20 gram Soul

How Small We Are

Richard — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 04:10:48 +0000

I find one of the most arrogant claims that religion makes is that we are somehow special - the “centre of the universe”, so to speak. While (most) religions have rejected the idea that the earth is the centre of our solar system, the very idea that the creator of the universe would single out one small planet in some distant corner of his creation to be “special” seems absurdly arrogant. Carl Sagan describes this arrogance as “our imagined self-importance”, and “the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe”. While I think Sagan’s description still remains the greatest demonstration of how insignificant we really are (with Monty Python coming a close second), I saw this picture just recently which I though demonstrated it quite well too:

I’m sure anyone who visits this site has already seen Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot”, but I’m going to post it here again anyway, because it always manages to put me in my place each time I watch it.

(link to video)

Can anyone honestly say that “God” created all of this just for us?

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Organised Atheism

Richard — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:00:45 +0000

I’ve been holding off talking about Richard Dawkins’ “Out Campaign” for a while (yes, it’s probably all died down by now - you’ve either got a scarlet “A” on your t-shirt, website, car and baby, or you don’t) because I still haven’t figured out what I really think about it. On one hand, I applaud the effort to bring atheists together and to “out” themselves, but on the other, I still see the label “Atheist” as useful as “non-chocolate lover” or non-spice girls fan¹.

Of course, the use of the word “atheist” (and therefore the need to “out” oneself) has been stirred up recently by Sam Harris at an Atheist Alliance conference in Washington² - there are no “non-racists”, so “why are we defining ourselves by something that should simply be the case”³?

Every political or social group have certain beliefs and/or interests in common. A football team shares a love of sports, and possibly a belief that football is a worthwhile pursuit. A political group might share certain values and beliefs about how a society should function. A religion, well, they often share beliefs about a great many things: politics, sexuality, family values, etc. But more importantly - they share a belief in a supernatural being (or spirit, or afterlife, etc.).

What do atheists share? Nothing. Many of us can’t even agree on a definition of Atheism! I don’t mean to say that there’s nothing that we share, but what we do share is, quite literally, “nothing” - we share a nonexistent thing⁴: a lack of a belief in God. While this probably gives us a more common understanding of God than most religious people (even within the same religion or denomination, it seems every person has their own understanding of exactly what or who God is), this doesn’t seem to be a great foundation for an alliance.

Am I going to “come out”, well - yes, and no. I am without religion. I am, therefore, an atheist. I am also without racism, and am therefore non-racist. I have never killed anyone, and am therefore a non-murderer. I further have no love for chocolate⁵, no love of ABBA or the Spice Girls and most certainly no belief in fairies or celestial teapots. If you wish to define me by any of these “labels”, feel free - but I certainly don’t.

Harris explains it much better than I could on his website [↩]
Partial transcript available at Washington Post [↩]
Hemant Mehta (Oct 1, 2007) Atheist Alliance International Convention 2007 (Recap) [↩]
Nothing (n) A nonexistent thing [↩]
I wonder if coming out as an atheist, or an non-chocoholic would create more of a stir? [↩]

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God is Dead: Death, Nietzsche and Atheism

Richard — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:00:39 +0000

It seems common to think that Atheists cannot have a positive outlook on life, because the non-existence of god somehow denies life of any meaning.

I recently attended a funeral (not someone I knew, but I was there to support the family) followed closely by a wedding. And then, as if it was all part of some higher plan (irony intended), I find myself listening to this podcast which I downloaded a while ago, but hadn’t got around to listening to yet.

The funeral certainly reminded me of death (which, one might imagine, might be an unpleasant thing to think about), but because of my recent “brush with death”, I was able to appreciate the wedding so much more. Knowing that life will end (and will not go on forever, as many religious people might hope for) made the celebration much more special that it might have been otherwise. As Joseph Brisendine explains in the podcast - how long could you have a orgasm for before it became boring? Life is wonderful precisely because it ends.

If we were to “transcend” death, and live in a “perfect place” for eternity, nothing in this life would be special or have meaning, because we’d always be longing for this “other world”. And isn’t this exactly what religion teaches us? Religion (at least the Abrahamic ones, and probably most others) teach of an “after” life, which is supposed to be much grander and more fulfilling than this life ever can be.

It is claimed that without “God”, life cannot have purpose, but Nietzsche suggests (at least, Brisendine talking about Nietzsche) that it is only without God that this life can have any meaning.

