An Atheist Manifesto

[Popol Vuh]

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?


http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/P100/

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I think of "A FareWell to Arms" when any discussion of an indifferent God

comes up...

<snip>
Catherine's death appears to save the lover from having to face this final truth about himself. For his narrative now memorializes her, if not as a sacrifice, at least as an ideal who compensates for his lost integrity. At the moment of her death, he even skirts the question of his guilt in one final, obsessive allusion to the Christ story:

Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went feet first toward the centre where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I could have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.(327--8)

The potential 'messiah' confesses his indifference, not to blame himself for the disaster, but to blame an absent or indifferent god for Catherine's death. The supposed absence of anyone to save the ants only proves to Frederic the absence of anyone to save him from his fate. But a number of deaths are really on his head. And so he finally avoids responsibility by making the reader a party to his failure: 'You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn' (327).
<snip>

http://www.utpjournals.com/product/utq/592/592_willams.html

[texastoast]

2. Sure they are

but what they don't get is that God gives free will. What kind of "father" would decide everything for his children? People who think God directs it all are just looking to blame something.

Parents make choices. Children make choices. We are all responsible.

Whether or not it is good is a value judgment. Is it "good" to have 6 billion harvester humans at the expense of every other species on the planet?

[bananas]

3. I wish there was a way to hide the R/T Forum from the main page

These religious flame wars are a real waste of time.
and push the important stuff off the main page.

[NMMNG]

8. Who said you have to click on them?

Not everything in R/T is a flamewar, and just because you don't consider R/T a valid topic of discussion doesn't mean others don't. I'm not interested in discussing "Media" but you don't see me whining when their threads show up on the Latest page. If you only want to discuss topics from GD, GDP and LBN then go to those pages. Otherwise, deal with non-preferred topics showing up once in a blue moon.

[bananas]

12. There's an option to show or hide the lounge

They should make that option available for R/T, I/P, and 911.

Religion and Theology are valid topics of discussion,
Atheism and Atheology are also valid topics of discussion,
but because there isn't an A/A forum, they get forced into R/T,
just like all the conspiracy theories get forced into 911.
Unfortunately, forcing the atheists and religionists together just causes them to fight.

I've started using the ignore button, any time I see an R/T flame on the latest page, I put them on my ignore list. It seems to be working.

[trotsky]

17. But Buffy, it's so much more fun to whine and announce how far above

the fray you are! Don't you see? :eyes:

[Greyhound]

4. a.) it is happening right now somewhere in the world, in fact this

atrocity is happening multiple times right this minute.

b.) as an atheist, of course I don't believe that they are right in their beliefs, however it is their right to believe as they wish.

c.) IMO it is very bad to believe this insofar as it encourages the individual mind up to continue to ignore reality and operate in a make-believe world of magical thinking. It also allows both the perpetrators of heinous acts, as well as the aforementioned parents, to evade confronting the horror of the act. Now I can certainly sympathize with the partial alleviation of the parents grief that a belief in a better place and a big-daddy-in-the-sky can bring to them, and would never begrudge them that. The bottom-line, however, remains that if you are only a pawn in a great cosmic game beyond your pathetic ability to comprehend it, you cannot be held responsible for your lack of determination to effect it.

[sui generis]

6. I gave me free will

Don't need to messiah to save me
Don't need no lord to follow
Don't need no tradition to obey
Don't need no nothin' but common sense.
Don't care if anyone else does either because
Don't need to have everyone "believe" the same things I do to validate me.

Life is so much more precious and fragile if you believe we don't have a soul and this is the only chance we get to make the most of it. What is wrong with honoring life here now?

It's depressing too, but things are what they are. After free will you have every other thing you choose to give yourself in the script you write of your self and your life. You just have to be bold enough to get up on the stage of your own life and deliver your lines and write the next chapter, write the next act.

[greyl]

5. Two previous R/T threads about this,

for comparison purposes only. ;)

Feb 2006

Dec 2005

[redqueen]

7. Interesting...

thanks for posting this.

[lvx35]

9. Hi, I'm God. I've killed everybody, everything since day 1.

I killed the first protozoa, I killed the dinosaurs, and one day, I am going to kill you. Because I have killed everything since the beginning of time.

What I just expressed is the framework that pretty much every religion starts with. The idea that torture and death occur has NEVER contradicted a religious belief, just the atheist concept of religion, which is not what believers practice. What religions do is to put these things within a higher context, and lay down laws as to why to not do them, something atheism fails miserably at...Why should one animated sack of amino acids not torture another for its own pleasure if it can get away with it and the death we face is all the same? Atheism doesn't answer this question, and it never can.

