RIP Rowdy Roddy Piper

I once had a twitter conversation with Roddy. He was grieving over the loss of a mentor named Mad Dog...
"Mad Dog taught me everything. How to take out an eye. How to get a free lunch. I love you Mad Dog!"

My reply...
"There's a meal behind eyeballs? I'm going for a walk. I'll have an eye out for lunch."

Roddy...
"You made me laugh! I needed a laugh! Thanks!"

I'm glad I could give him one smile when he needed one after all the smiles and laughs he gave me.

It must have been a very sudden heart attack because if he'd had half a chance, he'd have beaten it.
That's what he always did.

Bye Roddy.

I don't believe

When a religious guy tells me, "You have to believe in something," he doesn't mean truth, or facts, or evidence.
He means I have to believe in something that is beyond truth, facts, and evidence.
He means I have to have faith in a god or some kind of higher power that is unknowable.

He means I have to have blind faith.

Why do religious people believe that, "You have to believe in something?" Why can't they accept that some of us simply don't believe?
Because they lack the ability to understand what it means to not have blind faith.
They are so caught up in their belief and so unquestioning of it, that they are actually unable to imagine anyone who does not, deep down, believe in the unprovable.
They have to disbelieve so much of proven science to continue to believe in their god, that disbelieving becomes a pattern of thought.
This is why creationists and anti vaxxers reject science; to accept it would be to admit they are wrong. And they can't admit they are wrong because they need to feel in control of their lives and... there is just no polite way to say this... creationists and anti vaxxers are simply not intelligent enough to be in control of much of their own lives.
But, as Dunning Krugers will, they believe they are in control because they think they are part of the smart club who know that God is real or vaccinations cause autism. (Because science is a government conspiracy to control us all.)
They reject science because they are unable to understand science.
I do not blame them for their lack of intelligence.
I blame those who prey on them, feed them lies about religion and medicine, use them for financial gain, and purposely promote the ignorance of the population.
Religious organisations, faith healers, and snake oil salesmen like Dr. Oz are the lowest of the low.
They are parasites on the uneducated and simpler people of the world and it is up to the rest of us to protect the helpless from the parasites.

We must educate and inform. Religion does not want a scientifically informed population because they know...
education will end religious power in the world and that's bad for the religion business.

It's just a matter of time.

Mob rule cyber bullying

A dentist hires African guides and kills a lion that was illegally lured from a game reserve by his guides.

From his persective, he did everything legally.
From a moral standpoint, he kills for fun and has previously cheated the system to bag game.

You have the right to dislike him for his morals and his actions as a trophy hunter.
You do not have the right to end his livelihood, disrupt his family, post his personal info online, and cyber bully him into hiding for fear of his life with death threats.

Sir Tim Hunt, a Nobel Prize winning scientist was wrongly accused of being a misogynist by one woman.

One.

His life was turned upside down by her lies and by the mob rule cyber bullying that followed.
While he was shown to be innocent of her charges, his reputation was damaged.

You might be angry at a trophy hunter. You might be disgusted at his callous disregard for the life of a beautiful creature such as the lion he killed.
But ruining one dentist's life and ruining the lives of his family will not stop trophy hunting.

I detest trophy hunting. I think it is a barbaric and needless event, undertaken by stupid and heartless people, that has no place in the modern world.
I've heard the argument for income to the Africans. I've heard the argument for culling of animals to let the rest live better.
It comes down to people who need to kill to have fun.
Trophy hunting must end.
But cyber bullying will not end trophy hunting. It will only make it more discreet.

Mob rule is no path to justice or fairness.
Who chooses the cause in which it is morally acceptable to cyber bully?
You?
Me?
Christianity?
Islam?
PETA?
Anti vaxxers?

The problem with mob rule cyber bullying is that if we allow it to be established as an acceptable form of protest, then we lose control of it right from the start.

What do you believe in or not believe in?
There is a mob out there just waiting to cyber bully you for your personal convictions, whether they are moral or immoral.

Mob rule is wrong because the mob has no mind. It feeds off anger and outrage and denies any calls for calm, logic, reason, and fairness.

Mob rule cyber bullying is the online version of a riot. There's no control, nobody steering the mob, and no riot police.
Just a million people screaming for the death of a dentist with a pastime they don't like.
It is political correctness transformed into a cyber lynch mob. I have seen people volunteer to kill this man for the price of a plane ticket to his city!

Mob rule turns humans into a thing bent on the destruction of its target, and if the wrong target is chosen, there are no consequences, apologies, or reparations.

If you choose chaos as justice, then you must accept chaos as punishment if you are falsely accused.

Some are calling for legal justice. These people have petitions and want justice done by the law.
I applaud their reason.
Others are calling for revenge, for his torture, for his agonising death while they laugh at his pain.

Don't you see the irony in that? Don't you see that those people are just as bad as the dentist?
How can you call for an end to killing and suffering by offering to torture people to death?

This is mob rule cyber bullying at its worst and it's every bit as sickening and depraved as trophy hunting.

Dunning Kruger in religion

There are two halves of the Dunning Kruger effect.
The stupid people who think they're much smarter than they are, and the intelligent people who also think stupid people are smarter than they are.

(Yes, I'm actually calling stupid people stupid. Call 911 if that upsets you.)

