Is it logical for atheists to put up holiday displays?

I noticed in the news this morning that in Santa Monica California some self-professed Atheists had secured space to put up a scene promoting their beliefs, much like the Christians are in the habit of doing. What is the point of spending time and money promoting beliefs, for or against God, in a universe that is said to exist without any objective moral standards or purpose? If you think Christianity or some other religion is bad or Atheism is good, haven't you just affirmed everything you deny by being Atheist?

What is the problem with Bullies?

I saw a news story this morning where folks were getting all worked up about Bullies. They even had famous people like Lady Gaga sharing their outrage and desire to see bullying stopped. I would not have picked Ms. Gaga as a closet Christian, so I am not sure what problem she has with it?

Bullying is a normal part of the evolutionary/natural selection process and should not even be considered on moral grounds, as moral absolutes can't exist in the atheistic worldview. This makes even less sense when you consider the main object of the bullies in the story was LGBT people who won't likely be much use in the further evolution of the species anyway.

Now, I do understand that the Christians will look to their Bibles and claim we need to protect all people from harm even if they would describe their lifestyles as sinful - Rom. 13:10 "Love does no harm to its neighbor...", but for the logical and consistent atheist this "no bullying" talk is both inconsistent and meaningless.

Funerals?

Why do we bother with funerals? When Ebenezer Scrooge was asked about helping the poor in A Christmas Carol, he suggested they may as well die and "decrease the surplus population". His comment seems harsh, but in reality it seems very consistent with atheistic/evolutionary beliefs. What would he say at a funeral? He would not bother with such a thing (until he became a believer - icky!).

What is the point of funerals? Someone lives one day and dies or lives one hundred years and dies - does it really matter? They do stuff the majority say was positive or they do stuff the majority say was negative - who cares and why? Do we celebrate a mosquito for living long or sucking blood well? Why not? Probably because they are doing what mosquitoes do and their is nothing admirable or condemnable in it either way.

What makes us any different (unless you are a Christian)? Survival of the fittest makes every person equal with every other person and with every mosquito as well! We lived as long as we lived, did what we did and died without doing anything but playing our part in the amoral evolutionary machine.

How long will the Christian's beliefs keep overflowing onto everyone else and keep this world from being the cold, meaningless and amoral place it could be?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if people were consistent in their atheistic beliefs and when someone died - no one cared?

An Atheists View of 9-11

It is clear an atheist must take a very unpopular stance when it come to the 9-11 "tragedy" and upcoming memorial services. Survival of the fittest doesn't really allow for heroes and villains. The blind, cold and amoral process of evolution includes the reality of organisms killing each other, but we can't call that process bad any more than we could call the risking of one's life to save others good, noble or heroic. All this is merely a natural process. Survival of the fittest, assuming it is really the right way to describe a totally pointless universe, would leave more room for condemning the "heroes" as those who went against the natural order, but of course if they die in the process they have only proven to be weak and been rightly eliminated.

The Christians can get offended at this because they claim God has spoken and declared the purpose of creation and the moral standards by which man is judged, but if you can believe nothing created everything, that our conscience is a lie and that it is all meaningless - you need not be burdened with such things!

Movies and survival of the fittest

I watched Hotel Rwanda recently and was shocked by the mixed message we here from this and movies like it. The movie tells of the ethnic cleansing/genocide or what atheists/evolutionary believers would call survival of the fittest that took place in Rwanda during the early 90s.

People seem surprised by things like this as they happen over and over through history. There really only seem to be two different explanations. Either the Christians are right and God is real, believe He created us and these actions are objectively wrong because God has spoken and declared them to be in His word or we are simply the products of random and amoral actions over time and there is no basis for calling anything wrong. It could further be said that "survival of the fittest" would more likely mean these actions are right if we were able to meaningfully claim such a category for discussion within our worldview.

Atheist, believer in evolution - don't fret even if you are one day the object/victim of genocide like these 1,000,000 Rwandans, you can take comfort in making your contribution to the random meaningless progression of life on earth!

Pragmatism = The Atheist's moral compass!

Pragmatism, defined by me as "whatever works is right", is truly the atheist's moral compass. From the family, to education, to the highest levels of politics, pragmatism is how "right" and "wrong" must be determined. Of course the person with the most power or the "experts" they hire get to decide what the desired goal is and what "whatever works" looks like in the situation at hand. In the end, it is might that makes right. Of course their is no moral basis for accusing others of wrong as long as they can say this is what works.

