i read a great book for atheists, actually for everyone.

its called The End Of Faith by Sam Harris.

hes a phd candidate in neuroscience at stanford i think. he also has a masters in world religions. he makes a decent argument on a lot of different fronts.

i dont know if anybody else here has read this book, but it challenges the entire concept of faith on so many different levels and in such a convincing way, i felt like this guy was reading my mind.

www.samharris.org

 

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Having faith doesn't mean that suddenly you are going to start causing wars. Sure there are plenty of war mongers who get the 'buy in' they need for the atrocities they commit by claiming that they do it 'in the name of God' but this has so little to do with the actual values of the doctrine behind the faith. If the doctrine is 'love thy neighbour' then it cannot also be 'drop a bomb on thy neighbour'.
Why does having faith in a higher power have to be maligned by atheists? Surely there are some rational atheists out there who at the very least see someone's faith as 'perhaps a little eccentric but essentially harmless, maybe even positive'?
it's really important to seperate the world's eye view of religion from the actual principals of the faith as held by a believer lest you malign a believer who is no different from you in principal!

peace

c20

 

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have you read this, LSD:


"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill."
H.L. Mencken

Faith:.

There has never existed in the world anything more intensely vile, contemptuous, and dangerous to freedom, peace and progress as deeply held blind faith in organized religions and holy dogmas. The Christian dominated society of this country has painted a lovely picture of the faithful flock and how deserving faithful people are of praise and respect. Beneath the Xian whitewash is the plain hard truth. If a person treated his children half as cruelly as the supposedly divine and omnibenevolent Judeo-Christian blood god has treated his children, the Christians would be out to give him the death penalty. Does belief in cruel gods create cruel people, or do cruel people simply make their gods in their own likeness?

Faith is the nemesis of logic. Where there is religious faith, there can not be logic. The two are quite completely mutually exclusive. In every endeavor other than religion, if a person accepts things as being true with no quality evidence to support such beliefs, then the person is considered foolish and even contemptible by society. When acting exactly the same way regarding religion, the person is considered as perfectly normal. There is in faith an immunity to reality.

Faith is the destroyer of science and progress. Faith in gods creates a horrible aversion to change. The status quo is the rule of thumb and the "faithful" conservative Xian's morals are the worn out morals of liberals from forty or so years before him. Yet along he goes dragging his feet. "Why free the slaves? It's in the bible." The faithful Xians were enraged when Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod. "It's a sin" they screamed. "God surely controls the lightning and who are you to interfere?" There was Galileo who was tried by the Catholic Church for sacrilege because he claimed the world was round and that the earth orbited the sun, and not the other way around as the bible says. The Fundies are this very minute all across the country attempting to remove evolution from the science books, even though it is established as fact. The list is endless. Religion and science are mutually exclusive. Christian Science is nothing but an oxymoron.

Faith is the slaughterer of freedom. If there is a concept more hateful to the hearts of the faithful flock than freedom, then it is unimaginable what it would be. Truly the flock pays due lip service to freedom, but their every endeavor is to control and outlaw it. To pass laws to prohibit sexual preferences in the bedroom of two adults is nothing but pure tyranny. Why do these people care who you're sleeping with? What business is it of there's? The faithful claim that they simply want to live life according to the rules of their god, but they want nothing short of making everyone live by those exact rules. Everywhere you find these faithful people you will see them attempting to control the other people around them. They even have the audacity to claim they are persecuted, simply because people resist them and rail against their bids for totalitarian control. The faithful claim they are patriots, but they resemble old Russian Communism much more closely than capitalism.

Faith is the destructor of individuality. Everywhere the faithful are trying to enact their version of God's word into law and force the rest of society to be just like them. The faithful proudly claim the title of "Sheep". What more needs be said?

Faith is the fountainhead of ignorance. The faithful everywhere cast off logic and science as the temptations of Satan. Any science, theory, or fact which contradicts their religion is perceived to be purely evil. This inevitably leads to the embracing of myths and ignorance and the shunning of rational thinking.

Faith is the procreator of intolerance. Faith like nothing else strengthens intolerance and helps it breed and spread. What else would come about from people who claim as divinely inspired a book which espouses slavery, homophobia, murder, infanticide, genocide, racism, rape and kidnapping in the name of a loving god?




original posted here by mis-t-highs,

 

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read the book.