I see a lot of intelligent people who overestimate the intelligence and reasoning abilities of stupid people.
In fact, some of these intelligent atheists tell me I underestimate people that believe the world is 6000 years old.
I don't think I do. Nor do I overestimate them. If someone believes that Noah's Ark was real and the flood happened and the world was covered in water, then they're stupid.
They can be born stupid or willingly stupid, but they are stupid.
I get chided for not treating stupid people as intelligent people... for not treating their opinions as respectable opinions.
Whether they are born stupid or are wilfully stupid is irrelevent if they are trying to force religion into schools or government.
Look, if an opinion is based on disbelief of scientific evidence and blind belief in a holy book, I don't respect that opinion.
I may or may not respect the person who has such an opinion, but opinions deserve no respect or praise.

Education is the cure for either half of the Dunning Kruger effect.

I think it is easier for those in the upper middle area of intelligence to gauge their own and other's intelligence.
(I count myself in this middle area.) They seem to be smart enough to know who they are and observe those around them, but not so smart as to be surrounded by only smart people and think everyone is intelligent.
One must have experience with the intelligent and the stupid to have a reasonable grasp of their capabilities.

I wonder how much the Dunning Kruger effect is affected by educational status, and by the people with whom we associate?

Religious hate crimes

Are religious attacks hate crimes?
If someone is attacked because they are of a certain belief or non belief, then that is a textbook definition of a hate crime.

A French woman was attacked because she was wearing a bikini and some Muslim girls thought she was being immodest.
That's a hate crime because the Muslim girls attacked her for not being as modest as a Muslim girl should be.
The French woman was attacked for offending Muslim morality, which is based solely on the Quran.

To recap, A French woman, in France, was beaten by Muslim girls for wearing clothing the Quran states she may not wear.

A crime commited in the name of religion against someone who is not of that religion is a hate crime.

The authorities are giving it the usual, "We don't know if it was religiously motivated," nonsense.
Of course it was religiously motivated! Where do you think they got their ideas of immodesty?

The biggest problem with the Abrahamic religions is not what they believe as far as gods go, but that they assume their beliefs give them special status as the arbiters of worldwide morality.
As a self professed morally superior people, they often act in a most immoral fashion towards others.

Religious attacks are hate crimes.
Let's call them as such and let the sentencing reflect the crime.

Read the story here...
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2015/07/27/france-21-year-old-bikini-clad-french-woman-beaten-up-by-self-appointed-muslim-morality-police/

Where are we going?

We are nature. At least, we are part of it.
We are the part that questions.
We are the only part of nature known to us to be asking the big questions.
"Where are we going?" seems to me to be the most important question.
Where are we, as a species, going to be in 50 years? 100 years? 500 years?

Will we still have countries on Earth? Corporate rule?
Will religion still be a power in the world?
Will we still have starving people, even though we have enough food?

It seems to me that the only way to ensure our species' advancement and exploration of the universe's mysteries is to adopt a worldwide system of secular morality.
We are humans. We are curious and we need to explore science with our minds and unknown places with our bodies.
That is the purpose of life for humans. We are biologically programmed with a need to know.
This is why the scientific method is used to test hypotheses; it finds truth.
And this is why we must reject mythology as a substitute for truth.
Secular morality is tribal morality. What is good for the tribe is moral. Truth and knowledge and honesty and empathy and responsibility are what make up secular morality.
That's a lot more difficult if you consider the human species to be your tribe because there are so many of us that have different religious moral codes.

So, how do we instill a worldwide secular morality?
Science. Education. Knowledge.
The more people that understand high school level science, the fewer people there will be that credit mythology for the existence of the universe.

We must feed the hungry people of the world and we must feed their minds, as well.

Knowledge is the first step to truth. Honesty follows knowledge. Morality follows knowledge.
But the scientific method is how we gain the knowledge that leads to honesty and morality.

The more we know, the more honest and moral we become... and the less religiously inclined we become.

Science is not morality, but it causes morality because it rejects that which is not tested to be true.

And truth is as habit forming as untruth.
It's hard to lie to yourself when you honestly seek truth.

Equality is peace

There are no women's rights.
There are no men's rights.
There are no racial rights.
There are no LGBT rights.
There are no national rights.
There are no religious rights.

There are only human rights.

And we, as humans, either advance the human cause or we impair it.

Your words, actions, thoughts, and feelings either aid or impair human advancement.

Love, kindness, knowledge, generosity, science, and empathy advance the growth humanity.
Hate, anger, indifference, greed, ignorance, and religion impair the growth of humanity.

Dividing humanity creates fear. Uniting humanity creates peace. All special rights divide humanity.

Human rights encompass all humans. There are no special rights.

We are all equal as humans.

Islamophobia is censorship

Islamophobia says, "You must be Islamic or you're Islamaphobic."
It's simply a media spin, something to shout when the brutality of Islam is pointed out.

Islamophobia is a word to suggest a phobia but in actuality, is a form of censorship intended to silence all objections to ISIS and their terrorism.
It is purposely used in the widest context to include all non Islamic opinions.

It's a silly word because Islamophobia suggest an irrational fear of Islam. You cannot have an irrational fear of a religion that wants to cut off your head for non belief.
That's about as rational a fear as I can imagine.

Islamophobia is the Islamic verson of the older and tarnished Christian ploy of accusing non Christians of attacking Christianity.
If Christians are trying to push creationism into science classes and are thwarted by the law, they cry, Religious freedom!" and "Why are you attacking my religion?

Islamophobia is censorship.

Religion is a force for good?

This is one of those lies that has been repeated so many times that it has become common knowledge.

