Apatheism.

Not the real book cover. Close, though.

Jason Boyett has written a book. This is not a spectacular thing as such, as countless people have written countless books during the history of mankind. Even Boyett has done this a few times before. What’s more spectacular is that I read the book, from cover to cover (as far as “cover to cover” applies to e-books). I’m probably not in the intended target audience for a book about struggles of faith and doubt, not having much of either, but I read it nonetheless.

I’m sure it has something to give to those who have faith and doubt – perhaps it doesn’t have any answers as such (and this is made clear right from the start), but, in the way that we only truly appreciate what we have when we are reminded of those who have less, perhaps doubt is easier to deal with when you know there’s someone who struggles with a lot more of it. And Boyett has a few truckloads of doubt.

For the irreligious, the book has, perhaps surprisingly, a lot to offer. Chapter by chapter, from the early descriptions of his struggles in an American cult he calls “Southern Baptists”, to the later, profound stories of doubt brought forth by scientific and analytical questioning, Boyett builds a strong case against faith and religion. For those of us who already live their life without faith, it drives home the point why we’re better off like that. Much more convincingly than prominent atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, Boyett describes the enormous effort an intelligent, open minded person has to invest just to keep the faith alive, for very little, if any, real gain.

So, is it a good book? Personally, I thought so. For me, it offered an interesting window to the weird relationship Americans have with matters of faith. Its descriptions of what Boyett considers “normal” in the US Christian landscape were amusing and slightly repulsive, a view probably shared by most non-Americans, Christian or not. Most importantly, it has a perspective that doesn’t get much publicity. Doubt happens.

However, the book also reveals the lack of appreciation even the most open minded, intelligent and scientifically thinking Christians have for the beauty of the universe and life itself. Greed, if you wish. When faced with the immense beauty of the nature, life, birth, parenthood, love – all the miraculous things that surround us and are us, even people like Boyett seem to say; “Yeah, that’s all very nice, but that can’t be all of it. There has to be more!” Not satisfied with the 70+ years worth of wonders you get to experience as a human being, they demand more. Infinitely more. I find this puzzling, and somewhat sad.

My personal bottom turtle is life, universe and everything. I can see it, touch it, feel it, and I can appreciate it in all its glory and complexity. I will live forever through the consequences of my own actions, here and now, through the lives I help to change, through my kids, their kids, ad infinitum. I appreciate every day of my life because they’re a finite unit in the day allotment I get, not infinitely small fraction in some eternal life scheme mostly filled by a ghastly afterlife dedicated to endless worship of what appears to be an evil supreme being.

When having conversations with those whose doubt has eventually lead to abandonment of faith altogether, things that Boyett fears the most don’t even make the lists of things they miss about their past lives. As close as a serial doubter like Boyett is to the world-view of a non-believer, the last step is still enormous, and, if taken, would cause a major shift in priorities that lie beyond concrete, everyday things about life. I, for one, hope that Boyett will stick with his faith, complete with his doubts. It seems that Christians that I truly appreciate have a tendency to become non-Christians. This trend is not acceptable – the world needs more palatable, rational Christians to counterbalance the crazy ones. Perhaps counter-intuitively, that helps more than having a few additional rational, palatable atheists.

In conclusion, the book ($9.44 from Kobo) is definitely worth a read. It’s well written, cohesive, and occasionally funny. It also made me feel better about the choices I’ve made in my life.

CBS News/Crimesider: Pat Robertson: Haiti “Cursed” After “Pact to the Devil”

They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another

(Pat Robertson)

All right. So, a powerful earthquake hits Haiti, tens of thousands of people die, and there’s lots of shock, mourning and altruistic relief efforts coming from all over the world. It truly is a horrible, horrible tragedy. I’ve donated to Red Cross Haiti relief, you can do that too from the links below this post.

But Pat “Pat Robertson” Robertson *  knows more than the rest of us. He knows exactly why this happened. According to Robertson, Haitians turned to Satan for help some 220 years ago, and ever since that moment God has been targeting the island nation with vengeful, divine smart bombs.