Whatever works for ME is "right" - if I want to be a logical and consistent atheist!

Have you wiped out a weaker species today?

Survival of the fittest is at the very root of atheistic understandings of life. If you are not eliminating weaker species - you are not being consistent to your beliefs! The Christian's won't do this for you, so go conquer the weak or don't be surprised if the Fiddler Crabs or Humming Birds rise up and wipe you out one day!

Is eating your children only a legal issue?

If not for laws making it illegal, atheists should be consistent and affirm eating your children is as acceptable as eating any other living things. You might claim we should protect all animal life or you may have some standard by which you decide which animals are expendable for food or other reasons (crop harming insects for instance) and which are too advanced (able to feel) or just too "cute" to kill or consume.

I would propose that it is impossible to live in our culture without killing some animals for some reasons. If it is OK to kill a chicken and eat it, then why not a child? You might say you are exempt form this reasoning because you are a vegetarian and would never advocate killing/eating a chicken, but are you really being consistent in your treatment of animals? Do you kill insects that invade your home, bacteria that invade your body or cause the death of animals through your part in polluting the environment? Are some kinds of life of greater or lesser value - says who?

As one famous animal rights expert put it -

"There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.” — Ingrid Newkirk, Washingtonian magazine, Aug 1986

Newkirk was trying to make a case for animal rights by suggesting we have just as much reason for protecting the rights of rats as children. She has a point, but unless their is some absolute moral standard from which we derive things like rights then she may be making the opposite point - if we have no basis for rights for rats then there is no basis for rights for people either.

Unless God has spoken, as the Christians claim, then any distinction between mammals and bacteria as worthy of rights is completely arbitrary. If you are to be totally true to an atheistic/evolutionary worldview, it would be wrong to distinguish even plant life or rocks from the sphere of rights as they all equally exist as products of the amoral process of time and chance acting on matter. Of course the rights they have is not the right to exist without being harmed, but the right or even obligation to consume each other as much as they are able as part of the evolutionary process.

If God has not spoken and given us specific information on morality as it relates to the world, then there is no basis for even having such discussions of "rights". Survival of the fittest must prevail and if it were legal to eat your children, no one could make any kind of moral argument regarding the rightness or wrongness of it.

If atheists were to act more like atheists and less like Christians (living like morals were real/absolute) we may not have survived long enough as a species to have these kinds of discussion (our parents may have eaten us), but do you want to be a consistent atheist or live?





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Why "Good without God" is Silly Talk!

First, to talk about moral categories like good and bad makes no sense for atheists. If mankind is just another organism that came about through the amoral process of time and chance acting on matter, then to talk about things as good or bad is just plain silly. Chemical reactions or the actions of biological units brought about through chemical reactions are have no basis for morals.

Even if you were to suggest some other method for deciding certain things are good or bad, such as: they are good for the survival of the species or even the individual, your evaluation could never be anything but pure subjectivity. If we are the standard for deciding if we are good, I suspect we will be good in our eyes and someone else may just as validly declare us bad. Further, even the notion that the survival of an individual, a species, or even the continued existence of the earth as a whole is in some way "good", can't be grounded in anything besides personal opinion.

It is fascinating how many atheists feel obligated (in their books/speeches) to point out the better things atheists have done and the worse things religious people have done throughout world history. Should I assume they would become Christians if the statistics supported the opposite being true? Have they forgotten Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il and so many other murderous tyrants who were true to their atheistic/evolutionary beliefs? It has been suggested that some of these tyrants practiced a religion of sorts, but in practice they all assumed the role of god and acted according to an atheist/evolutionary worldview.

Likewise, this is an especially weak argument against Christianity since even though many who have called themselves Christians have done horrible things, the teachings of the Christian's Bible would have condemned those who did them and exposed them as not being Christians in any true biblical sense.

Clearly the tyrants who have been most successful in subduing/eliminating their foes were acting consistent with their atheist beliefs as they put survival of the fittest into action.

Face the facts - to even suggest life ought to continue is a moral statement that has no place in atheistic/evolutionary thinking.

Unless God speaks in some tangible way, such as the Bible as the Christians claim, then we have no basis for acknowledging morality as a category of thought/discussion, no language to speak within the category even if it existed and no standard we could use to evaluate it regardless.