[sui generis]

10. atheism doesn't "answer" questions

it just says "prove it".

It's always funny that religion has to describe existence in terms of "higher" and "lower", and of course the "highest" forms of enlightenment require miracles, acts of god, priests with a life line to the audience, or armageddon and an afterlife.

There is no "higher". What you see is what you get. If it's too ugly to bear, then make it better. You. Not some irrelevant water walking parlor trick of a petty deity.

When you turn philosophers into deities who walk on water and "die for your sins"; when you idolize them such that a cartoon causes global riots, your religion doesn't have a higher god damn thing about it.

Through all of history power over our lives has been the goal of the struggle between kings and priests. In this century where we are each our own king (or queen), the priests still struggle for control.

Go away - I certainly don't require a "lord" of any kind, I'm not a "sinner", I don't require saving, and I know right from wrong without ONCE having to refer to someone else's manifesto of parables.

[lvx35]

11. If you're a king in your own world, following your own morality...

Stop griping about the sex offender being king of his own world following his own morality. I've had to study offenders, and most of them don't take responsibility, blaming the child or society. They consider themselves morally correct for doing what they've done. This what religion fights against, it tells us we are NOT kings and answer to a higher moral cause. You call this 'control', but its just a system of shared morality which saves us from the kind of moral relativism the offender practices.

Go away - I certainly don't require a "lord" of any kind, I'm not a "sinner", I don't require saving, and I know right from wrong without ONCE having to refer to someone else's manifesto of parables.

Again, the offender would agree. From what authority would you draw upon to tell him that he is wrong?

[sui generis]

14. sorry, the exception argument doesn't work

we are not all "offenders" or "child molesters"; address the "norm". And more evil has been done by religous humans in the name of some absurd borrowed ethic than any "atheist" or the devil could even conceive of.

I don't subscribe to authority. I would refer that person to rational human laws, not just a list of commandments given credence only because an elder or a holy man or a deity said so, and not necessarily because they are right.

One of the cardinal crimes in ancient bedouin and nomadic cultures of the Sinai is envy and coveting; in a social structure of scarce resources they found it of greater value to make a commandment about jealousy than about fucking pre-teens.

The bible is full of advice about stoning people to death for absurd transgressions. Would you draw on the bible and expect your offender not to laugh in your face?

[lvx35]

15. We all subscribe to authority whether we like it or not,

that's what I'm trying to say here. You have your idea of right and wrong, which includes not fucking children (which I totally agree with) but eventually you run into somebody who does not agree, who is doing evil things and claiming they are right. Then you have do decide what to do about it. You can act as the priest, threatening with consequences for their actions in the next life, or the king, threatening with actions in this life, but to change what they are doing you have to take authority over them at some level, meaning you have to assert your positition as higher than theirs.
In your morality regarding fucking kids, I think you are absolutly right, not relatively right, and you have the right to say so, and the right to take authority over others who disagree. The question to me is "why". For me it comes down to "absolutes like do unto others as you would have done unto you", as Jesus said. From this, I can observe the life of trauma that comes from childhood sexual abuse and deduce that it is clearly wrong. Why do you think its absolutely wrong? You talk about the norm, but you also refer to societies where sex with preteens was a cultural norm. Again, where do you get your sense of right and wrong? What do you accept as absolute and why?

The bible is full of advice about stoning people to death for absurd transgressions. Would you draw on the bible and expect your offender not to laugh in your face?

Man, I wish I could come back with something to burn you, to make believers look good and you look bad, but I will speak the truth. Many sex offenders are "christian", its a matter of record. Particularly, they follow the "born-again" theology, which states that after accepting Jesus, no sin however heinous can bar them access to heaven, they will be forgiven. Or alternativly, they follow a theology which states that once you masturbate once, you are going to hell so it doesn't matter what you do after that point. These are fundamentalist belief structures, deriving validity from interpretations of the Bible, that these molesters BELIEVE. So would they laugh in my face? No not at all. It would be a matter of converting them from these bullshit faiths, backed by the Republicans, to healthier more valid beliefs, which are practiced by the religious left. I just wish you could see the difference.

[sui generis]

16. well thank you for the level headed answer

but I can't agree with you. I utterly despise religion, not because it exists or is practiced but because its followers often want everyone else to see their particular light, and would legislate it so if they could.

I think it was a great crutch to give a set of rote rules to civilization as it developed and destructively competed for local resources, but now I think it cripples humanity, is abused by evil people.