Three things come to mind:

1. WTF? Is he trying to overtake Fred Phelps as the most hated American in the world?
2. He’s not alone in his opinion. Apparently, many “regular Americans” have similar beliefs.
3. Someone really needed to call upon the Devil himself to fight the French military?

Interestingly enough, we can take a peek at what kind of situation lead the Haitian slaves to attempt Voodoo (which in itself is a combination of West African and Catholic Christian rituals) to get rid of their masters. A passage from writings of a slave describes the Christian love the French showed toward the slaves:

Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? … Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man eating-dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?

Many Christians and conservatives have expressed their outrage over Robertson’s comments. Quite a few have agreed with him. Those who disagree are quick to claim that he’s not a “proper Christian”. I don’t think there’s such thing as “proper Christian”. Someone who represents a certain flavour of Christianity firmly believes they’re the only “Proper Christians” or “True Christians” and everyone else got it wrong. Right. I’ve heard this so many times from so many different Christians across the whole asshat – sensible continuum that I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.

Everyone who sees themselves as Christian is one. Yes, I know that you there think that you got it right and my fellow Finn who considers himself an Evangelic Lutheran Christian while believing in reincarnation got it wrong. Bullshit. Christianity, like every other religion in the world and the godless camp, have shitload of people who are hateful bigots and real bastards or just interpret shit differently. Pat Robertson and every other moron who thinks like him are just as much Christians as those self-proclaimed Christians who condemn him.

In fact, if you’ve ever read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, petty and vengeful behaviour like that would certainly fit the modus operandi of the Christian God.

* Note: Pat “Pat Robertson” Robertson is not to be confused with Rob “Rob Pattinson” Pattinson, another soulless, bloodthirsty monster.

Canadian Red Cross “donate now” -page.

American Red Cross “donate now” -page.

I recently responded to a claim that accepting science requires more faith than accepting religious explanations (relating to the origin of universe, life and species). While the claim is at best rather bizarre and suggests a crucial misunderstanding in what both science and religion are, I summoned a parable to explain why I believe the way I do. I shall get into that later in this post.

I’ve already discussed about the nature of religious explanations, and the unfortunate fact that they only give answers at a very vague level, carefully avoiding going into any intricate details. Seeing religions as a simpler way to explain things and favouring them because of that is a misuse of Occam’s Razor. Just because religious explanation is overly vague doesn’t make it simple. Just because scientific explanation can dig into extremely high level of detail doesn’t make it more complex. “Nature made it” is explaining evolution at the same level religions explain creation. Science can go into quite a lot of detail when asked “How did nature make it?”. Asking “How did God make it?” is equally crucial question, for which religion doesn’t provide answers. All we have are wild guesses, and yours is as good as mine.

If we accept that God made the Universe, we should assume that a creature capable of creating the universe is nearly infinitely more complex than its creation – just as a watchmaker is nearly infinitely more complex than a pocket-watch. If we assume that God doesn’t need to be more complex because he doesn’t need to follow the laws of the physics in his own creation, we have to assume that there’s another universe with different laws of physics, The Universe of Gods, which doesn’t certainly doesn’t make the theory any simpler, and doesn’t exactly help anyone making the case for “religion takes less faith to believe in than science”. What science suggests in regards to evolution – complexity from simplicity through natural selection – is in comparison a simple concept and can be easily observed in the nature if we are so inclined.

What prompted my parable was a suggestion that those who accept scientific explanations put their faith in the scientists in the same manner than the religious put their faith in their religion – and, apart from those of us who really are scientists, all we have is someone else’s written word of experiments. Not many of us test these suggestions by ourselves. While I’ve sometimes had mould growing on a long-forgotten banana by the counter, it’s hardly a double-blind controlled study on the evolution of multicellular fungi. So, why should we trust the scientists to begin with?