In other words, it's bullshit.

Don't take my word for it. Ask the Native peoples of any country in the world that have had Christians visit them. That is, if any are still alive and remember snippets of their language or customs. The church routinely crushed whole cultures in the name of their god, as well as beat, shamed, raped thei women and children, and killed them.

Not enough? Still think religion is a force for good in the world?

How about 7 billion people and growing, but no birth control of any kind allowed?
This is more than just a useful interpretation of a bible passage intended to grow Christian numbers. It is immoral in the extreme to place the entire world at risk of overpopulation by refusing to allow birth control. All for the reason of increasing Christian followers.

Really? You're not convinced religion does more harm than good?

How about this: the two most popular religions the world has ever known have both killed countless people for leaving their religion.
How does that fall into the 'force for good' category?
How about the crimes that continue today? Murder, genital mutilation, torture, pedophilia, slavery, and the warping of millions of young minds to believe that questioning is a bad thing?
How is brainwashing small children into denial of reason a force for good?

Religion has done nothing good in its entire existence that could not have been done without religion.

Nothing.

Love and curiosity.
Empathy and inventiveness.
These things are good.

Religion turns people away from their families, away from their humanity, and purposely stifles their creativity and curiosity.

Humans have made progress.
Gods have made none.
Humans are good.
Religions warp human goodness to do bad things.

The force for good in the world is humanity, individually and collectively.
Humanity has always been the force for good, long before the Abrahamic religions were invented.

Love, curiosity, empathy, and inventiveness are easier without religion.

How hard is it to be good without religion?
It's easy... just be good!

The religious Catch 22

Religion says, "The only cure for religious sin is more religion."

That's like saying, "My cut hurts... I'd better put some salt on it!"

Religious sin is a Catch 22.

To cure sin, we need religion, which gives us sin, which needs religion, which gives us...

Many parts of the bible have been proven to have never occurred. Noah's flood, the Jewish exodus from Egypt, etc.
Why would anyone believe any prt of a book supposedly written by a divine source, which contains so many errors and contradictions of itself?
No, the bible is obviously man made and sin is an invention to control populations.

Sin is the root of the problem. It is a man made affliction and the only cure is following the rules of religion.
Sin and its cure are a rather cunningly fashioned con. Even today, you can be accosted on the street by some well dressed young men who will tell you that Jesus died for your sins and if you do not repent, you will go to hell.
Sin is the backbone of the Christian church. Without sin, the whole religion crumbles.
God, Jesus, Noah's flood, The exodus... there is no evidence for any of those. Why would anyone believe in sin?

Aside from my question, "If Jesus died for my sins, why do I have to pay again?" and the fact that he only had to die for three days... I think it is interesting to note that Christianity is still pushing the whole sin thing on us and claiming they are the only cure.
Why?
Because that's the Catch 22. You were taught sin as a child. So when you screw up, there's only one place you can go to avoid Hell; religion, which taught you about sin and Hell.

Religions only cure religiously caused ills.
Religion does not advance science... in fact it has held back science significantly.
Religion does not have medicinal properties, in spite of the con men faith healers on TV.
For instance, If you fall and skin your knee, there's no help from religion. It's gonna sting like a bastard until it stops, then your body will heal itself.
Now, you can thank God or Jesus or the milkman for making the pain stop and healing your body, but it healed just as fast as the atheist's kid's skinned knee healed.
Religion was no help.

Religion only cures religious sin.
There's only one way out of the religious Catch 22. Reject religion.
If there's no (man made) religion, there's no sin, so you don't need religion, which gave you sin...

What then? We'd have to be responsible for our own actions. We'd have to be moral without God. We'd have to be... atheists.
We'd have to put humanity first.

And that's what moral and responsible atheists have been doing for millenia.

Humanity before religion

Atheists are called immoral by Christians and Muslims.

Morals are older than religion. Morality is a prehistoric, tribal, survival trait. What was good for the tribe was moral.
Take care of the women and children - moral.
Make sure the weakest are not left behind - moral.
Tribal morality is how we survived as hunter gatherers, and even before then, as we moved from the trees to the open grasslands.

To claim that morality comes from the bible is a bold lie. In fact, the bible is an immoral book that claims Christianity is more important than the human tribe.
Jesus said, "For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law'"
Jesus placed religion above families. It was his intention to use natural family enmities to divide the family for the purpose of proselytisation.
Modern cults still use this technique to ensnare teens who are angry at everything as they try to get through puberty.
ISIS/Daesh uses the promise of virgins and sex to entice pubescent males to it's army.

Religion is self proven to be anti-tribal and anti-humanity.
If you're against humanity, you cannot claim your morality is superior to atheists, who have
dragged the West out of the Christian dark ages with knowledge and invention and into this age of age of limitless information.

Morality is a human trait. The less religion we have, the more moral we become.

Christians were in power and we called it the Dark Ages.
If we ever see a time without religion, what will it be called?

The Age of Humanity.

Be a rebel

"The genius is the one who is most like himself."
Thelonious Monk

I saw that quote on line and thought, "That's the biggest problem I have with religion."
Sure, there's the whole impossibility of religion, and the master/slave relationship, and the silly rules, but my biggest beef with religion, and any person or group, is that they want me to be someone other than myself.

I like me the way I am, for the most part. If there's going to be any changes in who I am, they're going to come from my wish to change, and nobody else's.