 

Whilst I agree with you that a person of faith isn't automatically going to encourage or start wars, I'm not sure I agree with you.

I really don't think America would have started the war in Iraq if it were not for the countries strongly held chistian and islamic faiths. If America and Iraq were secular countries, there would never have been a war.

 

Hi geeser,

I actually sympathise with the view points expressed above because i understand it from the context of a scientist for whom religion has only served to impede progress.
No doubt I would have been equally as eloquent in putting the atheists viewpoint across 15 years ago and no doubt with as much zeal.
I hated all religious types. Hypocrites, war mongers, liars - the list of contemptuous describing words would have been endless.
I am a die hard analyst, a computer programmer by trade and a lover of logic and logical explainations for aparent supernatural phenomena. My perspective was, if you couldnt see it, touch it, record it then it didnt exist.
Something happened that changed that perspective forever. I experienced God's love when I asked to receive the Holy Spirit. The experience was in no way ordinary nor can I explain it away (although I tried and tried to hang on to the logical). Go on... ask me for proof. I cannot give you any except the words of my own testimony but I know you are unlikely to believe me or take me at my word.
I have turned my back on God a number of times since then only to realise that the further I tried to distance myself, the more pressing the truth became until I realised that my need for 'truth' and 'purpose' was seated with God whom I had experienced.
How does my faith manifest itself today? Well in a quiet way where I try to listen to the voice inside that comforts and prompts and teaches me the benefits of walking through this life being humble. That quiet voice for me is 'on my side' and often counters my inner fears. I come to rely on it and I am never undone by it. When I ignore it I end up flat on my ass. Not perfect you see.
I dont say science is the devils work, I say it is interesting work undertaken by man and is usually beneficial to man. I call myself a Christian but I do not see myself being a threat to the world in any way, far from it. My faith has genuinley caused me to look at myself and the way I treat others and I am sure it has made my 'light' a little brighter. How can that be a bad thing?

peace

c20

 

I would rather hear you speak given that you claim the author must have 'read your mind'

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peace

c20

 

basically the premise of the book is that the absurdity of having "faith" in something that has no evidenciary support leads people to commit other similarily bizarre and detrimental acts once that concept of "faith" begins to permeate their heirarchy of rationalization. it also centers on the essential contradictions set forth in the holy books of each religion and the fallacy that certain passages should be accepted as real and certain others as metaphorical. what he says about it is that just because you can find the philosophy implicit in the words of jesus in several isolated lines of scripture to be sound and just, doesnt mean it isnt nestled in amongst a pile of useless and unjustifiable trash. he advocates that morals/ethics/concepts of right and wrong could be rationally put forth in a way that doesnt involve faith or religion at all, and would arguably be more binding because they are based logically and humanistically, and would invite periodic reexamination of their basis to make sure they still apply in the social context as it evolves. this would be preferable to the morals espoused by any particular religion that purports that they issue from an authority beyond human contestation because they would be adaptable and flexible as opposed to rules that are basically carved in stone waiting for obselescence to overtake them.

 

see thats the problem. it doesnt have anything to do with hate. atheism itself is not a synonym for religion hater. this book and a lot of the atheist people on this board (though not all) often are trying to get people to admit that there really cant be any evidence based rationalization for religion and that if other similarily unproveable concepts were put to religious people, they would demand proof to one extent or another, but somehow have partitioned their mind to exempt religion from the rules of reason. i, not as an atheist, but just as a rational person cannot understand or relate to this particular kind of self-delusion. it has nothing to do with hate, if anything i have been trying to listen to and debate people of religion for the purpose of seeing if there is any way that it could be understood by me in the terms that i think are valid.

 

Religion's require a body of believers. I consider myself a believer but I do not see myself or anything I believe to be a catalyst for harm.
Perhaps if you could show me how my faith was detrimental to the common good, I could relate to the concerns expressed personally?

peace

c20

 

because belief in something that is irrational and without any kind of evidenciary support encourages and fosters belief in other similarily absurd concepts and branches of that same original thing. the point is not that you yourself will do something harmful with your eccentricity, its that The President will do something harmful with it and hurt us all, or that osama bin laden will do something harmful with it and kill lots of people just going about their daily business. these people are in real positions of power in the world, in many cases their ability to ascend to these postitions of power has to do with faith-based beliefs or attitudes that they hold or are perceived to hold.