The way I see science working is similar to how open source software development works (or more specifically, how Free Software development works). A piece of software might be originally written by a single individual, but its source code is available for everyone to examine, modify and improve. Those with programming skills often grab the opportunity and refine the software, add new features and so on, in turn releasing their work for further improvement. This way problems are identified and fixed fairly shortly. Occasionally, a bit of bad code might creep in, but since it’s all out in the open, it won’t take long before its corrected.

Since science works in a similar manner, out in the open, inviting criticism and improvement, we can always be quite certain that what we have represents the best and most accurate view on the areas it covers, and it’s supported by sufficient evidence. It might not be 100% accurate, but its close enough that we can use it to our advantage. And it will always continue to improve.

Religion, on the other hand, is more like a piece of proprietary closed source software. Yes, it might come with a price tag, but that’s not the main point. In fact, it’s like a closed source application whose publisher went out of business long time ago, whose original source code was trashed, the programmers moved on, and all we have left is the binary blob executable and a manual, originally written in Taiwanese, then translated to English via Norwegian by a semi-literate German street sweeper.

We have no means to peek inside to see its exact details. We know it has its fair share of bugs, it got a bit more crippled when y2k rolled around, and it generally doesn’t play nice with contemporary operating systems. There are no ways to fix it, or update it to work in the modern day – it will always be anchored to the past when it was written. We can keep on using it for certain functions that still work okay, and just choose to not touch those ones that aren’t compatible anymore. To change it fundamentally is impossible – that would require switching to another program altogether. Perhaps another proprietary one, or perhaps an open source one.

Metaphorically speaking, I’ve been living with open source software all my life, updating and upgrading as needed. I see very little reason to all the sudden start using old proprietary application that is known to be buggy and is useful only for very few things. At the same time, I can understand why people would stick to such things if they’re familiar for them, despite all their flaws. Clearly, these people believe that there’s some sort of advantage in their method that isn’t available through alternatives. There’s nothing wrong with combining the two if that’s what rocks your boat. As long as you don’t come ringing my door bell and demand I should switch to yours too.

What is the purpose of debating with the religious, over the Internet or in real life, over things like god’s existence? Debates alone rarely lead to anyone changing their minds. Debates, especially when they’re done over the Internet, quite likely have the opposite effect. People dig their trenches, turn defensive, and drift further away from mutual understanding and any common ground. The same question could be asked about political debates. Do we even want to convert people to our world views? Or do we do that for the purpose of further convincing ourselves of what we already know?

Our non-religious camp has no churches to build, no indulgences to sell, no altruistic motive to save someone from eternal damnation. We don’t have designated leaders to please, and we don’t have bonuses or gratitude to gain from converting anyone. Whether 1% or 20% of the population in our respective countries declares themselves irreligious has very little meaning to atheist and humanist organizations. There are no profits in atheism.

So, is the main motive not related to (lack of) faith at all, but merely a political one? Do we want to grow in numbers to be recognized, respected and represented in the cultures, communities and political landscapes we live in?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be nifty if more people shared my views on life, universe and everything, all political goals aside. I just don’t think “nifty” is enough justification to do purposeful, goal-oriented atheist evangelism. The liberal end of Christianity generally lives a life just as happy as us, and isn’t really suffering for their position on things. Religious guilt, fear, angst and suffering ruins lives in the more conservative, fundamental end of the continuum. Maybe instead of having barfights with the fundies we should use our energy to form better ties to the moderate and liberal flavours of Christianity.

All these questions are quite different in US context as they are here in Canada and in most of Europe. Outside US, the faithless form a significant enough portion to have enough political and cultural weight to keep fundamentalism in check. Perhaps some level of evangelism is really needed in US and other countries where atheists and agnostics are a small minority and the fundamentalists roam freely. To bring balance to the Force.

If you’re an American atheist, you probably have every right to be an angry one. But anger doesn’t convince people that you’re right. All the ridiculous stereotypes and misconceptions the masses have of Atheists get reinforced and any kind of positive message that could have made a positive change gets lost along the way.