I am unique, just like everyone else. The difference is, I'm not trying to lose my uniqueness and fit into a group, a clique, or a religion.
Nor should you.
I don't want to meet another person who is bland and acceptable, and comfortable, and willing to compromise to make everyone feel better. I've met these people all my life and they have no opinions of their own.
They live their lives trying to be inconspicuous.
Can you imagine that? They bury their personality in order to not be seen.
Why?
Because Christianity has told people that being meek and humble and accepting is the way to heaven.
Look at the people who have changed the way we live with their discoveries. You will see that scientists, inventors, thinkers, artists... very few of them tried to hide in the crowd. It was because they were fully formed individuals that they were able to postulate their unique ideas. It was because they weren't the type to conform that they were able to dare to put forth a rebel idea.

We owe our technology, our civilisation, our knowledge, to the rebels.

Be a rebel.

Side by side, naturally

In many ways, women are closer to nature than men. The reverse can also be stated for some male attributes, but it is women who follow a natural cycle more obviously than men.

From vulva symbols to Venus figurines to Sheela Na Gig to...
The female has always been thought of as the giver of life.

Sure, women need men to plant their seed, but the rest of the baby making process is up to their biology.
Human life is created in women.
That statement flies in the face of the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions.

Is this why women have been so poorly treated by religions? Is it merely because the biological ability to grow a life inside them was so poorly understood by those primitive men who invented the religions, that they wanted no competition for their God's creation abilities?

Other religions with strong female goddesses were crushed or assimilated by the Christians whose missionaries were often accompanied by armies.

The gospel of Mary Magdalene was omitted from the modern bible.
Even Jesus' mother, Mary, was a bit player, who if you follow her story, was anything but the blushing bride after giving birth to Jesus. The mother of Jesus was basically cast off after her usefulness as a brood mare.

The bible is an interesting, if poorly written book, full of inconsistancies and, quite obviously, written by males with little or no understanding of nature.

If they had understood nature better, women's roles in the bible would have been proportionate with their roles in nature... as companions and partners in the life cycle.

Or perhaps they understood but didn't want women to be companions and partners? Perhaps they wanted women to be subservient to men?

The time for that silliness has passed. In many places we've grown as a species back to a time when women were valued members of the tribe. Not all places; some of the strictly religious places remain places where women are little better than property.

The time of religious superstition and magic creation stories is passing into mythology.
Let's move forward as a species, men and women, side by side, naturally, as we once did.

Snappy answers to street preachers.

"Excuse me, Sir. Do you have a moment to talk about Jesus?"
"Who?"
"Jesus."
"Never heard of her."
"Him. Jesus died for your sins."
"My sons? What did those buggers get up to now?"
"No, your sins. Jesus dies for your sins!"
"Really? What's a sin?"
"A sin is something you do that's against God."
"Who?"
"God!"
"Oh right! I've heard of her!"
"Him!"
"What? Now you want me to sing hymns?"
"Not hymns like songs. God is male!"
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Wow! Imagine the monster dick on that dude!"
...
"You're not going to let me talk about Jesus, are you?"
"And they say Christians are stupid! You caught on pretty quick!"
"Have a good day, sir. I'll pray for you."
"Thanks, but I do all right on my own."
"I'll pray anyways."
"Not my problem."

Tribal touch

If you ever doubt that we are descended from the same ancestor as apes, think of two scared monkeys hugging each other.
They don't hug because it's going to scare away a predator. They hug because it makes them feel better.

Wolves nuzzle. Elephants hold trunks. All animals touch the tribe.
Touch is an underestimated method of tribal acceptance.

We hold hands. We hug. We nuzzle. We kiss. We lean into each other.
We do a thousand small things every day to speak without words to the other members of our tribe and the tribe undrestands.
It's older than words. It's older than human. It's older than walking upright.
It is the reassurance that we are not alone, that we can count on the protection of the tribe.
Religion offers this same reassurance with supernatural claims and they have been successful because we have tried so hard to be civilised, we have shunned some of our instinctual habits.
We don't need religion.
We need what religion has tried to replace.
We need the tribal touch.

Skip the coffee. Just give me a mug of cream and sugar.

The vast majority of Christians and Muslims ignore more of their holy books than they follow.
Nowadays it's all Jesus and love and never mind all that fear of God stuff.
Jesus has become a cuddly Teddy Bear who calms and protects you while you sleep. A sort of Ritalin for Christians who don't appreciate God's more psychopathic decisions.
You know what I mean: the flood, the plagues, all the first born? Yeah, the icky stuff. The old testament stuff.

I won't be told I'm immoral because I don't believe in a god, by a Christian who eats shellfish, wears different fabrics, hoards money, has tattoos, does not give to the poor, wears religious icons, prays in public, and is wholly judgemental of anyone who is not a Christian of their particular sect.

So pick the parts of the bible that fit your lifestyle and ignore the rest.
I don't care.
Just don't start labelling me immoral because I ignore more of your bible than you do, hypocrite.

You

When you put your own opinion of yourself before the opinions of others, that's the moment you take the first step to being you.
Walk away from those who judge you, those who call you sinner, those who would mold you into who they think you should be.

Spend some time alone. I know of no better way to discover myself than sitting alone and writing.

If there is a purpose in life, it isn't found in religion; it is found in knowing and loving yourself, and these things are acquired in knowledge of many other things.
To know your place in the universe, you must first know something about the universe.
The more you know about the universe and nature, the better you understand where you fit in it.