i mean if i were to come out all of a sudden on TV and claim that i found a book that said if you eat ice cream for long enough you will become invisible and when people asked me to show them i said: oh well i cant find anyone its happened to because they are all invisible, what would everybody say? they would say "wow that guy is delusional". however, every president of the United States in history has believed in the same sort of unproveable nonsense and has been put in a position of power that rivals that of any ruler in all of history. the fact is that faith in some kind of god, indeed adherence to at least the appearance of being a christian is essential to getting elected to almost any national office in the united states. and when people come out and challenge that faith as baseless and illusionary, they are looked on as the proverbial "bad guy" for having the gall to question something so personal and sacrisanct. theres a chilling effect put on rational discussion of issues like abortion, cloning, stem cell research, and homosexual marriage because you commit political suicide and lose credibility when you are perceived to be attacking someones "deeply held personal faith" whether it seems self-evident that that faith has no basis in fact or not. that is how faith and its propogation as an essential component of moral behavior and character results in direct harm to people through the actions of leaders of faith and the power base that supports them, whether its religious moderates or fanatic extremists. you, by making up part of a congregation or a political party that espouses a platform of faith-based progress are doing indirect harm to us all through the power weilded by the leaders you help put in place and the creedence you help lend to the concept that the majority of people view faith as not only relevant, but also crucial to the politics of an entire nation. and so their are millions upon millions of people like you all over the world exercising their "harmless" right to faith without giving any thought to the consequences of what they implicitly support, leading to wars over and between religions, genocidal massacres, and subjugation of minority religious interests on a worldwide scale. now tell me that what you believe is inconsequential and benign, because it isnt. maybe you ought to reexamine it.

 

The abuse of religion, which is what you are describing, is no different to what Jesus spoke out against according to the scriptures. The Pharisees used religion and peoples good will and faith to their own advantages. They twisted the truth so that reverence for God implicitly meant that people must show reverence for them as well, in other words they set themselves up as God. Jesus called them hypocrites. I call those who abuse religion hypocrites. I am not going to renounce my faith because others use it for evil purposes, to do so would be an incredible weakness. You wouldn't ask people to give up what they believe in, in case another person uses it for evil purpose would you? Should the scientist give up the pursuit of harnessing safe nuclear energy because another might abuse the technology?

peace

c20

 

I sorry you lost me, right there, you could never have been an atheist, in the past as you would still be one now.

and there, you lost me again, a real atheist hates no one, he might dislike the religious persons irrationality, but hate. atheists have to much respect for life and humanity to hate.

and if this is true, it was the wisest you had ever been.

and do you wonder at it.

I would'nt go round telling people this though, we all have our inner voices, but most of us know they are not real.

great, but thats you, unfortunately theres a lot of religious freaks out there.

 

its what you regard as abuse, but it is justifiable using the same book and lines of reasoning that you might use to come out against abortion. what you regard as abuse doesnt matter, the fact that the abuse is justifiable using lines of reasoning that issue forth from the authoritative texts and doctrines of the religion itself regardless of the extremity is the reason why it causes harm. right and wrong may be established along non-denominational or even non-religious lines using reason and logic, without adding the corollaries that the bible or the koran or the torah would. what you are saying is that for every abuse you can find a place in the bible that advocates against it. thats not a problem. the problem is that for every abuse you can also find a place in scripture that could be construed to justify it. that makes the whole thing invalid as far as im concerned. there are a few places where jesus talks about being peaceful and tolerant, well there are just as many places where god tells people directly to kill in the name of their religion. that to me makes the whole thing a total wash. if you had morality based on reasoning and not dogma, abuse would be abuse and there would be fewer ways to circumvent admitting to it. faith does not serve us well in this regard.

 

So you are saying that faith gives itself to lending human beings the affirmation they need ( in the face of all good reasoning) to become like power crazed loons, telling people how to live their lives because their god said that that was how it should be?

Well yeah! And THAT was the Pharisees problem. They didn't understand that believing in God resulted from 'knowing' God. And they DID NOT 'know' God.