I think the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens do both good and some harm to the atheist community in general. We need them, because they provide an important outlet by saying things some of us would want to, but couldn’t say. They provide a lot for those who already have abandoned faith. Whether they alienate or bring over those balancing between faith and lack of it, I don’t know. Personally I would find the confrontational style alienating. In the end, I believe the positives greatly surpass the negatives. Support for the existing faithless is more important than growing in numbers.

What we need more are the friendly, inoffensive atheists. People who can lead by example, being happy, whole, wise and altruistic without faith. Clearly, openly and unapologetically without faith. I know there’s many of us who believe that time for niceness is over, we’ve done enough bending over and it got us nowhere – but this is not about being an apologetic for Christianity, or accepting its influence in the culture without questioning. Just being Good without God, and open about it, is a much more powerful tool for atheist evangelism than even the wittiest writing you can get published in the local paper, or greatest ever debate “won” on the Internet.

I don’t ask the militant anti-theists to fall silent. They’re needed for our own camp. When you’re in more or less oppressed minority, there’s some level of Justice and Retribution you can feel when you, or a big bad brute on your side, has beaten someone in a debate. Just don’t expect it to convince anyone to join in.

Browsing around various forums dedicated to the non-religious, you’re bound to find that some of us are equally close-minded as your stereotypical religious fundamentalist is. Not that this is surprising, we’re all humans after all. Often, if not always, this extremist portion of nonbelievers had a similar stance while they were subscribing to a religion in their past. When a pendulum swing starts at one extreme, it has a tendency to end up in the other extreme.

Sometimes doubt, even if purely hypothetical or based on humour, expressed in atheist/agnostic communities is treated with ridicule, even hostility.

Granted, these communities are supposed to be safe havens for discussion, specifically set up to be clean of religious influence. Most of us are surrounded by a religious majority in the communities we physically live in, and have no means to escape the pro-faith air around us, the American atheists being far worse off than the rest of us.

Still, we are supposed to treat reason, logic and doubt as virtues. We are supposed to treat blind faith as a ‘sin’. That’s what sets us apart from large portion of the religious community. If we apply doubt, reason and logic only against religion and never question what we actually believe in, we’re no better than a fundamentalist person of faith is. Actually, they do exactly the same: they use their own flavour of theological reason and doubt against the stuff they don’t believe in, and often hold their own beliefs above criticism.

Allow yourself to doubt. Question everything, including the things you treat as facts. Spend some time occasionally re-evaluating what you believe in and what you don’t believe in. Allow others to doubt, and support them in it. Engage yourself in hypothetical thinking. Entertain what-ifs. Remind yourself what the scientific method is all about.

Which all leads me to another, but related topic:

Read anti.

I made a new year’s resolution to read at least one book, from cover to cover, that goes fundamentally against everything I believe in. For me that would be a book from a religious perspective to life, universe and everything, or a conservative, right wing viewpoint. I shall cover at least the religious angle, diving in to the political opposite might be best done after I have thoroughly trained myself in various relaxation techniques. A year or ten of yoga might do the trick.

I mentioned my resolution in a comment on Jason Boyett‘s wonderful blog, slightly unimaginatively named “JASON BOYETT: author of the Pocket Guides“. I shall forgive Jason for the naming issue, as the blog itself is absolutely adorable, and his writing is top notch. In the spirit of “read anti”, I’d recommend JB:aotPG as a good counterbalance to any nonbeliever, to complement all the sites, blogs and communities we spend most of our time in that preach to the choir, so to speak. From the above-linked post:

Here’s a challenge this year: read something you know you won’t like. Read something that makes you uncomfortable. Read something that stretches you. Do it with an open mind and a positive attitude, and see what happens.

Diving head first into a copy of Pat Robertson’s “Bring It On” isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but there are plenty of books out there that offer an interesting challenge for our thinking, some of them suggested in Jason’s blog. Of course, if you’re a tough basterd who eats whole cows as breakfast, bathes in shark-infested waters and wrestles polar bears as a profession, go ahead, read Robertson, or “Listen, America!” by Jerry Falwell.

