Religious People

Anyone who knows me knows that I am very anti-religion, and for many atheists this is the case. Many of us are atheists not only because we do not see evidence for a supreme being, but also because of the interpretation of such a deity (or deities) has done so much incredible evil in this world.
I don't think religion is evil, but I do think the world would be better off without it. Supernatural belief in general can go, I'm not picky about having a deity or not.
This is not that uncommon of a view, it really isn't. As much as you think there may be a huge religious majority, and there is, 13% (source) of over 311 million is still 40 million. That is forty million people in this country alone who do not believe in a god.
But get ready, because here comes an uncommon opinion.

I don't like religious people.

Not all religious and supernatural-believing-type people. The wiccans in general don't piss me off except when they spout their supernatural stuff. The new-agers annoy the crap out of me when they try to tell me about something ridiculous. In general, however, people who subscribe to mainstream religion (abrahamic, basically - be it any sect of christianity, catholicism, islam, judaism) are people who start on my shit list.

Listen, I want to be very clear about this. This has nothing to do with your belief in a god that I don't believe in. Seriously. Well, it has a little bit to do with it, but only because of the fact that you call yourself a christian, or a muslim, or a jew. I don't think your belief in God is a correct or even prudent one. I think it is childish and misguided and foolish and false and I am going to do everything in my power to convince you of that fact - but none of that means I don't like you. So when I tell you that you are on my shit list from day one, I want you to understand it is not because I think you are wrong.

I want you to understand that when I say that you are on my shit list from day one, it is because of your label. You have this label that you use. You call yourself a christian. You call yourself a muslim.

Then this christian pastor goes and says something like "let's gather all the gays and lesbians and put them inside an electric fence, because that way they'll die out"



Yeah. That happened. Anyway, so this pastor comes out and says something crazy and us militant atheists add it to the "Horrible ideas created in the name of God we are glad nobody used" list and move on. But this weird thing happens when we pass this on to our religious friends.
This is a set of the typical responses to asking a religious person about this type of event
"Oh, he's not a real christian"
"I don't believe that"

Awesome, congratulations, you have a sense of morality. Good for you. Pat yourself on the back.

But here is what strikes me as odd. Many atheists see this type of thing and get angry, we see this and have a very strong emotional response to it. This man is standing up and saying how we need to put all the gays and lesbians and queers behind an electric fence and let them all die off because they can't reproduce. I don't care that this is a stupid idea because gay people are not born of gay people. Seriously, that is not what upsets me about this video.

What upsets me is that you don't care.

What upsets me is the fact that you see this man standing up there, standing in front of all those people, all those minds, and using the name of a belief that you proclaim to be a part of, and he is saying these hateful, ignorant and wrong things, and you know they are hateful and ignorant and wrong, that is why you don't believe them - but why does it not enrage you?

Why does it not infuriate you that someone is standing up there saying that they are a christian and that this is what christianity means, when you know they are wrong?

So if you are a religious person that stands up against this kind of idiocy, great. I am glad to hear that. But there are so many people out there who see something like this and just let it go without seeing any need to stand up and say no. Even the people in the audience of that sermon aplauded. I'm not saying that the fact that you didn't aplaud is not commendable. Again, good on you for having morals. But saying that you simply don't agree with his idea is idiocy as well. You know who else rounded up the gays. You know, and I know I don't have to remind you, because I know you know. Would you ever suggest that saying "I don't agree with that" is enough? No. It wasn't enough. We went to war against that idea. The idea that certain people should be rounded up and slaughtered was such a repugnant idea to us that an entire nation still deals with the fallout of an idea that was fought and defeated nearly one hundred years ago.

So why does it not enrage you when someone claiming to be of your belief system says something like this.

There is a great quote that sums this up very nicely. It was from an episode of Stargate, which, while not a great show, had its moments.

So here is the scene. Context: the Ori are these crazy powerful beings posing as Gods, the priors with the crazy eyes are their missionaries, they also have crazy power. And spaceships. Anyway, their believers have no idea the Ori feed on their belief and are just power hungry jerks. Interdimensional power hungry jerks.
In many ways, the believers are just like so many of us, they just believe, and the message in Origin (their book) is mostly a positive, loving, "Ori will bless you" sort of message.

But then this happens.

A little later, our Tomin goes back to talk to the Prior.

I always loved this scene, but never really figured out why. Recently, I watched the episode again, and realized why I loved it so much: this never happens. I never see the good people, the people who I know are good, kind, moral people, stand up and fight against the tyranny that pervades their leadership. I want so badly to see that anger in your eyes when someone claiming to stand up for your beliefs says something incredibly hateful, ignorant and wrong, and I don't understand why I don't see it.