So even if someone writes a book to the contrary - Good Without God - is silly talk.

Atheists do believe in god!

Really, if there is no God who has spoken or revealed Himself (as the Christians claim He has in the Bible), then I am as much of a god as there is and I can rule over those around me unless they can stop me, of course you can do the same back. This is what all great tyrants of history have believed and what you must embrace as you dethrone their God and put yourself in His place!

You could look into their claims about God as revealed in the Bible. They claim it is largely verifiable by outside archaeological evidence. They claim that it alone explains the world and even gives a basis for moral absolutes like kindness, justice and striving for peace. They claim that those who died martyrs for their faith in Jesus would never have given their lives for proclaiming the resurrection and His miracles if they knew it were all lies. However, we must remember, even if it is at times easier to believe their explanation of things than to attribute it all to time and chance acting on matter. If you accept their view you must step down form being god and worship theirs.

Imagine a world were we don't get to be god, would you really want that?

Oh the shame I feel!

I really let myself down today. I don't know what got into me, it was a moment of weakness, I just forgot my beliefs, lost sight of reality for a moment - maybe some leftover parental/society programed "conscience" made me do it, but I did it none the less and I feel like such a loser.

Yes, you guessed it, I did something sacrificial, I helped someone in need!

It makes no sense, I could almost wish I had someone to forgive such a "sin" against my atheistic and evolutionary beliefs! 

Although I definitely/rightly want what is best for me even at the expense of others most of the time...

it is sometimes like the selfish acts I know I should do I feel guilty for doing and at the same time the generous acts that make no sense in my worldview I sometimes feel good about doing!

I could almost curse the random action of time and chance on matter that saddled us with feelings that sometimes contradict our evolutionary obligation to selfish actions!!!

I know there are atheists that are generous/sacrificial and feel good about it, but let's face it y'all are traitors and are living like Christians, they are the only ones who can make a claim for the rightness of and even necessity to help the less fortunate. If God has not spoken and told us what we are expected to do, what right and wrong are, then we are obligated to assume "might makes right" as atheism and evolution demand.

I know what you may be thinking - it looks like the only way to have a society that is built on kindness, generosity, fairness, justice, etc, is by accepting the Christian's worldview.

You are right, but the freedom to do whatever you want and freedom from any guilt - comes at a cost!

Human Rights - Really?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Sound familiar?

It is from the Declaration of Independence.

Clearly, the Founding Fathers were aware that "human rights" could only be grounded in the reality of some higher authority whom they called "their  Creator". The majority assumed this creator had mandated these things for His creation and revealed it in the Bible.

We can be free of this Christian "human rights" nonsense if we will only think logically!

It is clear that unless a higher authority/creator tells us what is true, good, right, etc. in some absolute/concrete way, such as in a written document like the Bible, then "human rights" is nothing more than one or more persons' opinion of what ought to be in a world without oughts!

If we reject the notion of a creator/God we are free from "human rights".

Let me give a practical example -

Suppose ten people find themselves stuck on an island cut off from all other people, governments and laws. For the sake of argument, five are adult men, two are adult women and three are children age 9-11 (two girls and one boy).

Even though there is no moral basis for a majority vote for making decisions (evolution would not account for it), it is decided that they will vote to decide how things are to be run on the island. The five men decide they want the others to be their salves, in even the most heinous/unspeakable ways, so they convince one of the children to vote with them and the majority's will becomes law on the island. 

The women and children now find they have been voted into slavery by the majority. Removed from other laws/governments that dictate behavior and punish lawbreakers, can these slaves make any claim of their "human rights" being violated?

Most would say pedophilia is obviously wrong everywhere all the time, but lets be consistent atheists and acknowledge all morall standards are subjective and simply based on the standards particular societies have chosen. Therefore, slavery or pedophelia are simply the acceptable moral standard this society has voted into law.

This is even being generous, because in reality the will of any two of the castaways might just as well dictate accepted morality for this small society, if they are strong enough to force their will on the others. As I alluded to earlier, even voting can't be called "right" unless it is anchored in some higher authority/creator.

It is true that these kinds of things have happened many times throughout history and have often been called evil or even atrocities, but now we see that even the condemning of these actions is baseless when God is rejected.

"Human rights" as a concept doesn't even make sense if we (humans) are simply products of time and random chance on matter!

