Sh-t happens
The day after the Samoan tsunami I heard a tv reporter, after recounting the death and destruction and misery and coming plagues, say "their Christian faith will comfort them". It's the kind of thing you say on these occasions of course, and people nod wisely. Ah yes indeed, wouldn't do for me, but if you are a believer it must be a comfort. Sort of like the "no atheists in foxholes" nonsense.
But having nodded wisely I stopped to think. Never a good move with religious mythology. And I said to myself "why?" Let me see if I understand the options. First there might be a big unfeeling brute of a god who when he gets bored, or has a hangover or something, pulls the Earth's crust in such a manner as to set off a tidal wave just near some beaches occupied by one of the most inoffensive and nicest people on the planet, the Samoans. As a result these nice people, men women and children, old and young, have their lives taken, families taken, suffer horrible injuries, have their homes smashed to pieces, their animals killed. I'm not sure where Christian faith manages to comfort them for believing in such a creature.
The second option might be that there is an omnipotent but somewhat nicer creature, who, although he could stop the natural event of earthquake and tsunami (even though they are going to hit some of the most religious and god-fearing people on the planet), chooses not to. Instead, in a kind of video game, he decides to randomly save a few of the people who might otherwise have died etc. And they, believing that their faith saved them (though why it didn't save their equally true-believing neighbours must be a mystery), might take comfort in that.
Or third, they might believe in some sort of distant figure in the sky, who neither starts disasters nor plucks a few survivors from their path, but, having noticed that some humans (and animals) have been killed on a planet he purportedly created for them, takes them up, 2 year olds and 82 year olds alike, and gives them another life in some distant part of the universe as yet unseen by the Hubble telescope. In that case, I suppose, survivors, believing in a god not powerful enough to prevent disaster in general, nor enough to save extremely religious people, instead believe in one that removes people from their families for no apparent reason and takes them somewhere out of reach to their loved ones left behind.
And the final option, I suppose, might be a kind of combination of the three. That is, whatever the hell god is up to with his earthquakes and tsunamis and random deaths and theoretical second life believers trust that if you just knew enough it would kind of make sense. And therefore they believe something that may have been said by someone who may have once lived who was a self-proclaimed god translator who thought that yes indeedy it did all make sense. All reminiscent of public attitudes to the war in Iraq, or to banking deregulation. At least one Samoan could be heard on a television report saying something like "help me christ to believe that this is all for the best" or words to that effect.
Look, I don't know about you, but I think my atheist religion would be of much more use to me than any of that self-contradictory rubbish. I think I would accept that the movement of tectonic plates in the Pacific rim triggers earthquakes, and these in turn can trigger tsunamis. And that on low Pacific islands, or even high ones where people, naturally, live on beaches, there are going to be high mortality rates and great loss of property as a result. No pattern to it, no one to blame, no get-out-of-disaster free cards being issued, just a big wave with your number on it. As an atheist then I would make sure that scientists came up with the best possible tsunami and earthquake warning systems. I would try to make sure that infastructure and planning and building codes in seaside villages were of a high standard, and I would try to build appropriate refuges. And I would make sure that disaster planning and response was of the highest order to rescue and treat people (and animals) and then to rebuild. I wouldn't waste time looking for answers in the sky to a question that has no meaning. Not feeling obliged to do that would be a great comfort to me. What about you?
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An enjoyable article, Dr. Horton. The same thoughts cross my mind as well. To extend your theme, it bothers me when images of the president or members of Congress are seen in church, hands idly clasped, heads down in prayer --- because while I respect their right to worship as they choose, it bothers me that they're not in their offices, on the phones, having meetings, writing legislation, or doing something productive. Instead, they stand there talking and mumbling to themselves, which helps no one.
What most religious people fail to see is that we live on an active planet. People are too self-absorbed and instead decide to read into events and ascribe meaning than to prepare and study the natural activities of Earth, divorcing said activities from their lives. And although comfort by religion can occur, comfort in no way validates the claims of that religion, and yet that line is often blurred by the believer, unfortunately.
Please keep up with the writing. We need more outspoken articles such as this.
However, PLEASE do not call atheism a religion. We do not pray to gravity and we have no holy books nor do we pray to deities. Atheism is a religion like not-believing in pink unicorns is a religion.
But the tsunami is a great example. Would any sane parent build or buy a house with broken glass, razor blades, cockroaches and asbestos and rotten eccoli meat all over the floor, stick their kid in there and then blame the kid if they got sick or injured?
Bad things happen and that is all there is too it. It is not that we as humans like bad things happening to us, we don't. But these bad things are no more a result of a man in a red leotard with a pitchfork than anything good being a result of Batman or Isis.
The tsunami was not a punishment, it wasn't a test, it wasn't because of anything humans did, past or present, good or bad. The tsunami was as natural as cancer and meteors. All things we don't want harming us as a species, but hardly a result of a comic book battle between a fictional super hero and a fictional villain.
We'd do better as a species to give up on delusions of narcissism , accept our mortality, and work on observing the real world to look for ways to minimize the harm these things can cause.