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Asking for Directions

Richard — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:03:57 +0000

Non Sequitor seem to come out with some good religious-themed comics. Here’s another one to add to the list.

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Christianity 2.0

Richard — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:09:09 +0000

Good to see religion doesn’t necessarily mean being stuck in the dark ages. Now if someone can just update the bible, we’d be set.

Oh wait, that’s being done too…

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Passive Aggressive Christians

Richard — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:23:52 +0000

I’ve you’ve never come across the site Passive-Aggressive Notes, you’ve been missing out. It, along with the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks always manage to keep me entertained.

One of their recent posts involved a few lovely Christian themed notes, asking Where Would Jesus Park?

Check them out…

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Do Everything Like a Pirate

Richard — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:29:59 +0000

Today was the day when every good Pastafarian (and other pirate loving people) talks like a pirate. I, however, am a non-practicing Pastafarian, so I don’t generally observe these religious holidays (there was a pub crawl at Uni to celebrate, but I had to work instead).

But that should stop you getting in on the act! Even Flickr celebrated the day:

If you didn’t talk like a pirate today, you’ve only got 364 days until the next time you can “talk like a pirate and not be entirely insane”.

So, I’ve been wondering - when are all the atheist holidays and festivities?

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Did Jesus Even Exist?

Richard — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 12:02:15 +0000

Even though I was never really a Christian (although I looked into it seriously for a year or so), I had always assumed that Jesus was, most likely, a real person. There’s a common argument¹ which goes something like this:
“Either Jesus was crazy, or what he said must have been true. There’s no evidence he was crazy, therefore he must be the son of God”. Sure, there are plenty of other responses to this argument, but I think the two simplest ones are:

Jesus was misquoted, or misconstrued
Jesus never actually existed

I still maintain that if Jesus did actually exist, he would be quite unhappy about how his teachings have been butchered and interpreted today. So in some sense, I still believe the first option is quite likely. I had not, however (until recently) actually seriously considered the possibility that Jesus didn’t actually exist.

The bible talks about people we know existed, right? Various Kings and so forth? So, it’s fair to assume that Jesus also existed? Given that Jesus is such a central part of the Christian mythology, Christianity would fall if it could be demonstrated that Jesus was simply a myth, right (please, correct me if I’m wrong)? Well, this might just be true!

I first came across these two YouTube videos² a while back, and it made me realise that, if true, it would be an amazing coincidence if he actually existed (of course, perhaps that was God’s plan to make Jesus even more difficult to believe, thus requiring more faith). Dionysus (one of the figures discussed in the videos) was supposedly born of a virgin, fathered by the king of heaven, turned water into wine, died and resurrected. Sound familiar? There are, apparently, many other mythical figures who have extraordinarily similar stories - all of which predate Jesus.

There seem to be many others out there who claim similar things, and while there is some criticism of some of these claims, there are, undoubtedly some parts of the Jesus story which were “borrowed” from earlier myths.

I plan to investigate this further, as I don’t believe it’s quite as clear as is suggested, but I wonder - how much of Jesus’ life has to be true for Christianity to remain?

I think it might have originally been by C. S. Lewis, although I could be wrong [↩]
Both videos are short clips from Zeitgeist - The Movie, available in its entirety via BitTorrent (legally!), streamed via Google Video, or for order on DVD [↩]

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Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end

Richard — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:36:36 +0000

Seems this quiz is doing the rounds at the moment.

You Are Incredibly Logical

Move over Spock - you’re the new master of logic
You think rationally, clearly, and quickly.
A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How Logical Are You?

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Jesus Saves

Richard — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:33:34 +0000

I’ve been away this weekend, and haven’t got around to writing a proper post, so I’ll leave you with a joke instead.

Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.

Finally fed up, God said, “THAT’S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job.”

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.

They moused.

They faxed.

They e-mailed.

They e-mailed with attachments.

They downloaded.

They did spreadsheets!

They wrote reports.

They created labels and cards.

They created charts and graphs.

They did some genealogy reports.

They did every job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell

Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.

Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming:

“It’s gone! It’s all GONE! “I lost everything when the power went out!”

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work.

Satan observed this and became irate.

“Wait!” he screamed. “That’s not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don’t have any?”

God just shrugged and said,

JESUS SAVES

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