When I speak of child molesters I mean pre-adolescent children. The nuance of when is proper to take a wife or a husband is a social more, but nearly everyone agrees that you have to at least be physiologically mature. I wouldn't want my kids to marry before 30, personally, but I wouldn't send their boyfriend/girlfriend off to jail for having underage sex with them either. I would hope to have instilled at least some common sense into them to make well thought out and supportable adult decisions if they are going to treat their bodies as if they were an adult.

I personally don't believe that if you sat jesus or mohammad or buddha down in a room and asked them "did you want to be "worshipped" after you were gone?" "did you really appear in that grilled cheese sandwich to give us proof of your divinity" that they would say yes. In fact I'd go so far as to say I don't think they'd approve of what their philosophies have become, and they, as mortal men, would have been horrified to see what evil was done in their name in the pursuit of this mythological "divinity" that we spun their stories into to impress the goatherders.

I believe that a real adult makes his own traditions, chooses which traditions he honors, chooses his path. If you have values that drive your actions, such as fairness, conservation of resources, avoiding waste, not bringing harm to other humans, that ethos underscores every decision you make. A rote list of rules is for children. At some point, you must choose what rules you follow.

We have a social contract, that if most of us agree that doing something to impinge on the freedom of another human, such as having sex with a child, or hanging someone for being black, or taking someone's property, or causing someone physical harm, we understand that we all mostly agree that those actions are wrong and have remedy. The "authority" here is the social contract. We have a choice to remain here under the burden of not "being allowed" by that contract to freely harm someone without repercussion, or to go where there is no social contract, or less enforcement.

We also have a choice, as in the case of abuse of the social contract to take away or reduce the rights of a minority to stay here and defy that contract, because authority alone does not make right. The danger of ascribing to some "higher" authority is that it requires an interpreter who inevitably introduces his own bias, or it creates the habit of associating power with right, and never questioning it. There are people who are utterly evil atavistic throwbacks of humans who claim that jesus would be okay with murdering people in his name, that god visits hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis on entire countries because they don't kill gays in the streets. And they believe that every faith but theirs is a "bullshit faith", and that the only thing that matters is divine authority.

Atheists, like believers come in every shade of the rainbow. I would properly call myself a humanist, and describe my vision of the administrative function of government as normatively secular. That leaves room for lots of belief, and separates church from the purpose of the administration of state.

I think it's long past time for us to re-address what we think of "faith" as "philosophy", and to look around at reality and cherish what's here a little more. We owe multitudes of fairy tales and parables to our youngest children as a necessary stage of their learning and intellectual growth, but we owe equally wonderful and awe-inspiring reality to them when they are adults.

[lvx35]

19. Wow, well said.

That was one of the most challenging posts I've read here on this topic, because I agree with so much of it. You are aware of how religion has helped shape society to this point, the role that myths and stories play in the development of children and the teaching of morality, and you are pointing at a new 21st century world we are living in and talking about how we basically need to upgrade how we mentally do business. The big challenge is in the idea of reframing it as a philosophy...Is my spirituality a philosphy?

Here's the deal. Psychologist have been speculating about the origins of religious thought being in the evolutionary development of empathy. Being able to project thoughts and emotions on others to know what they are feeling/thinking gave a huge advantage to early man, and was spread widely. It is thought that the extension of empathic reasoning to include basically everything is what gave birth to religions, or the projecting of emotions on non living things. I'm bringing this up because it pegs pretty well what religious/spiritual people like myself actually experience, which is an intense empathic relationship with the universe. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm just telling it like it is. This relationship is something which is absent from philsophies as I know them, because they are intellectual. But this is living, its an extremely intimate thing happening at the daily level with religious/spiritual folk. Its like a relationship with a loved one...can your relationship with the people you really love be expressed as a philosophy?

So that's the core of it, that's why religions persist...and I can't say that it is in itself wrong, I think its a good thing, though wrongness can come of it when people try to intellectualize it in terms of ridiculous narratives. The best spiritual wisdom makes no sense whatsoever to the rational mind, like love poems.

The bottom line is, that's how I am. That's how WE are, spiritual folk. I honestly can't concieve a non-living universe, so deep is this in me. So now what?

The only solution I can see is if science and humanism were to offer a positive narrative for humanity, life and our role in it that allowed us to relate empathically to the universe, that opened the doors to the same sorts of things. But who really wants to do that? If we actually did that we wouldn't be able to sit here bitching at each other in R&T!!! ;)

[sui generis]

20. Thanks - I like what you said

"I'm bringing this up because it pegs pretty well what religious/spiritual people like myself actually experience, which is an intense empathic relationship with the universe. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm just telling it like it is." and

"I honestly can't concieve a non-living universe, so deep is this in me. So now what?"

