compassion.

‘I’m still an agnostic, I’m not sure who I’m praying to. A friend called me a ‘reverent agnostic,’?’ Mr. Jacobs said. ‘Whether or not I believe there’s a God, I do believe in sacredness and sanctity and the importance of the sabbath and prayer and tradition, that all of these can be sacred.’

I believe in gratitude and thanks as well. However, a prayer of thanksgiving to the unknown or the universe is kind of silly. When something goes right and I can identify the actual cause then I’d rather thank the person that contributed or reflect on what I’ve done to make it right so hopefully I can continue the trend.

I believe in the sacredness, sanctity and importance of our lives. The sabbath as just a day of the week, hope wrapped in the false clothing of prayer, and the primitive traditions of our superstitious ancestors are not sacred to me at all. Our lives and happiness are very important to me since this is the only life we appear to have. My reverence is reserved for the universe and life itself, where I actually do not see the fingerprints of one all-powerful super intelligent creator that was not itself created. (???) In fact, the “miracle” of it all is made petty and ridiculous in the light of the silly stories and rules of the Bible. It really doesn’t do our universe and our existence true justice. Once again, if the Bible God that is complicated and powerful enough to create the universe was not itself created, then why couldn’t the universe itself with its power and lack of intelligence exist without creation?