I'm an Arrogant Bastard; on Atheism.

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"Why can't I believe what I want to believe?"

"The beauty of nature/art/love proves that god exists to me!"

"If you don't have faith, you must be a nihilist with no morals, ethics or values".

"Atheism is just another religion, you worship Pope Richard Dawkins!"

"I'm talking about another kind of "knowledge"/Science don't know everything!"

"I'm an X, and I dont believe Y, so you're wrong"

"The Bible/Koran doesn't say that! You're interpreting it wrong!"

"Wolfram87, Get off your high horse!"

In essence, all testable claims put forth by holy texts have been demonstrated to be wrong

Excellent post.

I must just pedantically dispute one claim.


I am fairly sure this is not true. There must be some trivial detail in a religious text somewhere which is both testable and correct.

One thing I read recently that freaked me out is Jesus died so He can take the punishment for us. That irritated me. Jesus didn't die for us. He, like many others, died because people wanted him dead. He did not take out punishment so we would go without being punished. He took the punishment along with us

Now I've been here a short time on this new account, and I've been both praised and scolded for my stance on the matter of faith. So without further ado, I present to you this ventilating rant on the subject.

Now, I'm very aware that I can't tell people what to believe, nor does that totalitarian idea hold appeal to me. I am however, acutely aware that many, many people believe in things that are wrong, and I mean on every level. As a person who cares both about truth and about humanity, I want to at least try to be a mitigating influence to counterbalance that. I don't expect to convert "true believers", but I hope to give people capable of reason some reasons not to subscribe to anything that asks them to believe or to act on bad or on no evidence.


a person may ask. Leaving aside the curiousity of believing something because you want to believe it, rather than because you think it's true, this seemingly reasonable question becomes much more sinister in almost every context in which it is invoked. "Why can't I..." asks the Jehovah's Witness, invoking his human rights to deny his dying child a blood transfusion. "Why can't I..." asks the Jew, handing his newborn son off to the penis-mutilator. "Why can't I..." asks the Christian fundamentalists, denying education to their children rather than risk them being "lead astray". "Why", asks the South African man raping presumed virgins to cure his Aids, "can't I believe what I want to believe?". I chose some of the worst examples for illustration, but the point stands; your wrongness is yours, and letting it affect others is in itself wrong. Most of the western world has freedom of religion; freedom to be wrong. We do not have freedom to wrong others.
(Also note that out of these four examples, only the last one is illegal)


(Campin_Cat and I had a tiff over this one, and I hope I can adress it better here. Don't take it too personally, this argument is common.)
There are several things wrong with this statement. Firstly, it suggests that a thing can be proven to one person, and that thing will then be true for that person, while somehow remaining untrue to the unconvinced. Even leaving aside the misuse of the word "proof", this is false. A person believing a thing does not make it true, nor does disbelief make a thing false. Subjective experience does not constitute objective reality. So what is objective reality? That which does not go away when you stop imagining it. Therefore, what you believe or think is much less interesting than what you can demonstrate.

Secondly, it suggests that those of us who spend our time and energy studying and striving to understand nature, in all its horrifying and simultaneously starkly beautiful splendor, are just wasting our time; there is no mechanism behind it, no observations to be made or measurements to be had. We can't deduce, infer or predict anything, because it was all just magic all along! And not only was it magic, but it was your preferred brand of magic! Your personal genie built all of it, and us plebeian non-believers owe a massive debt of gratitude for being allowed in it. Am I getting across how insulting this is?

Thirdly: it points to things we both agree exists, that we both agree are very beautiful, and then hijacks them to your side. It's saying "you can't have these unless you agree with me". In a sensible discussion, this is akin to moving your rook diagonally in chess; you don't get to do it.


This one is surprisingly common. Despite all the abundant atrocities commited in the name of faith, it is somehow the atheist that has no values. Why is this? Seemingly, because Holy Book du Jour says so.

The Koran says very little about atheists, other than lumping us with polytheists and calling for our murder.