It is clear the Founding Fathers knew the consequences of a godless society and wrote the founding documents of our nation based on their strong religious (mostly Christian) beliefs, but now we can be free by following atheism to it's logical end and get in the process -

A world without any basis for "human rights"!

If you end up a slave in the process - I guess you can't complain, accept to time and chance acting on matter!

Free From Final Justice - Woopee!

Not that I believe the categories of fair, right or justice are anything more than human constructs, but isn't it good to know they have only very limited and temporary influence on us!

Seriously, don't you want to rest easy knowing that if you beat the system here, you have truly and finally gotten away with it? It would really stink to think you/others would one day have to give an account for all the "evil" you have done. The truth is, if you murder someone and get off on a technicality you are totally free, of course there is no guilty feelings as nothing is really bad in any absolute sense, but also we have none of the perfect justice of God, final judgement stuff the Christians get from their Bible.

Isn't it much less complicated and even fun to live in a world where if you can pay off the police, strong arm a judge or threaten a jury and be let off and then you really are "innocent", since the human legal system is all there is!

If you really did do something the legal system or those moralistic Christians call evil, it is nice to know that saying your sorry or making amends is useless and unnecessary. I mean really, if there is no moral absolutes or final judgement beyond this life, it would be hypocritical to try to make up for something that is only between you and the legal system.

Atheism is hard to live out sometimes, but can't you see the wonderful world it brings about!

My bad, I mean the world we can make no judgements of good (wonderful, for example) or bad about. It is really hard to discuss anything without using language which makes value/moral judgments about things!

I will try to do better - @&$!* I did it again...

Why not get rid of the poor and weak?

I know it sounds harsh at first, but aren't you just reacting emotionally from a primitive man made standard of right and wrong that you have been taught to believe? Seriously, other animals from the microscopic level up to the largest on earth have natural predators to eliminate the weak and unproductive.

We have become so protected by advancements in technology and science that we need to consider helping natural selection out a bit, it would still be natural selection, because we are doing it and we are only parts of nature after all. By having us better producing members of the species weed out some of the less fruitful ones, we could make much better use of resources that are becoming more limited all the time.

I know those Christians will say that God has said in the Bible that He made man in His image and we need to respect and care for all human life (even the unborn if you can imagine that), but we don't believe in their God, so we must do as we think is best. I know you might say - well even an atheist should be concerned for the greater good and my suggestion mat not be what is best for the whole human race.

Who cares!

I am not obligated by evolution to do what is best for the whole human race - only what is best for me, and only I decide what that is. If my plan is bad for everyone but me, that is just too bad for you, unless you are strong enough to stop me.

Aren't you glad we aren't obligated to care for the poor and weak like those Christians? I know they don't always do it, but their Bible does teach it and unless God has spoken and told us about moral obligations to care for others then we have no reason to think we must.

Doesn't it make you feel safe, if you are very strong, at least for now?

Oh the Freedom of Meaninglessness!

Those poor Christians.

They believe God has spoken in the Bible and told mankind about who God is, what life is about, what is good/bad morally, how to be reconciled to God for not meeting his moral standards (Jesus/cross) and even gives a basis for knowing if anything (even our senses/thoughts/logic) are true or reliable.

We know better!

If God hasn't spoken then nothing has any meaning or purpose that can be known by us. Even our ability to know things by our senses or reason is simply our opinions drifting in a purposeless/meaningless/unknowable universe. Even if there were a god, we could not know anything about him or what he expects from us if he did not reveal himself in some concrete way, like the Bible.

It is so freeing to know that our lives have no meaning or purpose. We can work hard or not, be kind or not, pollute the environment or not and at the end of the day we can know nothing we did had any real meaning or purpose either way!

See how free that makes you feel!

Atheist - Be Consistent!

I am often amazed at the inconstancy of atheists. If we believe it - let's act like it. One example is on ecological issues. We are supposed to believe in evolution, but so often we see those who confess atheist beliefs doing ridiculous things - like putting beached whales back in the ocean!

How do we expect these whales to evolve if we keep putting them back! If we had any basis for calling something morally wrong/bad - this would be bad, but we don't, so  never mind I guess, but it still seams really inconsistent! Is being inconsistent bad?

Oops! I can't use categories like good or  bad - getting a headache!

Until next time!