Once you understand that you're just a speck in the vast, godless cosmos, what is left is not the hopeless, empty life religions would have you believe.
No! It is a glorious journey into finding that which you love to do the most and doing it to the best of your ability.
Because in all that vastness, you are unique.

It is a journey of self discovery, and the further you travel on this journey, the more you come to love yourself for the truly unique and beautiful person you are.
And when you understand that morality is not forced upon you by some god, you realise that it is all the more important to be moral for your own sake and for that of the human tribe.

But your journey starts with truth, education, and a willingness to face your fears and see who you are and where you want to go.
These are the toughest decisions you will ever make. You will shed tears and howl at the moon... but keep moving forward because every tear and every howl brings you that much closer to self love. And that's infinitely better than the imagined love of any nonexistant gods.

We are surrounded by noise that makes it hard to think. I don't mean the noise of traffic or the hum of the machine.
I mean we are surrounded... bombarded... inundated by the opinions of everyone else.
Every day, you should find someplace to be alone, even for a short time, and listen to your heart.
Your heart is you.

You
Listen to your heart
You
Follow your heart
You
Become your heart
You

Love you.

Religion is built on hate.

We must speak this aloud.
The time for polite acceptance of religion's foray into politics and education because, "religion has good intentions," is long past.

Religion is built on hate.

It is built on the hate of anyone not a member of that particular sect of that particular religion.

Hate.

You can keep your words of love for Jesus because they are not followed by people as the hate in the bible is followed.
How many people do you know that gave up all their possessions to feed the hungry?
How many do you know that are misogynists, that are bigots, intolerant, judgemental, hateful... all the things that Jesus supposedly said were wrong?

Hate.

Religions are simply a means of control. There might be some few who believe and follow the path of Jesus, but they are so few and so overshadowed by the power hungry rulers of religion that they are invisible.

Hate.

Here's a thought.
If you stopped trying to use the name of Jesus to acquire power and started trying to be enlightened like Jesus, you wouldn't be so full of hate.

But you don't get it, do you?
Do you know why you can't understand that love and peace is the only way mankind will prosper?

Hate.
Religious hate.

Religion vs the Darwin Finch

Add caption

Religions have a motive for most of their claims of persecution. It is proselytisation by censorship.
Their rules are holy but yours are persecution.
All the squawking is to shut you up so they can be the only ones heard.

Some of the 'persecutions' and rules of religion...

Prayer/religion in schools.
Christians want prayer in school because they want to get young minds that haven't yet formed their bullshit detectors. They want minds that are succeptible to believing the ridiculous stories in the bible.

Blasphemy.
This is simply an invented method of silencing critics of your religion. It is a meaningless word to all but the followers of a particular religion. However, it is supported by all religions because they understand that if one religion can be mocked, all can be mocked.
And mockery exposes the truth of religions.
Religion is control.

Dietary restrictions.
Why ham? Why fish on Fridays? No Shellfish?
Some of these restrictions may have had a perfectly reasonable beginning but today those meanings are lost in time. They now exists as traditions.
If religion can control what you eat, it can control any part of your life. IS has recently killed lots of people for not fasting during Ramadan.
Why?
Control.

Apostasy.
This one is obvious. If you leave a religion, you leave its control. That is unnacceptable to an organisation that needs complete control of its followers to survive.
In short, religions are not content to control only their own followers. They are actively using political correctness, laws, politics, and terror... anything they can think of using... to control those who are not of their religion.

Crying persecution has been a successful Christian ploy for two millenia but it has run into a stumbling block called the internet.
Social media has, (mostly), free speech. This is anathema to religions, who must have thought control to survive.
The internet also has information freely available to all. Religion is most successful when information is given to followers only by priests, because information leads to knowledge, and knowledge leads to atheism.

The more religion cries persecution, the more people will google it to see if it's true and discover the lie.

Religion needs a better tactic. Unfortunately, I don't think they have the capability to adapt to the modern, educated world.
Part of natural selection is that those who adapt, survive to breed.
Wouldn't it be ironic if religion went extinct because of an inability to grasp the concept of natural selection?

Perhaps the symbol of the world would then become the Darwin Finch.

Self censorship is atheist morality

I just deleted a would-be blog entry.
Sometimes I have no topic in mind when I start writing. I just start hitting keys and see where it goes.
Often I get into it and have to stop to read what I've written.

I started writing and it became evident the topic was heading for child abuse in religion. After fifteen minutes or so, I stopped to read what I'd written.

I was asking you to imagine a child being abused by a priest.
I didn't go into a lot of descriptive detail. It was mostly emotional, and perhaps more powerful because of that.
I can write with power and this time I did. It was too much. It was sickening. There was begging and screaming and terror and pain and it was too much.

As I said, I deleted it.
I deleted it, not because it wasn't a possible depiction of what so many children have endured at the hands of religious leaders, but because it was an accurate depiction.
I'm worried that maybe someone reading this might have been a victim of molestation and that such a strongly written depiction might resurface some old and unwanted memories.

I just didn't want to cause anyone any unnecessary pain.

I understand that it is an important topic and must be discussed and brought into the light to be dealt with, but not so powerfully and emotionally that past victims will relive some very dark times.
There are other ways to treat this topic that are more respectful to the victims.

Why am I telling you this?
Because it's not always what we say that shows the morality of atheists. Often it's what we don't say that shows our true colours. Those unsaid words can't be appreciated unless we speak of why we didn't say something.
And religious people need to know that atheists have morals and consider the consequences of their actions.
They need to know that there is morality outside religion, that atheists love and care and grieve and weep and get lonely just like religious people.
The only consistent difference between the religious and atheists is the belief in a god.