Burden Of Proof: On Acceptable Evidence for God

This post is a response to a post on Generation Atheist called Are Proofs Or Evidence For Deities Even Hypothetically Possible and while I highly recommend reading that article, it will not be necessary to understand what I am talking about here.
The entire article is based on two ideas, Occams Razor and Clarke's Third Law
OR: All other things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one, or more accurately, that when discussing hypotheses that are equal in other regards, it is right to select the one that requires you to make the least number of unwarranted assumptions.
CL: Any technology sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from magic.

We use OR in our life every day - we assume when we find a suicide note and a guy hanging from the ceiling, we assume that he killed himself. We would not assume that someone forced him to write the note in his own handwriting and then hung the guy for some reason. Unless there is evidence (for example, he was really rich, and then after he died suddenly it was revealed that his will was changed last week to put all of his money into a nameless bank account) of course, we will assume that the simplest answer is correct. This is the reason for the word "unwarranted" because if there were such evidence, the assumption would be completely warranted.

Clarke's Law is less prevalent in our society in an obvious way, but think about A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court. A moden man is sent back in time to the middle ages, and with his knowledge of history and electricity, manages to make firearms and an electric fence to defend himself from those who would wish to destroy him. And what is the first word they use for him? Wizard. He was using a concept of electricity to run his camp, charged invisible particles moving energy around - this was so far above the understanding of the people of that time that they couldn't understand it at all, and so it was magic. But we are smarter now, we have this law to reference. So if an alien race ever showed up and shot energy weapons and were capable of moving things large distances in a single instant, we would assume (based on CL and OR) that they were simply very technologically advanced, not magical.

And really - magic is simply the manipulation of the world using techniques unknown to the observer. If I can make a bosy float, and people do not understand it, it is called magic. But I did it using techniques possible and following from the given rules of the universe. If someone were to do something that we perceived as impossible, we would be wrong - it is not impossible, because we just saw it. Then there are two conclusions we can reach: either our understanding of the rules of the universe were incomplete in this regard, or our understanding of what we just saw was incomplete. This is why I say there is no such thing as magic. Because magic is to do the impossible (or at least the illusion of the impossible) which by its definition is not possible. If it is done, it is possible, and therefore there are rules governing its possibility, which puts us back at the two possible conclusions of incorrect knowledge or faulty perception.

So the question this author poses to us is this: hypothetically if someone showed up claiming to be God and showed up amazing things that we were incapable of doing (water into wine, walking on water, etc.) we, the rationalists, would assume that it was simply advanced technology and not magic - so how would a deity prove itself? This is a very good question. I had to think about it for a while, and had to back to the base of the creation myth to answer it.

I am going to assume for the sake of argument that God exists, created the world with natural laws (gravity, radioactive decay, stuff like that) and that we as members of its existence are forced to obey, and that these laws cannot be broken. They can be manipulated - Jesus can walk on water, the sea can part, stuff like that. These are improbable, but do not go against the laws of nature. It is conceivable that the act is a trick based in technology and science. For example, we have invented a vehicle that can travel on land and water without touching either of them directly - we call it a hovercraft. It is simple, a parachute holds the air in place and the force exerted upwards by the air held under the craft is equal to the force of gravity on the craft. But imagine trying to explain that to someone who didn't understand forces or gravity or even air. There was a time when birds were not understood.

So how would a Deity prove itself to exist to us? For me, it would have to violate a rule of this universe that is not violable. For me there, is only one rule that comes to mind - the conservation of matter. Unfortunately, this would be again, very difficult to do even for a Deity, because us skeptics are very skeptical.

So I was thinking how a Deity could prove itself to me beyond all reasonable doubt. Because humans do magic tricks, so a Deity doing something that even remotely looks like a magic trick would merit a response much like the lolcat above. We would raise an eyebrow and say "how did you do that" and God would respond "I am God, I can do what I want - I am master of all creation!" to which we would respond "that was a cool magic trick - now how did you do it?"

So after some thinking, and likely more thinking to come, the only thing that would prove to me that God existed is to do the one thing that it is said that God can do. There is only one thing that God could do to prove his existence to me: destroy the universe. And I don't mean make it all crunch back together - I mean make it disappear. But that would not be enough - because it is conceivable that an alien race with sufficient technology could do that. No, I want God to destroy the universe. Then I want him to take my immortal soul to the afterlife. Then I want to watch him recreate the universe.

In summary, the only thing that would really prove beyond all doubt for me personally that God existed was to watch him do the one thing that God is certainly credited with - the creation of the universe.