The Bible calls atheists "fools" and asserts that "they are corrupt, their deeds are vile; / there is no one who does good." It seems the Bible, like the Sith, deals in absolutes. Not entirely surprising, and only takes one instance to disprove. But believers often claim that they have an "objective morality", meaning that when God says something is good, it is. Considering how many times God condones mass-murder and genocide, I would argue that this is false, and indeed that "objective morality" does not exist at all.

That isn't to say we can't have morality. The concept of suffering is hardly unknown to us, and most of us agree that we want to avoid it. Most of us also agree that satisfaction is a good thing, be it professional, sexual or intellectual. So if we create a framework in which we strive to minimize suffering and maximize satisfaction, we have a subjective morality that is already lightyears ahead anything found in the alleged holy books, and we needed no gods to make it.
And for you Americans out there, do look up the group "Atheists in Foxholes"; a very literal subversion of a very common and disrespectful military saying.


While Dawkins himself has said that some of his fans take on a disturbingly worshipful tone (and that he finds this disturbing), this is wrong. Atheism is a religion in the same sense as "not playing football" is a sport. We have neither deities nor dogma, and neither required nor prohibited beliefs. This argument is often used by those on the sidelines, unwilling to take sides in a heated debate, but wanting to claim the moral highground in relation to both parties. What this is is nothing more than a weak appeal to moderation, and as the Prophet Dawkins (peace be upon him) said: " "When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong."

And while many atheists are rationalists and materialists, there is no dogma saying you can't believe in a whole bunch of spiritual juju or ESP-powers or crystal powers or whatever else. The only thing atheism by definition rejects is the idea of personal gods. It's just that people who reject that faith tend to also reject the other ones.



And religion doesn't know anything. In essence, all testable claims put forth by holy texts have been demonstrated to be wrong, and some even particularly ignorant for the time they were written. And as I am an arrogant bastard, I'm one of those people who will indeed say that science is the only consistently reliable method for attaining and ascertaining knowledge that we have, and the other, "deeper knowledge", that some religious people like to claim, is nothing more than the conviction born of self-delusion. Science has provided more for more people in 200 years than religion has in the previous 2000 years.



Sometimes it seems that the only real requirement for belonging to a religious group is to say that you do. Thus, you can apparently be a Catholic with no regard for the pope and an abiding love for condoms and pre-marital sex, or a beer-and-bacon loving muslim. Jews are a bit iffier, because the semitic people are called jews, and adherents to Judaism are called...jews. Apparently, most jews hold to some of the ancient traditions, but far from all of them believe in god. But I digress. This is usually a method for avoiding criticism. A muslim in the west might say that he does not believe that you should murder non-muslims, and therefore criticism of the Koran for that reason is invalid, ignoring the considerable number of people who read the Koran and gets exactly that message.



Arabic probably is a very difficult language, I will concede this. But it's curious to see how much violence can appear out of thin air once a translation into english is even attempted. Or the text might be violent and medieval from the start. Where is Occam and his razor when you need it? Christians are not innocent of this, either. Very few Christians seem to actually read the Bible, or they would know that it condones abortion (but only as a test for infidelity), or that it does indeed condemn homosexuality, but that it does it with the exact same language as it condemns shellfish, tattoos and wearing mixed fabrics. Where are the "God Hates Lobsters"-signs?


In conclusion, I want to stress that I don't think religious people are bad people. It's not a crime to be wrong. In fact, science would stop if we were never wrong. Without ignorance, we could never sate our curiosity. But it has some particular areas where it has much more influence than should be awarded it. If you think of yourself as a good christian, and you're faced with the question of, for example, gay marriage. Should gays have human rights, or does a book of iron age mythology have a veto to to play in that question? Should the church perhaps let up on the ban on condoms in Aids-riddled Africa, or does the bible trump reality? Should said book also have the power to prohibit the dissolution of a legal contract, even for people of another faith?



Never! I know I come across as an arrogant bastard, but I'm an arrogant bastard with a point, and I will ride this stoned equine into the sunset. Hiyah!


(If deemed unsuitable for the section, please move to the Haven. I just needed to rant for a bit.)

Nicely done...