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.

How To Not Accidentally Sound Like A Jerk

This is going to be the homophobia edition, because I can't really talk about anything else, but it is important that you know where this is coming from. It is coming from a discussion on race
Angry Eye is an experiment/experience conducted in which college aged students are separated by eye color, and various amounts of learning and tears ensue. I highly recommend you watch it before reading this post, but as it is over 50 minutes long, I'll do my best to write as if you have not.


"When I look at you, I don't see you black"
"When I look at you, I don't see you queer"
"You arn't a black person to me, you are my friend"
"You are not just a queer kid, you are my friend"
Gonna say right off, I want you to understand, never utter these phrases or anything involving these constructions. Ever. Especially those first two. Those are really gnarly, and now I am going to explain to you why that is.


I wrote this with the word black, so I'm just gonna keep it that way, but you can exchange it for the word queer, or alter-abled or any oppressed ethnicity or what have you.


"When I look at you, I don't see you as black"
What is intended: you are my friend, and I think of you as my friend, and I don't think of you as "that black person"

What this means to the speaker: I do care about you as a person, and I want to make it clear to you that I am not racist because you are my friend and it is the worst thing to have your friends think poorly of you.

What this implies to the listener: people whom you do not care about and who are not your friends (people not me), you do think of them as black. Furthermore, by being your friend, in your eyes, I have un-othered* myself. I have been granted this privilege of no longer being othered by you, the otherer, because you are in power, and I am not, and as long as things remain that way, you want me to remain at a place where being your friend is the best thing I can do, because I am stuck this way.


Appropriate response: fuck you


*My definition: To be an other in a society like ours is to be a minority, and one that receives different treatment disproportionate to your difference. Handicapped spaces are an example of differing treatment that is not disproportionate, because the difference between alter-abled, and whatever you call someone who is not, often implies a more difficult time moving around. Putting a group alter-abled people in a separate school because their legs don't work is othering.


Many people on the privileged side of privilege are confused about this response, which I will reiterate, is quite reasonable. The point that you are missing is that what you intend and what it implies to a person who has been othered by society are completely different. This is not a bad thing, you should not be ashamed of your privilege, but you should be aware of it, and when someone gets (in your opinion) disproportionately pissed off at something you believed to be completely innocuous, chances are pretty good it is because you did not understand their point of view.
In such a situation, because you are trying to say "I care about you," now would be a great time to prove it. Explain that you did not understand what was so harmful about that statement, and then (second most importantly) ask them to explain it, and (most importantly) accept it as a truth, not an opinion. They experienced your words in this way, that is a fact. You are not here to argue if their experience is justified, you are here to understand why what happened happened and you are here to make sure it doesn't happen again, because they were hurt by your words, and you don't like hurting your friends, do you?


I was asked by a friend of mine, how would I avoid this negative implication. Simple answer, you can't. It simply cannot be done. This phrase will, and has in my experience, triggered anger nearly 100% of the time. It can't be done. The best thing you can do is understand why, and how to deal with it once it happens.


So I have had a lot of people of varying closeness in my life, and at one time or another, being human, many of them have made mistakes. Many of them have said "oh man, that is so gay" or "look at that faggot" or anything along those lines. It happens. I understand that. You have been trained to use the word gay as a synonym for "thing I don't like" and the word faggot to mean "that person I don't like" and this is not your fault. I understand that. It is the fault of those who came before you. It is your job now to be aware of that, and to take steps to change it.


When I point out that someone has made a booboo, there are, in general, three (four) categories that the reactions I receive fall into.
1. That wasn't what I meant
2. Oops
3. OH MY GOD I AM SO SORRY
(and the unspoken fourth category, because the people who say this are not my friends, and therefore I have no business trying to get them to understand)
4. Fuck you faggot


Two of these categories of response are acceptable, one is unnecessary, one makes all othered people sigh, and one of them will result in someone punching you in the face.