I could have said it myself actually. I am a spiritual person too - I entertain "irrational" notions the same way a composer breaks the rules to make a sonata or a concerto more interesting; the same way a good artist uses an unexpected perspective to gain new insight on an ordinary subject.

From an evolutionary perspective, "we" each think of ourselves as individuals, when we are in fact billions of specialized individual cells all working together. Somewhere way back on the scale of our time we shared an evolutionary vertebrate ancestor with what became dinosaurs and birds, and even further back those clumps of cells all mostly decided on bilateral symmetry and growing clumps of cells that were sensitive to light and sound. We all have eyes.

In my spirituality we are all the planet's eyes; we are all some version of something this planet threw together to stand up and look at itself and see what else it could see. I don't really anthropomorphize it but there is a tickle in me that says how marvelous that "mother earth" and that squirrel over there and any human or creature I see are all siblings of a kind; that every rock or lichen or tree is another expression of the planet's quest to live and evolve. I know that I can have a philosophy that is rational and scientific but also deeply "spiritual" and deeply connected.

I lean towards modern zen/tao principles most often but I am completely unschooled in those in any formal fashion. That's why I enjoyed you making the observation (paraphrased) "not saying right or wrong; it just is"; an observation we don't make often enough about many things.

I can celebrate real spiritualism and connectedness at the same time as pure rationality; it's like a layer or a filter, or maybe even an ingredient of our experience as humans and our ability to sense and feel and cogitate. Most "spiritual" people actually do see dichotomy very readily, and don't view the world in absolutes or in black and white when "what is" in reality is that there are many many colors in between, and color is not a fact of nature but how our individual brains perceive and react to those reflected wavelengths.

But back to written laws based on anthropomorphic deities - it seems to me that people who ONLY see the world in black and white also often find it offensive that other people don't see it that way too. They force those views on others, and rather than sharing how they think, they demand that you think like they do, feel their rights are violated when they can't be guaranteed the opportunity to invade your mental space, and build their world-view out of laws that restrict behaviors, rather than laws that guarantee freedom and fairness. I don't think that's very spiritual of those kinds of people, however religious they may be.

[trotsky]

18. Well, the religious answer to the question is either

A) It's perfectly fine to inflict pain or death, because god said so!

B) Don't do it, because god said so!

Yeah, blame atheism because it doesn't offer an answer, just the freedom to figure this out for ourselves.

[manic expression]

13. People can do what they want to

It's called free will. What's your point?

[Ian David]

21. The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles

The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles

* We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

* We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

* We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

* We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

* We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.

* We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.

* We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.

* We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.

* We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.

* We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.

* We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their
fullest.

* We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.

* We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.

* We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.

* We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.

* We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.

* We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.

* We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.

* We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.

* We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

* We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

More:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=main&page=affirmations

[SPKrazy]

22. Hasn't This Been Discussed, and Discussed

God gives us free will.

We aren't able to understand the big picture because we are trapped in our time and space constrained bodies.

Some day we will know the truth.

Those are my beliefs about atrocities.

Bad shit happens in the world.

It gives good people a chance to do something about it I guess.

[Random_Australian]

23. One last comment: this is AN atheists manifesto, and without heirachy

there is no requirement to follow, believe, or even be similar to anything expressed therein.

Of course, following, believing & similarity are fine.

Just needed to be said.

[neebob]

24. Blah blah blah

I couldn't finish reading that if I wanted to. Here's my manifesto: It's pretty frickin' obvious that there's no god, no before or afterlife, and no soul or separate consciousness to have been or to go anywhere but inside the physical body I now inhabit on the planet Earth. If there's another universe or plane of existence, I'm not invited. Therefore, I had better suck it up and deal - make the best of this existence, in this body, on the planet Earth, in this universe.

Notice I'm speaking strictly for myself. I don't disagree with Sam Harris, in general, except for where he says only the atheist is or does this, that, or the other thing. Or I should say I didn't see anything else I disagree with in scanning his manifesto. I'm just not willing to join his so-called project and waste my time trying to end religion. It'll never happen.

And I simply don't believe Sam Harris when he says that observing and arguing for the obvious is a thankless job he doesn't want. It's like Dude, you wrote a 4-page manifesto and a 250-page book and built a whole big website about it.

It may be a thankless job, but it can also be a paying job ... since we're observing the obvious.