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Category: atheism (page 7 of 17)

Census: ‘Atheism’ or ‘No Religion’?

12 January 2011 / / 7 Comments

Now here’s an effort I can get behind. Atheist Ireland requests that if you’re not religious, don’t automatically tick the box for a religion in the upcoming census.

Be Honest to Godless in the Irish Census on Sunday 10 April. Think before you tick. And if you’re not religious, please tick the no religion box.

It’s now three months to the next Irish Census on 10 April, and Atheist Ireland wants to see an accurate answer to the question on religion. You won’t write in your childhood home address unless you still live there. So don’t write in your childhood religion unless you still really practice it.

Sounds reasonable. And the British Humanist Organisation is saying the same thing.

If you say you’re religious on the census and don’t really mean it, then you are treated by some sections of the media, churches, and even government policymakers as if you are a fully-fledged believer.

This is significant for Australians because we’re having a census of our own in August this year. We have a census every five years instead of ten. (Takes less time to count us.) The 2006 census was the first time I’d identified as “No Religion” (but I didn’t identify as an atheist). I have to say, it was a somewhat exhilarating experience, one that you can enjoy for yourself. I’m really looking forward to see how the unchurched categories jump, as they have consistently done.

But somewhat strangely, the Irish Atheists are requesting that atheists not say they’re atheists.

Please don’t write in ‘Atheist’, or anything else that is not a religion, in box number 6, which says ‘write in your RELIGION’. That makes some people mistakenly think that atheism is a religion, and creates the impression that there are far fewer atheists than is actually the case.

Okay, so atheism is not a religion. But if someone asked me, “What religion are you?” I’d say, “None; I’m an atheist.” So I can see “No religion” or “Atheism” as appropriate answers. The confusion about atheism-as-religion is annoying, but people won’t suddenly straighten themselves out from the census alone. It’s the kind of thing you have to explain to people over and over, one person at a time. Which we will continue to do after the census is over.

And if you think about it, it doesn’t make sense to say “Don’t write in ‘Atheism’ because not enough people will write in ‘Atheism'”. Let’s turn that argument on its head — do write ‘Atheism’ so that more people will be writing ‘Atheism’!

How does the religion question work for Australia? The Australian Bureau of Statistics has a space for the categories “No Religion”, “Atheism”, and “Agnosticism”. (Download an Excel spreadsheet of all the religious data on this page.) I plan on writing in ‘Atheism’ because observers and journalists will group atheists in with the ‘No Religion’ category anyway, and why not be as specific as possible? And, of course, if atheists write “Atheism”, then more atheists will be identifying explicitly as atheists, which is a good thing.

That’s my argument, anyway. But what is everyone else doing?

As a final note, the LDS Church claims that there were 108,851 Mormons in Australia in 2006. In the same year, only 52,141 people self-identified as LDS. You’d think saying “I’m LDS” would be some kind of minimal requirement to be considered a member. Do you think the LDS Church is not doing their best to keep a really accurate count?

Why get married? A straight guy reflects…

5 January 2011 / / 6 Comments

I have an announcement: Ms Perfect and I are engaged! I proposed on Christmas Eve, and amazingly she said yes, despite knowing me for years.

Members of my family were pleased. At last, our relationship would have legitimacy! (No, they didn’t say that. They said, Have the wedding in winter so we can come to Australia in summer!)

Before the engagement, we lived in delicious sin as a committed couple, ready to spend the rest of our lives together. Now, post-engagement, we’re living together as a committed couple, ready to spend etc. No difference, really. So why did I decide to do this? It’s not like we had to get married. Besides the ring, some photographs, and a certificate, things won’t be noticeably different. And as Dean once said, secular atheists don’t need marriage. But I could think of a few reasons why I might want to be married.

It’s a party. Okay, we can always have a party. But not one as theatrical. Or cinematic. So it’s something.

Okay, next reason. It’s a narrative of how your life is supposed to go. You grow up in your middle-class suburban home, watching movies with weddings and thinking, “This is the goal.” That’s not very good either, but we’ll add it to the pile with the other reasons.

Having children out of wedlock would be a stigma, but that’s only an issue for a few more years, as all the people who think this will assuredly die off soon. So let’s move on.