Gonna tackle them one by one.
1. That's not what I meant, you are taking this too seriously, calm down, etc.
These are the biggest privilege denying responses there are, and as a responsible friend to an othered person (hint, that is almost every single college aged person in America), it is your job to understand where your friend is coming from, and this response is not the way to tell them "I want to learn."
This is the one that will make people sigh, because we hear it all the time. If this kind of response were applied to a statement about women and a feminist spoke up, this response would be a great example of "mansplaining." It happens. All. The. Time. Remember people, I don't blame you for your training, but once I point out that you have done wrong, I expect you to be an adult about it and own up to it.
This is the most common response.


2. Best response you can give. Obviously, don't say "oops" but admit that what you said was wrong, and then ask how it was wrong (and listen to the response) and then, for the love of all that is good, don't make the same mistake twice. I know that what you did was most likely a knee jerk reaction to something. I know your brain went through the process of "I don't like that thing, that thing is (... umm... what's the word people use most ofte)GAY" and I don't blame you for that. So when I point it out, go "whoops" and mean it, and then try not to do it again. If you do, try to be mindful and correct yourself.


3. This one is almost the best response. Some people might love this one. I don't. And here's why.

• If I care enough to point out that what you said was not ok, you are already my friend and I already like you.
• If you are my friend, chances are you are not a racist/homophobic sack of shit.
• If you are not a homophobic sack of shit, chances are occurrences like this are fairly rare.
• If occurrences like this are fairly rare, you deserve the benefit of the doubt that this was the result of societal training and not you being a supreme douchecanoe.
• If the occurrence was the result of societal training, I don't need a huge apology.

That's it - I just don't need one. You are my friend, and all I need to know is that you recognize that what you said is wrong and will try not to do it again. Mistake leads to apology leads to forgiveness leads to move on. If you dwell on any of those steps, you will not be the better for it.


4. Fuck you faggot.
Fuck you, you privilege-denying, slur-slinging, homophobic, insecure, sack of ignorant shit, you have no place in my life, begone with your hate filled discriminatory ways.




Have I said things that were interpreted in other ways than I intended? Does the sun rise in the morning? Am I white? Uhhh, yeah. Did I react perfectly every time? Psh.
Do I endeavor to be better? Absolutely. Do I believe I deserve some of that benefit of the doubt? Yes. Do I believe I should be excused from my mistakes? No, but I believe I should be forgiven.
In this instance, I do my best to apply the golden rule. I treat those who make mistakes with the same level of forgiveness and compassion with which I would expect to be treated.


So, How To Not Accidentally Sound Like A Jerk: can't be done. However, what you can do is this: realize when you have been a jerk, apologize for being a jerk, and hope that your friends and you have a loving enough relationship so that they can forgive you, and then you in turn forgive them when they make mistakes, because everybody does it. Everybody has some privilege.
My roommate and I have been working on an idea of the überprivilege. It is the following (in America, mind you)
Straight, white, cissexual, male, able-bodied, young, thin, christian, there may have been others but that's what I've got.

If you are a gay, african, transwoman, alter-abled, old, heavy, and muslim in america, you might have a case for not having any privilege. But if you have any of those privileges, be aware of them, and be aware that you are at risk for saying something stupid and offending someone you love. Just remember that you love them and can convey that, and you'll be fine, I expect.

Beauty In The World

Because of my choice in friends - people who are open to alternatives to the gender and sexuality binary, people who don't buy in to all the stuff that I write and complain about - I tend to be friends with a lot of people who could very easily be described as hippies. Which means that as a result of this, I am exposed to a great amount of stuff that could also very easily be described as "hippie dippie" or "woo woo" stuff.
Now, I am going to save us all a lot of time and reading by summing up my opinion on this stuff: do not believe. I believe the woo woo to be on the same level as the invisible creation man in the sky who punishes and rewards one species on one planet in one solar system of the entire universe that he created.