And yeah, I was an atheist, happy in my logical view of the world. No need for all that spiritual rubbish. Not my thing. And when I use the word 'hate' as in 'hated religous types', I dont mean I hated anybody, I just mean that it was far removed from me, . I do not need a lecture on what atheism is. I'm telling you I was an atheist. My views were 'changed'. Not by a thought process, but by an experience that meant I could no longer have an atheist view anymore because I 'personally' had 'proof'. The experience overwhelmed me and I was a 'witness' to the Holy Spirit. I have no other explaination. The experience left me in no doubt. I can no longer lie and say 'there is no God' because 'I have' witnessed God's power. Now the atheist values that I once held, still hold me in good stead, why... because the atheist is right. It is about proof. But as with anything you wish to prove, you have to start with an open mind and not 'force' the results to 'fit' your personal bias. You must be objective and be prepared to get different results to what you might expect and treat it all the same. Science is about fact after all. The atheist is interested in cold hard fact. The mistake I made as a 'die hard' atheist, was 'not being true to logic'. Logic suggest that all possibilities must be considered else the one disregarded may turn out to be the most important of all. I hadn't even entertained the possibility that the 'God thing' might actually be true. Logic stood and mocked me for a brief while after my conversion and I was reminded of these words from Matthew 11:25

"
At that time, Jesus answered, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants. "

I couldn't have felt so small. Just like an infant infact.

Logic suggest that all possibilities must be considered else the one disregarded may turn out to be the most important of all.

I like that sentence. Sums it up for me.

peace

c20

 

So you are saying that faith gives itself to lending human beings the affirmation they need ( in the face of all good reasoning) to become like power crazed loons, telling people how to live their lives because their god said that that was how it should be?

yes thats exactly what im saying. belief in a religion as the one true way to know god precludes respect for other belief, which inevitably leads to some type of harmful minority oppression or war between factions disputing the validity of each others claims.

Well yeah! And THAT was the Pharisees problem. They didn't understand that believing in God resulted from 'knowing' God. And they DID NOT 'know' God.

that is your opinion. to the pharisees, you do not "know" god, and neither did jesus. they were using reasoning from what is now the old testament of the bible and the associated jewish apocrypha to deny jesus based on their faith. thats why its so ridiculous. what you are saying now is that there is a true and demostrable way to know god and that you "know" that that is the only kind of faith you are supposed to have. how do you know that? because the bible says it, and since the bible is not a historical document, it is the repository of collected faith. so basically you are saying you have faith that you know what faith is and that the faith you have faith in is the correct faith. ridiculous. your argument collapses on itself.

And yeah, I was an atheist, happy in my logical view of the world. No need for all that spiritual rubbish. Not my thing. And when I use the word 'hate' as in 'hated religous types', I dont mean I hated anybody, I just mean that it was far removed from me, . I do not need a lecture on what atheism is. I'm telling you I was an atheist. My views were 'changed'. Not by a thought process, but by an experience that meant I could no longer have an atheist view anymore because I 'personally' had 'proof'. The experience overwhelmed me and I was a 'witness' to the Holy Spirit. I have no other explaination. The experience left me in no doubt. I can no longer lie and say 'there is no God' because 'I have' witnessed God's power. Now the atheist values that I once held, still hold me in good stead, why... because the atheist is right. It is about proof. But as with anything you wish to prove, you have to start with an open mind and not 'force' the results to 'fit' your personal bias. You must be objective and be prepared to get different results to what you might expect and treat it all the same. Science is about fact after all. The atheist is interested in cold hard fact. The mistake I made as a 'die hard' atheist, was 'not being true to logic'. Logic suggest that all possibilities must be considered else the one disregarded may turn out to be the most important of all. I hadn't even entertained the possibility that the 'God thing' might actually be true. Logic stood and mocked me for a brief while after my conversion and I was reminded of these words from Matthew 11:25

the mistake you made is that you were an ignorant atheist. no self-respecting atheist that i am aware of would deny that there is a spiritual aspect to existence that cannot at this time be quantified in scientific terms. so what? that doesnt mean that you have to go get religion to explain it. logic does not suggest that you must consider all posibilites equally, logic requires that you consider all possibilities and discard ones that do not have any basis in logic itself. logic requires that you institute a heirarchy of possibility based on how probable each possibility is and how much evidence there is for and against the validity of any particular claim. maybe you failed as an atheist because you misunderstood the ethos as much as you apparently misunderstand your religion.

and also, just to keep it in mind, when you use the word hate, you should mean hate. or just in general you should say what you mean.