There's far too much sweeping generalisation going on from atheists and the religious. We're all individuals and members of the homo sapiens tribe.

How about less personal attacking/name calling and more topical debate?

I think that would be a good place to start.

Science is indistinguishable from magic

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke

Science will replace religion as the ordinary person's belief system, not through violence or intentional disproof of religion's holy texts, but because it will be seen as magic.
And because science delivers.

Science is becoming so advanced that comprehension of the higher studies is beyond the ordinary person, or even beyond scientists in another field.
It is as magic to them.
They will believe it without truly understanding.

The need for real results in combatting climate change will bring more converts to science.
Forest fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes have started to increase in frequency and it will get worse. People will look for help.
Real problems require real solutions. Religion will be relegated as a system dealing with personal happiness as science gets more support to deal with climate change.

This will bring more corruption to religions in their fear of the loss of followers, which when exposed, will turn even more people away and into the more moral and honest compass of science.

Priests in Africa claimed condoms had holes in them to let AIDS through, which is a death sentence to millions who will now shun condoms as worthless.
Science is working to eradicate AIDS and encourage truthful education regarding birth control.
These kinds of acts show people the true face of religions and they are turning away in disgust, and turning towards science.

Science is leading us into the future in everyday items like cel phones and in discoveries that will take us to the stars, end hunger, and prove that we are all one human tribe.

It may not be magic, but sometimes it seems that way because science and wonder have always walked hand in hand.

Gone are the days when everyone in the tribe could be taught how to use a spear thrower.
The tribe is too large for all of us to know about advances in quantum entanglement, which even Einstein called, "spooky."

It is a wondrous magic, this knowledge of the arcane, and none can know it all.
But the system of scientific review keeps it from being blind belief.

It is the system that we understand and trust, even if much of the knowledge is indistinguishable from magic.

The Resistance

It's not about gathering and discussing. You couldn't get a group of atheists to agree on anything but non belief, anyway.
It's not about ending religion. People should be free to believe as they choose.

It is about resistance.
It's about picking your battles.
It's about using your free speech to voice your opinion.
It is about stopping the indoctrination of children, stopping genital mutilation, stopping child brides, stopping pedophile priests, stopping all kinds of crimes against humanity in the name of religion.

Why have these religions not been tried for crimes against humanity?
Why has it been acceptable for religions to shield pedophiles, to commit atrocities against children all over the world, to tell people in Africa that condoms have holes that AIDS can get through, all because they worship a god who says it's okay for them to do these things?

Religions have always done just as they pleased and now that atheists are speaking up for our own rights to free speech, religions are crying intolerance.

Intolerance!

After all the crimes against humanity throughout the ages that continue today, religions want to cry intolerance because they can't stop free speech?

How does one respond to that ultimate level of hypocrisy?
The best way I know how is with four words for religions that don't like free speech...

Get used to it.

Imagine

With the lifelong believer, you can try the argument, "Imagine there's no God," but it won't work.
Religious faith has become such a part of people's identities that they are unable to imagine there's no God.
They simply cannot.

They will tell you they can imagine a godless universe but they can't. They might imagine in their minds the emptiness of space, or a windowless room with no lights, or perhaps a person devoid of happiness and hope, as that is what they might consider life to be as a godless person.
But they can't imagine what it is like to not believe there is someone looking after you, that you are not alone, that someone will always be there to help.

I don't believe the strongest believers know how to stop being faithful even when they try. All their lives they have imagined the presence of God and their brains are actually shaped by this belief. Neural pathways formed early have been strengthened by a lifetime of use.
Those who are programmed to believe, either by themselves or through childhood indoctrination, are usually believers for life.
It takes a very strong personality to break free of a lifelong fervent belief.
Most never will.

I think it's easier for a non-believer to imagine a God than for a believer to imagine there isn't. (I'm talking about a non-believer who has never believed.)
As there's no proof for God, all it takes to imagine there is a God is pretending that God is apart from the natural universe, that he created the universe, and that he controls the universe.
Then imagine yourself making decisions based on what God wants, rather than what you want.
I was once married, so it's easy enough to imagine trying to please someone else that gets angry if you don't.
I was once a child, so it's easy to imagine a parent as a total authority figure on whom you rely utterly for life and happiness.

But living your life for God is much harder to ignore when you try to imagine there is no God. You'd be accustomed to making decisions for God, to asking for direction from God, to praying for yourself and your loved ones.

When you ask a lifelong believer to, "Imagine there's no God," you are likely to get a faith based response.
"I can't imagine that!"
"I have too much faith for that."

Or you might get some misdirection response that tells you that person is incapable of even considering the notion.
"Imagine God is in your heart."
"Why would I want to?"

Give it a try next time you're debating a believer. I bet you'll get some kind of evasive response.

And don't get mad if they won't try to imagine there's no God... they don't know how.

They can't.

For the human tribe

We are hardwired for tribal success, to insure the future of humanity.

This is the heart of atheism. Atheists want to learn all they can to keep the human tribe alive, prospering, and advancing.
As knowledge of fire kept the nocturnal predators away, so knowledge of the natural universe keeps the religious predators at bay.

The tribe is stronger in knowledge than belief.