In case you are unclear about what I mean by the woo woo, I shall clarify, because there is some hippie dippie stuff that happens to not fall under the woo woo category (y'know, because there is scientific evidence for it). Things that do (and of course, this is opinion, not fact, as I am not an expert): astrology, homeopathy, energy work done through simple touch (massage is not this), praying to your God or Goddess of choice, and many other things that I would need to be reminded of, but you'll see the pattern here soon enough.


The pattern here is simple, and is in fact the exact same reason I have a problem with sports stars thanking God when they win the game. It is the same reason I have a problem with people going to confession to get forgiveness for their sins. All of these remove the humanity from a choice.


From a christian perspective: when you do well, it is God's work, when you do poorly, it is your fault (yay guilt!).
From a non-christian perspective: when you get better, it is because someone touched you in just the right way, or because the onion juice you diluted into oblivion cured you, and if you get sick, it is because your diet is full of pollutants and you havn't cleared your body of the nasties that wander in through your food.
When someone is strong and independent and knows what they want, and you ask them their birthday and you respond, "oh, it all makes sense now - you are Scoprio!" and or maybe it's "oh, you are Leo!" or maybe "oh you are Taurus"
Go look at all of the signs at the same time, and you will see an absurd amount of overlap.


"I know why you did it. You were afraid, who wouldn't be?" These beliefs granted you safety. That there was something up there watching us, be it a God or the idea of all creatures being connected, or that the stars and their gravitational pull on each other somehow has any effect on my personal characteristics. It makes sense to see patterns in humanity, but the criterion for the patterns is way too loose, and as science has shown, humans are fantastic at forgetting things that hurt us and/or don't fit with the way we want to be.


And if that is all it is, to make yourselves feel better, I can completely understand why you did it. But please, consider what it is doing to you when you are not looking - it is removing the humanity from Choice. I value choice above all else - it is what defines me personally as alive - my ability to choose. A plant lives, a plankton lives, but there are only select creatures on this planet who are truly alive. Most if not all of them fall in the animal kingdom.


These beliefs do not remove choice from people, but they at least partially remove the idea that the things that follow from your choices are directly following from those choices. Credit is not being given where credit is due. If you pray for your God to help you out, and then you finally confront your drunken father who has been abusing you and you get him arrested and into rehab and your family doesn't fall apart - it is not because of God. It is because you were an impossibly strong human being who was able to step up and take responsibility for your own life and make things better. If you are sick and someone poked you a couple times and you go around being nice and feeling better, it is not because someone shifted your energy pathways, it is because you decided that you were tired of wearing the grumpypants and that you wanted to make a change in your life.


But the problem with people, is that we generally do not believe ourselves to be impossibly strong. We are told our whole lives that we are weak, that we need help. We know that change is hard, we know that it is sometimes impossible. So we invent things to serve as catalysts for change, when in reality they are not catalysts, they are excuses to get things rolling.


So when something happens to me like the things that have happened recently - one after the other, events seem to be happening around me that are exactly what I need. Huge potential for things to blow up in my face and ruin a lot of things for me are not  blowing up - and random acts of kindness from people are. Stuff in my life has just been working recently. And from a woo woo or God perspective, the stars are aligned in some way, or I did something to deserve this.


I believe none of that. I believe in coincidence. I believe that a lot of stuff has been going well for me, and I am so incredibly grateful for that. And when things start to go poorly, because they will, because nothing good ever lasts (because life is imperfect), I will realize that it is a coincidence, and that I need to work hard to turn things around. I will not blame it on Venus or Mercury going retrograde. I will not blame it on the gays. I will not blame it on the thetans inhabiting my body. I will blame it on life being what it is and then take responsibility for fixing it.


Try this for a week: when things go well, be happy about them and when things go wrong, be sad about them. Do not ascribe any meaning to the events beyond the events themselves - see the beauty in the good, and the ugly in the bad. Enjoy the beauty, and eschew the bad.


When people say that atheists see no joy or beauty in the world, they are off base - we see just as much beauty, because we look at the world and we see the world in all of its glory and power, and to a lot of atheists, there is nothing more beautiful than that.

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.