The purpose of this is not to convert you to the opposite viewpoint. It’s to offer another perspective, enrich your understanding of the whole Big Picture™, and to make you understand your own position in a more comprehensive manner. Many of us participate in various kinds of religious debates in the no-man’s lands of the Internet. Generally this works in the opposite way as reading a book with an open mind does; these exchanges have a high probability to polarize our views, drag us into territory of intolerance, and eventually act against us, as individuals and as a community.

Wherever there appears to be a gap in contemporary scientific knowledge regarding the exact details how something has taken place, there’s always someone who jumps up, points at it and acts like it’s evidence against the viability of whatever overarching scientific theory the detail is a part of. Moreover, the missing knowledge is irrationally seen as an invalidating factor for the theory, and somehow through means of magic it becomes a proof for an alternative theistic theory.

These theistic theories pretty much boil down to the following, detailed explanations:

God made it.

And that’s it. Now, at least for certain topics, we have some additional detail. Let’s look at the origins of mankind. The first one in God’s assembly line was a male version of human being:

God made it. Out of dust.

How delightfully detailed. No details are given on what kind of process God used to form a human body out of this “dust”, no details on type of dust used, no details on absolutely anything interesting. The Bible jumps straight to describing the process of jump starting this freshly built corpse, through means of God blowing into its nasal cavities.

Much more details is available regarding the manufacturing process of the female counterpart:

God made it. Out of the man’s rib.

So God performed some kind of surgery while the man was sleeping under some form of divine anesthetics, although no specific details are given on this either. God opened the man up, removed a rib, and, apparently, rammed some kind of meat there to seal the wound. The level of detail for the actual manufacturing is unfortunately limited to the single word “made”. The female corpse apparently didn’t need magical nose resuscitation, and seemed to be alive right from the start. No details are given on whether, as a result of creating her solely out of material from the male, they shared identical DNA. Perhaps he just generated an identical copy first, tweaked the DNA and then devoted time to sculpt in the gender characteristics? If so, did he just discard the unnecessary penis? That would make Eve the first ever gender reassignment project. More importantly, did he tell Adam that Eve used to be Steve?

All said and done, the whole creation process is described roughly in a length of a single, medium sized blog post, which could be further condensed into one tweet without losing much details:

God created life, universe and everything out of nothing in six days.

Comparatively then, much more details are available from scientific theories regarding the same topics. For Creationists, a sufficient (perhaps even slightly too verbose) level of accuracy could be:

Universe happened, life got started and continues to evolve.

The point is, that on the same level of accuracy that religion gives its answers, science has 100% of the answers too. In more detailed level, science might be missing some answers, while religion is missing all the answers.

Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life: and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

(John 6:53 – 55)

Eucharist is possibly the most endearing component of Christianity. Certain flavours of the religion go to great lengths explaining that the little wafer that gets stuck in your throat is really, really seriously Jesus meat, and the appalling sip of wine is really, really, really his blood. No, it’s not symbolism. Nuh uh! Priestly magic turns it into 100% authentic, genuine flesh and blood of Jesus.

But it’s not cannibalism.

Cannibalism is what savage tribes and voodoo cults do. That is clearly evil. Even symbolic cannibalism is witchcraft. Evil! Evil! Eeeeeeeviiil! There’s a corner in Hell reserved for such repulsive, wicked, beastly acts, likely filled with your standard combination of eternal burning, fire, brimstone, torture, possibly sodomizing with a red-hot iron rod and other displays of Christian God’s love and compassion.

Now, Eucharist has nothing to do with such savagery. It’s not even like comparing apples and oranges, it’s like comparing apples and a four-barrel carburetor of a 1957 Chevrolet. Eucharist is a holy sacrament, not an unholy practice by silly jungle people. It’s a Good and Awesome thing, and a symbol of God’s love for us. But not in the same sense as, say, if some lunatic psychopath murdered his own kid, cut steaks out of him and fed them to his girlfriend. Because that would be gross. Ew.

Get it?