As a scientist I of course accept that plates move, tectonic shifts occur and nature deals out death and destruction. But as a poet I also believe in the words of the poet Rilke who understood that nature is both beauty and terror. "Beauty is but the beginning of terror." Another author who understands this is Annie Dillard (see her book Holy the Firm.) Nature is a paradox. I also find a numinous impulse in nature that contains the contradiction of beauty and terror. This impulse is nothing like the OTG. Einstein called it a "cosmic religious feeling." Where I part company with you is that you seem to arrive at a sort of fundamentalism that desacralizes nature -- a fundamentalism that seems to me to be not unlike religious fundamentalism only with different dogma. There are at least eight different human intelligences of which the logical/ma
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Elmer, Elmer "atheist religion" was tongue in cheek, getting in first before the familiar accusation arrived. I'm not sure about 8 different intelligences. I reckon there is just one, with different attributes coming to the fore in different people. And no, I think Einstein was wrong (there is a sentence it is satisfying to write) if he thought there was a "cosmic impulse", a bit like believing in "intelligent design".
I am so relieved that you are not trying to start another religion. See Howard Gardner's books on multiple intelligences. No thinking of a sacred impulse in nature is nothing like thinking of intelligent design. This sacred impulse has been described and named in various ways as Holy the Firm (Dillard), the Collective Unconscious (Jung), the Great Spirit (Native American), quantum mechanical entanglement (modern physics), the Holy Spirit (the Bible), the Great Integrity (Lao Tzu), the Cosmic Religious Feeling (Einstein), Natura Naturans (Spinoza), the Eternal Beauty (Hawthorne), the Forms (Plato), the Unmoved Mover (Aristotle), the Guest (Kabir), the Prayer of Union (Saint Teresa of Avila), the Divine Imagination (William Blake), Morphic Fields (Rupert Sheldrake), the Anima Mundi or World Soul (Paracelsus), the Mysterium Tremendum (Rudolf Otto), the Designing Fire ((Zeno of Citium), the World Spirit (GWF Hegel), Infinite Substance (Anaximander), the One (Plotinus), Spiritus Insertus Atomis (Democritus), the Self-Existent (the Therapeutae), shamanic ecstasy (Miro), Facultas Formatrix (Kepler).
If you're so secure in your beliefs, (or unbeliefs, as the case may be), why are you begging for approval here on the internets?
As far as I'm concerned, complaining about what other people believe is like straight people complaining about gay marriage - it's something that I don't have a stake in, and which doesn't effect what I think or do in any way.
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Not begging at all, Simon, just examining another curious aspect of the human condition.
No it is not the same.
For the same reason a Jew or Christian cant get elected in Iran, I speak out here as an atheist.
You don't have a stake in Islam, but I am sure you don't like their treatment of women, should you not "complain" about that?
Almost half of Americans falsely believe that the earth is 10,000 years old or less. The people(of course not all, but far too many are)perpetuating this lie want this absurdity taught in science classes, not just in their Sunday schools. They have constantly bullied the government into giving them special rights to the driver's seat which the First Amendment forbids.
If religion really was left up to the individual in this country, you'd have a case. But if you think religion hasn't entangled itself in politics, you must have been asleep the past eight years under Bush, "Jesus is my favorite philosopher". Bush won, not because he was qualified, but because he sucked up to his base.
I've never understood how one can worship a being that he believes responsible for, and in touch with, everything that happens in the world. How is that comforting? And what is prayer all about-- does one dare to question, or try to curry favor with, the omnipotent? I am much more comforted by the knowledge that stuff just happens, and then life goes on.
approximately 2009 years ago, a man (supposedly) lived on Earth. He (supposedly) talked to God, and everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt, believed him, and made him their lord and savior
Now, 2009 years later, hundreds of thousands or even millions of people are locked up in institutions because they believe with all their heart, to the core of their being, with the same level of passion that Jesus (supposedly) did that they talk to God
One person vs several hundred million
statistics say the one is the exception to the rule. Our society believes that the hundreds of millions are the exception
DOES NOT COMPUTE
Saying Jesus existed does not prove the magical fantastic claims made in the bible, anymore than a Muslim claiming that Mohammed existed means that they will get a magical harem in the sky.
We know that George Washington existed, but no sane person would go around claiming that he could produce a full sized Lamborghini out of his rear.
We know that New York exists and has been used in FICTIONAL movies like Superman, but no sane person believes that a man can fly around like that.
What we do know is that the motifs claimed to be original in the OT and NT are NOT NEW. Curing blindness, flood stories, original people, judgment of the dead, raising people from the dead, eye for an eye, are all MOTIF's FOUND in much older mythology prior to Christianity or Hebrews.
Religion is merely the placebo of hero worship. It is nothing but a gang mentality.
You will notice, I did intentionally add "(supposedly)" to my comment, indicating that I don't buy the Jesus myth either, but if we're gonna tell the story we might as well *try* to get it right, the same way we try to get right the stories of the tooth fairy, easter bunny and Santa Claus
It amazes me how many who post here refer to "believers" or those with faith as believing in fairies or a guy in the sky, etc. This is a simplistic trivialization of a much more sophisticated and rich understanding that some have arrived at using not only their logical intelligence but the other intelligences humans are capable of displaying. Just because your belief system may be barren, simple and vapid; don't assume everyones is.
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