Thunderstorms are not angry gods.
Lightning is not Zeus casting bolts from Olympus.
Plagues do not happen because we are sinners.

Tribal survival depends on knowing what is going on within the tribe and without.
We must know who is trying to usurp power from the people of the tribe for their own purposes. And we must know where we are in the scheme of all things.

Knowledge is everything.
We homo sapiens are the keepers of knowledge and we must resist and defy any and all superstitions that would corrupt our knowledge in the name of religious power.

For the human tribe.

Natural is factual

You are a natural homo sapiens mammal born of natural homo sapiens mammals.
Your mother and father copulated and his sperm entered her egg and nine months later, you started breathing.
You were born an atheist.
Naturally.

Those are facts.

Anyone trying to squeeze any kind of supernatural belief between those facts wants something from you.
It might be money. It might be obedience. It might be going door to door to proselytise.
It doesn't matter what they want from you. They want something.

Facts do not want anything from you. They don't care if you believe them or not.
Facts are not alive. They need nothing.
They are simple truths that we as a species have realised.
They are provable. They are facts.

If you are religious, then what you have been told is truth, what you have read in a holy book as truth, what you believe to be the truth, are unprovable.

They are not facts; they are beliefs.

No matter how strongly you believe, no matter how unshakable your faith, no matter the depth of the feelings inside you, if you can't prove your beliefs they are not facts.

You are a natural homo sapiens mammal born of natural homo sapiens mammals.
You were born an atheist.
Naturally.

Just like every other creature on this planet.

Hate is integral to religion

Religions pay lip service to love but it is hate that grows and maintains religions.

Christianity has never been about love. It was born as a fanatical death cult and prospered most when it killed, tortured, and terrorised men, women, children, and whole cultures who who defied it.
They called men heretics and women witches and they burned them alive. Those that didn't burn, converted.

Mohammed tried to start Islam but wasn't doing very well, so he moved and started killing to make his point. Islam took off and people flocked to Mohammed to be in his cult that let them kill and rape with God's blessing.
The religion of peace.

Christians tell me that Jesus is all about love. The old testament had no Hell. Jesus brought us Hell.
Some love!
"Love me or I'll torture you forever!"

Religion is hatred of all who do not share your religion.
The Christians, Muslims, and Jews all look down on others because each believe their religion is the only true religion.
But if there's one thing they hate together, it's atheists. They will drop all arguments to stand up for religion over disbelief.
The Pope proved this in his comments after the Muslim Charlie Hedbo killings, when he said that religion must not be mocked.

Disbelief and mockery are the worst things to a religion.
The former gives you no money and may tell the truth. The latter exposes religion for the farce it is.

Words of peace and love are all nice and rosy but it is hate that makes religions successful.

Quick! What are the two biggest religions in the world?

How did they get so big?

God wants you to be dumb

He punished Adam and Eve for eating of the tree of knowledge.
He turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for her curiosity.

And now his churches tell you that faith is greater than knowledge.

What better way to dumb down a population than to have God tell you that education is bad because it takes away from faith?

The cure for religion is education.

That's why there are serious attempts to put creationism in public schools; to remove the threat of an educated population learning that religion is the cause and ritualised continuation of your fear wrapped up with a bow.

Prayer is a self delusional activity.
Chants and songs are mnemonic devices to push aside reason.

Replacing knowledge with faith is the denial of evidence.
It is the assertation that you can pick up a turd by the clean end, when a cursory glance will tell you that from one end to the other it's pure shit.

The devious part is that there's no need to pick up the turd. You can smell the stink of it from a distance.
And yet the church will tell you that if you ignore the evidence and have faith, that the turd can be picked up by the clean end.

What are you going to do with a turd?

The atheist movement needs a name change

A common atheist viewpoint: If I have a movement, all I want is to be alone... and some paper.

Take any two atheists and they will probably have more in common that a non belief in gods.
But each random pair of atheists will have entirely different commonalities than any other pairing because the only thing that all atheists share is the non belief in gods.
We may have similarities but they are not part of the definition of atheists.

I don't want to be identified as an atheist. I dislike being counted as a member of a club I did not join.
Atheists didn't join a club, a group, a flock, a congregation, or a church.
We were named as non believers, as outsiders, as strangers for a reason... we might speak of our disbelief and it might make sense to a believer.

The word atheist shouldn't exist. It was invented by religions to mark those who would not do as commanded.

Even so, atheists are not religious rebels. We can't rebel because we are not part of the group. We are completely outside the religious world.

So what are we? We are those who resist the influence of religion in society because, in our outsider lives, we see religion as it truly is, without the faerie glimmer of faith and blind belief.

What can we call ourselves that does not have roots in religion?
Atheists? Outsiders? The list is long for names that have religious rebellion as their theme.
I reject them.
To find a name we must try to find similar characteristics that we share.
Most atheists are intelligent but I do not favour Brights. It has a condescending feel to it, making it a religious rebellion name.

I considered Reasoners, Resistors, and Solvers but they all suggest an anti theistic origin, when I think a name should what a group believes, not what they disbelieve.
It has to be a name that has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

How about Nines?
"I'm a Nine."
"I'm a Niner."
Based on 360 degrees, in which all angles adds up to 9.
It's logical, scientific, and you can go to any sporting goods store and buy a number 9 to sew on any garment.
(Nobody's getting rich selling Nine crests.)
And it has nothing at all to do with religion, religious people, or non belief.