Let’s entertain for a moment the possibility that Christianity might be on to something with their God business. Let’s assume that God actually exists. Let’s assume that the Bible has some truth in it. What would God be like? What would Christianity be like if we threw out the useless and evil bits?

I’d like to start by chopping off some of the most offensive parts of the Biblical God. Attributes that describe a weak, overly emotional deity, incapable of rising above simple human emotions. After all, what’s the point of having a god if you demote him to something that has temper tantrums of a 5 year old and emotional balance of a teenager?

Jealousy? No. A proper God has a better self esteem than that. He probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you worship other gods, who, quite possibly don’t even exist. Jealousy is a human emotion. Many of us can rise above it, why should we think that our god is inferior to us?

Vengefulness , wrath and other unpleasantness? I’d like to keep God a bit more benevolent. Genocide, feeding babies to bears and burning down entire cities doesn’t sound horribly benevolent to me. Not to mention the whole business about murdering nearly every living thing on the face of the earth. To believe in such a vengeful, wrathful God is akin to calling him an asshat. Which would possibly qualify as blasphemy, but as I mentioned above, I think he has pretty good self-esteem and can take that in stride.

Obsession with penises? (and other naughty bits).  Attitudes toward nudity, condemning premarital sex, homosexuality, and masturbation – thank you but no thank you. I’d like to think God is not obsessed with people’s genitalia like some creepy pervert. Sex is fun whether you are trying to procreate or not, and it’s fun for a reason. I’m hard pressed to figure out why the hell this kind of crap found its way into any religion in the first place.

The Whole Jesus Died For Our Sins Business? Yeah, no. It simply makes no sense at any level. If God needed to forgive us for our sins (most of which we can now safely re-classify as non-sins anyway), why go through silly hoops like coming down to earth, getting his ass nailed on a cross, dying and then climbing back to heaven? In the name of all that’s holy, why on earth it would make any difference? You’re a God. You want to forgive mankind. POOF! Forgiven. Done. Let’s move on.

We don’t forgive the neighbours by slaughtering our puppy on their front lawn. I think it’s disrespectful towards God to think he’s either insane or intellectually challenged enough to come up with a plan like that.

Now, since we are approaching the core of Christianity, we must acknowledge Jesus and his role in the whole business. Son of God? Why not. Preaching an agreeable, good message? Certainly! Since we already concluded that the description of God given in Old Testament is largely bollocks, Jesus is a very appropriate messenger to give an idea what his dad is really like. Too bad about the whole crucifixion thing, but shit happens.

Jesus Magic? Why not? If we accept that Jesus was a son of God, walking on water, creating zombies, turning water into wine and other party tricks should be a piece of cake.

Salvation through Christ? Yes, in the sense that if you apply the Golden Rule and other reasonable moral guidelines Jesus taught, you’re in. Again, we must reject the evil “believe or be damned” -business. It’s irrelevant to God, and quite likely irrelevant to Jesus too.

Heaven? Totally. Filled with awesomeness, like banana cream pies and all the porn you can eat. Criteria for entry: Not being too much of an asshat during your life.

Hell and Apocalypse? No. The concept of Hell doesn’t fit into the concept of a benevolent god. Eternal damnation, fire and brimstone, and unimaginable suffering aren’t the first things that spring to mind when you imagine a loving, caring, compassionate deity. So, we shall throw away hell as malevolent, throw away apocalypse as useless and irrelevant, and add in the concept of reincarnation. Say, if you were too much of an asshat, you’ll be reincarnated over and over again until you get your act together. Add in the idea that the hardships you suffer in this life are payback for what you did in previous life, and we’ve reasonably explained why life unfairly sucks for some people.