How about this: It’s a way of making your relationship public and real. Well, what about now? Aren’t we already public and real? And yet…

It’s like I don’t really have a reason at all for wanting to be married, not a reason anyway. But all the little reasons add up, plus an urge that says, “This is what I want to do. With her.”

As I weighed up my reasons for marriage, I found myself (not for the first time) considering the situation of gay guys and gals, and wondering why they might want the same thing. I also reflected on the reasons people had for denying them marriage.

Why do they need marriage? say the Moral People. Why don’t gay people just live together? Well, we ‘just’ lived together, and it was lovely. But I decided I wanted to do it ‘for real’. What if someone had come and told me we couldn’t, because their god disapproved? And since theism is massive projection, they mean ‘because they disapprove’. I’d tell them to get bent, and I’d hope any gay couple would do the same.

Well, we’ll give them a civil union, the Moral People continue, but we won’t call it marriage. Isn’t that good enough? What’s the difference? Well, is a civil union a marriage? I’d say no, it’s not. So what is a marriage? A marriage is where they say “It’s a marriage.” If they don’t, it’s not. And that matters to me.

And I guess that takes us to a Big Reason for marriage. Marriage is the way our society confers favour and approval on relationships, and some of us — however iconoclastic and rugged we be — desire it. We want the whole thing, cake and ring and all, however silly and clichéd that is. Religious conservatives (ever the tribalists) know something about societal approval too, and they oppose gay marriage because they don’t wish to confer societal approval on those types of relationships.

At least, I think this is what’s going on. I have no idea if this is what goes through the mind of a religious conservative or not, though, because strangely not once in any of the many discussions I’ve had on this topic has one of them ever said this. They come up with log-stupid arguments about reproduction, polygamy, or incest, but they never say ‘I can’t stand them and won’t have them in the club’. Either they’re ashamed to admit that’s the real reason, or I’m totally off-base. But I don’t think I am.

How lucky I am to be a straight guy, able to marry the straight girl of my dreams. How unfair that not everyone can have what comes so automatically to us.

Extraordinary Claims

3 December 2010 / / 4 Comments

Love the look of this website — Extraordinary Claims — by the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Love the content too. It’s a rundown of a whole crop of bogus ideas, from Allah to Xenu.

From the blog:

Why is belief in Bigfoot dismissed as delusional while belief in Allah and Christ is respected and revered? All of these claims are equally extraordinary and demand critical examination.

At CFI Canada we challenge ideas and ask tough questions to promote reason, science, secularism and freedom of inquiry.

I think I could read this all afternoon. There goes today’s productivity.

And if you’ve read the website, why not ride the bus? Only catch is, you have to be in Toronto.

The atheist group behind last year’s controversial bus ads suggesting “there’s probably no God” is rolling out a provocative new set of posters on buses across the country that places Allah beside Big Foot and Christ beside psychics.
…
They will hit Toronto streetcars in January, pending final approval from the Toronto Transit Commission, said Justin Trottier, national executive director of the Centre for Inquiry, an atheist organization. After the Toronto debut, the organization plans to post the ads to buses in Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa, Saskatoon and Montreal.

The rest of us can but hope to have such liberal-minded bus advertisers.

Still alive, more than ever.

3 September 2010 / / 12 Comments

This is a post about my Mom. It’s not intended to distress family members — I think I’ve written it with a modicum of sensitivity and tact — but it may. If you think you may be offended by my views on the implications of religious belief as they pertain to mortality, best to stop reading now, instead of making a scene at the funeral later. If, however, you’re willing to risk it, or you just want to know where I’m coming from, please read on.

Facebook friends will already know that my Mom passed away last week. It wasn’t unexpected — she hadn’t been well for a long time, and I’m glad she’s not in the pain and the frame of mind that she was in. I’d already done a lot of the emotional work and the ‘letting go’, but I was still surprised at how tender I felt that first day; I felt the fragility of my body, my heartbeat, the delicate chemistry of my consciousness. I walked and moved gingerly, as one does at the beginning of a cold. I’d always lived in a world where my mother existed, and now I didn’t.