"If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6, and 9, then you would have a key to the universe."
Nikola Tesla

Whatever we end up calling ourselves, it will be worn proudly. We are the minority of humanity that values reason over blind belief and kindness and empathy over ignorance and fear.

We resist religion to ensure progress and the future of humanity... but religion is not our defining trait.
We are the reasoners and the solvers and the seekers of truth.

I like Nines. It sounds right from any angle and there are degrees of meaning.

Let me know what you think of Nines in the comments or on Google+ or twitter.

Are atheists more moral than theists?

Yes, they are.
Atheism destroys excuses for people to subjugate others. It frees people from religious biases and imperatives and allows them to see the human equation.
Once you stop thinking of others as less important (because your religion tells you you're one of the chosen people), all others  must be seen as fellow human beings.
Atheism's complete lack of the religious 'chosen people' idea necessitates basic human compassion and equality.
When we are all equal as people, we tend to discuss more and demand less. A lack of religious arrogance would mean an end to many of the worst human woes.
Atheists are often asked, "How can you have morals without God's laws?"
Atheists are more moral than religious people because we choose to be moral, instead of being moral because we're afraid of going to hell.
Morality can't be forced. It isnt morality if you act in a moral fashion because of the threat of torture.
Morality is not based in fear.

The things that make religions immoral are simply not present in the atheist non belief.
• Atheists do not believe they are a chosen people.
• Atheists do not have an easy method of forgiveness for immorality.
• Atheists do not cover up for each other's immoral acts. In fact, much like scientists will denounce a bad hypothesis by other scientists, we argue the immorality of atheists as strongly as we argue religious immorality.
• Atheists do not have a belief we have to put before evidence, so we're more honest to ourselves.
• Atheists do not have a book telling us to convert the world to atheism.
• Atheists freely choose to live moral lives.
• Atheists don't even like to capitalize 'atheist' because we don't want to let even the name become dogma.
• Atheists do not kill for atheism.

Atheists are good and moral people, who just happen to not believe in gods.

I was wondering...

There are insects whose bodies glow with light.
Their bodies glow!

There are spiders that hide under a trap door that they build themselves.

There are carnivorous plants that eats insects by catching them and dissolving them alive.

A cheetah can run faster than you're allowed to drive in the city.

Some animals can change their skin texture and colours to perfectly camoflauge themselves in their surroundings.

Dolphins have empathy.

Ants make bridges of themselves to cross obstacles.

The ancestors of dinosaurs are alive today.

Hummingbirds!

Tardigrades!

The natural world is filled with so much wonder and awe.
I don't understand the need to believe in the supernatural when nature can fill me so.

From quantum entanglement to unimaginable distances in space, everything is connected.

Humans!

We are nature.
If you go outside on Sunday morning with a magnifying glass and a pair of binoculars, you'll learn more about wonder and awe and the overall connectivity of all things than you will singing hymns and reading from your book.

We are alive! We're natural!

Go outside and get connected to nature.
Smell the fresh cut grass, feel the sun on your face, the wind on your skin. Delve the forest deeply and sense the unseen life surrounding you.

There is a whole world living between the bark and the tree.

See the night sky and imagine that you can only see the tiniest piece of one corner of only one of the one hundred billion galaxies in the universe.

Everything is part of you as you are part of everything.
And it's all connected.

Created by a god 6000 years ago?

This has been disproven by science.
Only a mentally ill person or an idiot could honestly believe that, though there are plenty who will gladly take the money of the mentally ill and the idiots... because it beats an honest day's work.

How do you help those so fooled that they resist your help with tooth and nail?
Only education will help them.

And wonder.


A little extra...
If you want to do something fun, go through that list of wonderful things above and wonder what emotions they feel as they're doing what they do.

Who decides who gets free speech? You?

There is power in words, and to deny the right of someone else to speak is to deny yourself that right.

And yet, every activist cause has people who will try to silence you, try to discredit you, try to get you fired, all for speaking your opinion.

This recently happened with Sir Tim Hunt, a Nobel Prize winner, who was accused and labelled a misogynist for some out of context words. The social media lynching was nearly immediate. Calls for his retirement, his firing, and all kinds of nasty memes. He was made a pariah... because of an attack article with no basis in truth!

Feminism, LGBT rights, swear words, animal cruelty... the cause is irrelevent. It is free speech that gave all those things their power.
In many cases denying the freedom to express an opposing opinion has helped many causes become successful.
You can't deny free speech simply because someone doesn't agree with you or you don't agree with them.

Free speech does not end where your cause begins, no matter the righteousness of your cause. In fact, the more righteous your cause, the more important it is to allow dissenting opinions.

Increasingly, I see good people telling others they can't say something because they believe they have the moral right to tell others what they are allowed to say.
They don't. Nobody has that right.

You can tell people to shut up, but they must have the right to refuse to be silent.

You have to deny censorship, in order to not be censored.
You have to allow free speech, in order to have free speech.

You can't achieve equality by taking the rights and freedoms of another.

Argue. Debate. Discuss. Defend.
But the instant you censor free speech should be remembered... that is the instant you surrendered your own free speech.

Life in the fascist lane

Most atheists do not seek to create a world free of religions.
What most atheists seek is a world free of the abuses of religion... a world in which every adult is allowed to choose what they do or do not believe.

If you do not seek freedom from religion as earnestly as you seek freedom of religion, then you do not truly seek freedom.

If you seek freedom only for your own religion, you are at heart in favour of religious tyranny... of theocracy.

You are a fascist.