"
At that time, Jesus answered, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants. "


Logic suggest that all possibilities must be considered else the one disregarded may turn out to be the most important of all.

but what youre saying isnt true. you are beginning with the assumption that an atheist doubts christianity because he or she has not considered that it may be valid. well i start from the other end of the spectrum, i went to a protestant church until i was old enough (about 9) to see the glaringly obvious contradictions between what the minister and the bible said were true and what seemed to be the reality of life. there was a huge disconnect for me even as a kid with like a 3rd grade education. so for a long time i didnt know what to think, then as i got older i started to study religion in an attempt to understand it. it still didnt make any sense. so my attempt to understand religion pushed me further from it as a logical and reasonable person, because logic cannot support what is unsupportable. reason cannot justify the unreasonable. religion is both of these things, faith requires suspension of disbelief and trust without proof. i cant accept those requirements. so according to what you have posited, i am a living example that faith cant stand up to critical empirical analysis.

 

i am a living example that faith cant stand up to critical empirical analysis.

What you are saying is - 'I read about God and Jesus, I went to church and the bible stuff they spoke about didnt reflect reality as I saw it. So you studied religion when you were older to understand it, 'give it a chance' kind of thing ,pretty open minded but it didnt make sense! You didnt find what you were looking for in the text you studied. You had made your attempt to reach out your hand through study and nothing happened.'

Were you looking for proof in black and white? Words on a page? You cannot verify the text unless you know God. How can you say 'these words are God inspired' unless you are aware of what God may be like. One would have to 'witness' that in order for it to be verifiable. I knew nothing of the scriptural texts about the Holy Spirit at the time when I experienced what I experienced. The revelations at the time left me in know doubt regarding the importance of Jesus of the bible and his gift of life, I glimpsed God's majesty and His power and my inner witness cannot deny it. My inner witness cannot deny it. The presence has not left me and is my source of strength.

peace

c20

 

Just curious C20 could you explain these revelations any better than this? What exactly happened? How is it that you can only attribute these occurances to a god? Could these experiences not have come from somewhere else?

 

Basically for a moment I put all my personal pride aside and said 'Ok God, here's all my doubts, here's all my scepticism, please, if you are there, please see through all that and forgive all that and touch me the person underneath. Let me know that you are real.'
What happened then literally knocked me off my feet. I remember like a warm invisible blanket enveloping me as though someone had dropped it from above. The sense of peace that came with this 'blanket' was not a purely physical thing. It 'spoke' to every fibre of my person and the sense of peace came because I knew that this thing I called a 'blanket' 'knew' me even better than I knew myself but most of all it 'loved me'. As I lay there I witnessed myself go through some sort of spiritual deep clean. I was told by the presense that I was being washed in the blood of the lamb (which meant nothing to me at the time) and that blood was the greatest gift I could receive because it meant life for me, that without it I could not be free. I then was shown the great price that was paid to bring this cleansing blood to me and it was then that I could understand the Jesus character from the bible. The presense that was with me and showing me stuff was 'alive', a living entity, incredibly wise and knowing and loving. It seemed to view me as a mother might view a new born baby. It wanted to protect me and was seemingly jealous for my love. I remember being sorry. I could see very clearly how my pride would block such a experience. The presence was incredibly powerful but in a very contained way. I got the impression that the power would not force itself on me because that wasn't its nature.
When the intensity of the experience left me (probably only a couple of minutes) I felt 'new' and more than that I felt 'whole'.
I went to try and find explainations as to the nature of the experience, picked up a bible and tried to make the associations between what I had experienced and what the bible had to say. It was at this time that I came to realise that the God that speaks in the bible, has the same spirit as the thing that had visited me. I also came to realise that the thing that had visited me was the 'Holy Spirit' that Jesus said would come. I know that presence is never far away and I trust its guidance because it is 'good'. I believe it is the power that created all things. I have also learnt that we as a race would have had no hope of salvation without the blood of Jesus being available to wash away our sin. The whole sin thing is not how most people see it either, or rather the consequences of sin. Sin and God are like oil and water. They repel one another. God cannot be adulterated by it. We have all sinned and it is this that prevents us from knowing God. If Jesus had not come and taken away the sins of the world then we would not have been able to know God. His life was poured out so that we could share it. Sharing His life means knowing His Father, Our Father.

peace

c20

 

Geeser:

Excellent post.