It must have been a long time since we really talked, what with her being ill for such a long time. My memories of her come back in pieces. I’ll remember something she said, a conversation we had, something she taught me. If we went to McDonalds, we had a ritual where I’d wind up the straw, and she’d flick it with a loud crack! All with the most blasé expression on our faces. It’s much funnier if it’s your Mom. As I said on Facebook, “My mom was a great person. She always encouraged me to develop my mind and my talents. She loved me. And she taught me to shop.” She really was amazing, and I’m really going to miss her.

Subsequent days have been fine. I may feel different at the funeral (jet-lagged), but for now I feel like I’ve bounced back. In particular, I feel no desire to revert to the comforting myths of the religion of my youth. Quite to the contrary — when someone wrote that Mom was in a ‘better place’, I felt a quiver of very mild exasperation.

This has raised a question for me, though. I’ve often heard that stories of an afterlife serve to ‘comfort’ believers in times of death. So why are the religious members of my family so glum? Of course, we’re all sad because we’re going to miss her. But among all the condolences and the contacts I’ve heard and read, there has been precious little optimism (so far). Why are they expressing sadness at all?

They ought to be delighted! Right now, Mom’s wearing a robe, padding around in little white slippers, waiting to be taken to some kind of veil thing where she can give the handshakes and passwords. Whereupon she will be ushered into a bright white place with tasteful furniture, there to be with my father, her sisters, parents, Jesus, and everyone, for all eternity.

I believed in that story, and I talked with other believers for years, so I think I know the mindset pretty well. When you believe in the supernatural stuff, there’s always some vacillation between certainty and doubt. It comes in cycles. You can have a doubting period, but then you pump yourself up with faith until you’re ‘strong’ again. Maybe some people don’t let themselves doubt, but I’m sure many believers are familiar with what I’m describing.

For me, the conflict ended when I realised that the evidence for gods was poor. The concept of a ‘spirit’, or a little ghost inside of us, was equally unsubstantiated. The sensible explanation was that our brains were the things that produced the sensations of cognition and perception, and when the brain died, perception would simply stop and we would experience nothing. I wasn’t fond of this conclusion (and I’m still not), but I found it to be the explanation that best fit the facts. You could say I ‘took the hit’, and accepted its implications for my life.

As a result, I’ve accepted my Mom’s passing with an equanimity that I couldn’t have mustered in my believing days. I was taking all my time going between belief and doubt. Someone who believes in heaven and an afterlife is just dodging the inevitable conflict. They can’t do the work of accepting the finite nature of human existence because they think they’re going to live forever. Their religion keeps them from accomplishing this very important task of adulthood. They are prevented from growing up.

Me, I’m waking up today and feeling grateful. I’m enjoying all the sensations my body feels. I realise that my life is a tiny blip in an eternity that will go on without me, and I feel happy and amazed that I get to be here on this day that will never come again. I’m tasting food. I’m enjoying the touch of a sweetheart. I’m the guy you saw riding the bicycle too fast, shouting “I’M ALIIIVE!”

For so we are. All of us here today are alive. Let’s get out there and do it.

Endangered religions

15 August 2010 / / 3 Comments

Linguist Michael Krauss defines whether a language is endangered or not partly by whether they’re being taken up natively by children. It strikes me that the same criterion could apply to whether a religion is endangered or not.

And right now the stats are not looking good for religion among young people. Earlier this year, a Pew Forum report showed that young people are less likely to be affiliated with a religion than other generations were when they were younger. Now research from evangelical Christians shows the same trend.

“Bye-bye church. We’re busy.” That’s the message teens are giving churches today.

Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in.

“Talking to God may be losing out to Facebook,” says Barna president David Kinnaman.

Interesting. Let’s come back to this later.

“Sweet 16 is not a sweet spot for churches. It’s the age teens typically drop out,” says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, which found the turning point in a study of church dropouts. “A decade ago teens were coming to church youth group to play, coming for the entertainment, coming for the pizza. They’re not even coming for the pizza anymore. They say, ‘We don’t see the church as relevant, as meeting our needs or where we need to be today.'”

Or here: (but caution: author is plugging a book)

‘How can we stop the oil gusher?” may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort: Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.

As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.

Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn’t megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Back to that Facebook comment. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this shift is most pronounced among an age group that grew up with the Internet. The Internet is contributing to the demise of religion among young people in a couple of ways. First, by contributing to the sharing of knowledge. As knowledge becomes more available, religions (which teach things that are wrong) will seem less and less relevant. Second, the Net has allowed for the building of communities. Many people see value in churches as a social network, but if people have alternative social networks (even online ones), they’re less likely to seek one in a church.

My concern now is that rejection of religion may not be matched by critical thinking and skepticism in other areas. They might just be shifting to other kinds of unreason, notably new age snake oil and other proto-faiths. I think education about how to reason and how to find good information are the most important areas we can be focusing on with this age group.

Why are we moral? It’s a problem — for Christians.

12 August 2010 / / 18 Comments

One of the main themes of the ‘Collision’ discussion was morality. Ben the Christian had no argument with the idea that atheists could be moral, but he thought they were borrowing Christian morality (which actually predates Christianity). Like Wilson in the film, he argued that Christians could explain why a deed was moral or immoral (God seddit), but atheists couldn’t.

In fact, atheists can explain why we’re moral: we have brains (with, yes, mirror neurons) that can feel the feelings of others. When we see someone that’s hurt or sad, we feel like it’s happening to us, and we don’t like it. This gives rise to compassion, empathy, and all those nice things.

Here’s the interesting part (and this line of thinking arose out of a discussion with Mark Ellison):
• A theory is better if it explains more.
• Atheists can explain why atheists and Christians are moral.
• Christians can explain why Christians are moral, but they have no idea why atheists are moral.
• Their theory explains less. This is a problem for their theory, not for the theory of atheists.

No, really, they simply have no idea why atheists are moral. Take a look at the recent column from Billy Graham.

DEAR DR. GRAHAM: The kindest, most thoughtful person I know says she’s an atheist and doesn’t even believe in God. I always thought we needed to believe in God before we’d behave like she does, but I guess this isn’t necessarily true, is it?
…
[Graham responds:] Why is she such a kind and thoughtful person? I don’t know the reason; perhaps she simply has a sunny personality (as some people do), or perhaps her parents taught her to be kind and considerate when she was growing up. But I do know this: She’s not this way because she’s an atheist. In fact, she’s this way despite her atheism — because a true atheist has no real reason to believe in right and wrong or to behave sacrificially toward others.

But if they do behave this way, and you can’t explain it, doesn’t that mean there’s something lacking in your explanation, and not with atheism?

By making this argument, Christians are trying to give us their problem. But the difficulty inherent in their position belongs to them.

Thinking about Hitch

10 August 2010 / / Comments Off on Thinking about Hitch

I’m no Hitchens, but since clomping about in his enormous rhetorical shoes on ‘Collision’ evening, I’ve been thinking about the guy. He’s published an article about his illness.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

And appeared for an interview with Anderson Cooper.

And since I’m now teaching The Swearing Class at UWA Extension, here’s a thought from Jeffrey Goldberg:

As for the few of you who wrote to Goldblog to say they were praying for Hitch’s death, I can say that he does not care one way or another what you do or think or pray, but on behalf of myself and the entire team here at The Atlantic, let me just say, Go fuck yourselves.

I concur. Who said profanity was in poor taste?

I’m pulling for you, Mr Hitchens.

Collision! Aftermath

6 August 2010 / / 4 Comments

Last night saw the screening of ‘Collision‘, a combined event for the UWA Christian Union and the UWA Atheist and Agnostic Society.

Festivities actually got started earlier in the day, as Ben Rae (from the Christian Union) and I got together on RTRFM for a interview on Morning Magazine.

MP3

It went pretty well — I only had one brain fart, which is pretty good for that time of day.

The real action happened at night, when 300 people packed the UWA Tav. Sincere apologies to everyone that had to be turned away. We had an inkling that it would be big, but in retrospect, maybe we should have hired the Octagon. Wait — no beer in the Octagon. Oh, well.

First was the film, and it was great to see Christopher Hitchens at his most fluid and incisive. Douglas Wilson was a surprisingly tenacious fighter, and some of his arguments made me think, I must confess.

Then the discussion with me and Ben. I noticed a couple of things. One, people stuck around for it and didn’t just leave after the film. That was a nice surprise. The other was how quiet the audience was. You’d think 300 tavern-goers would form a boisterous crowd, but they didn’t. It was scary-quiet. I suppose the civilised nature of the documentary set the tone. There was an exception: toward the end one biology maniac could no longer restrain himself, and began explaining to everyone loudly about mirror neurons. There’s always one. I did appreciate the assist, though.

Anyway, I think I managed to address the strengths of atheism, and Ben had a chance to get his message out, too. Overall, a very successful evening, and a fun time.

There were cameras, and we’re working on a YouTube version of the discussion. In the meantime, here is a still.

If you were there, put your impressions of the night in comments.

Collision! Christians and Atheists! Mass panic!

27 July 2010 / / 6 Comments

The UWA Atheist and Agnostic Society is putting on an event with the UWA Christian Union: a screening of the film ‘Collision‘ featuring Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson.

And after the film, Ben Rae of the Christian Union and I will conduct a thoughtful and good-hearted discussion of issues involving faith and disbelief. We won’t even hit each other with chairs (very hard). Instead, we shall sit with our respective cups of tea and exchange views. I gotta be nice? Well, no. Like Hitchens and Wilson, we disagree on things (sometimes strongly so), but we can do so with mutual positive regard.

It’s all going down on Thursday, 5 August at the UWA Tav. You can come even if you’re not a UWA person. Tickets $5.

Obligatory Facebook event.

What comfort is atheism?

4 July 2010 / / 7 Comments

A lot of people I care about have come back with some really bad god-damn diagnoses in the last few months. Mom’s not well. Two friends have cancer, but they’re both holding it together.

It’s throwing me, frankly. I’m getting older, and I wonder if I’m due for some similar bad news. Are some of my cells even now going berserk, turning into the cancer that will kill me in five years? I look at Miss Perfect and she looks at me and we wonder how many more days we get to have together.

I know some people get comfort from their belief that after this life, a supernatural being will allow them to live in peace and happiness with loved ones forever. And there will be pie in the sky when you die. It’s a nice thought. I can see why people turn to it in times of existential uncertainty.

By comparison, atheism doesn’t seem to offer much comfort. We’re here, we die, and there’s no reason to think that any supernatural beings exist to revive us. Fine if you enjoy accepting the harsh realities, but not much in the way of comfort. Which is fine with me. I’ve always cared more if something’s true, rather than if it’s ‘comforting’. You could say that drugs offer a degree of ‘comfort’, until they wear off and it’s back to reality.

And for me this is the problem with the comfort offered by religions. It’s a comfort only if it’s true, otherwise, it’s a cruel illusion. If atheism doesn’t provide comfort, the false comfort offered by religion is even worse. It’s expensive and time-consuming.

How, then, do we explain the diseases that strike those we love? If you believe in a god, you have to believe that he has the ability to heal you, but for some reason, might not. (He certainly doesn’t heal amputees.) Then after he lets you go through pain, death, and uncertainty, he’ll whisk you away to paradise. And what kind of heaven awaits? Christopher Hitchens (another unwelcome cancer diagnosis) opened my eyes by pointing out that the Christian version of heaven is not an eternity we should wish for:

We would be living under an unalterable celestial dictatorship that could read our thoughts while we were asleep and convict us of thoughtcrime and pursue us after we after are dead, and in the name of which priesthoods and other oligarchies and hierarchies would be set up to enforce God’s law.

But for those who look to the natural world, the explanation is different. Our bodies know how to carry out the processes we need in order to live, but they don’t always do so optimally. We’re engaged in an evolutionary struggle of survival with other individuals and other life forms. Evolution has seen to it that we survive pretty well most of the time, but sometimes not.

So is that it? We’re just going to die, and then that’s the end?

No. We’re going to live, and then that’s the end. And how amazing to have lived on this world! How unlikely! Some humans made a human child with a brain that could experience consciousness, and that human was me. I may not know how long I have to live my life, but I’m not going to waste any of that time in church, helping to support someone else’s comforting scams. I get my comfort knowing that when it’s my turn to go, as we all do, I will have lived fully, loved deeply, and kept my mind as free of delusion as best I could.

This life is full of people, love, food, knowledge, questions — and, yes, difficulty, pain, and sorrow. Even so, I’ll take it.

There’s a song that keeps coming back to me: What a beautiful life. It makes me feel optimistic when I hear it. Maybe you’ll like it too. It’s true, you know.

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