In his Complaints and Grievances, George Carlin did a fairly good job in cutting out the useless filler material in the Ten Commandments. I would take his 2 condensed commandments (and one extra) through another simplification, and leave just one:

I: Thou shalt not be an asshat

Morals are something built into us human beings. Whether you credit God or evolution (or, if you prefer, God-created evolution) for them carries no significance. We all seem to have a basic set of morals and ethics that are a part of us in the same way our spleen is a part of us. The secular humanist variety of humans comes with a basic set. A lot of that set can be simplified into the Golden Rule, paraphrased by Jesus when he said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you“. Cooperative and altruistic behaviour has evolutionary benefits, so it’s not a big surprise we evolved to be, very generally speaking, rather pleasant creatures. On most days.

The religious variety of us have the same underlying set of naturally occurring morality. Usually it comes with some additional add-ins and take-offs, defined in various holy books and their interpretations.

Most of what’s essential in Christian moral code already exists naturally, the religion just dresses it up into holy words, and tends to (attempt to) claim the sole ownership. This can, and has, lead to rather silly situations, like people questioning if a person can even have morals if they’re not religious. To be fair, people claiming such things are on the brink of extinction these days, and neither WWF nor PETA seem to be bothered by that. If you’re so inclined, you can treat the moral compass as God’s gift to all humanity, whether they’re believers or not.

If morality exists without religion, does religion then strengthen our likelihood to behave in an ethical manner? After all, it adds an eternal reward for good behaviour and indescribably horrific eternal punishment for immoral behaviour. Apparently, no. Secular countries seem to have less crime and corruption than highly religious countries. In US, the prison population has far less atheists than their proportion of the general population would suggest.

In more detailed scale than just the Golden Rule, morals are not absolute. As a product of evolution, morality evolves along with mankind. There are no clear, absolute rules that live throughout the history unchanged. In general, most of us view many things that were morally acceptable 50, 100, 300 or 2000 years ago appalling. Religious morals, just like secular morals, are subject to similar kind of fluidity. There were times when slavery, racism, even genocide, was considered morally acceptable. While the Bible hasn’t seen much rewriting recently, the interpretation shifts as the natural morality shifts. Religious morals have to adapt, even if they do it rather reluctantly. There’s only so far you can go in a fight against natural cultural evolution. Churches either adapt or die. I call this kind of consciously done, reluctant form of adaptation “Intelligent Redesign”.

Each generation that grew up in a certain type of moral environment sees the next generation as more immoral. They see that the old moral values that still appear absolute to them aren’t respected anymore. The next generation might look back at the previous one and see them as detached from contemporary reality, and, in some cases, immoral. One example would be the treatment of gay people. The old generation might see the acceptance of homosexuality as immoral and evil. The new generation might see the past discrimination of homosexuals as immoral and evil. It’s an interesting topic since we’re currently in the middle of the morality shift. The same shift happened with racial discrimination not too long ago, and while we still have many issues lingering, racism is nearly universally deemed as immoral. People who feel strongly against gay rights today will be judged as disgusting, immoral and evil in not too distant future, even by most conservative, fundamentalist Christians. Such is evolution.

While religions almost always drag a few decades behind the natural evolution of morality, they can also be a tool to pervert  individual items of contemporary morality.

Religion has the power to convert morally acceptable things into immoral things. Nudity, premarital sex, same-sex relationships, using condoms, masturbation… Christianity, Judaism and Islam all have their hangups about most things sexual. Deeming any of them immoral has no natural justification (although the ethics of pornographic industry would be a whole different kind of issue). For some reason, many religions have quite unhealthy focus on your private bits, approaching a bizarre level of fetishism.

The religious battle against natural morals works the other way around too; religion can be used to convince believers that naturally evil behaviours are morally acceptable. Attempting to convince a secular humanist to hijack an airplane and fly it into a skyscraper just wouldn’t work.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

(Blaise Pascal)

To go against nature in morality takes lot of blind faith and conviction, and religion is perhaps the most suitable tool for that. Similar results can be achieved with fanatical political and patriotic views. Patriotism and nationalism are unhealthy when they become like a religion. Add religion, politics and patriotism together, and you have the ingredients for a genocide.

There are plenty of urinating contests going on between atheists and religious people. Even a by-product of various other forms of penis comparisons in the fields of evolutionary science versus creationism, god’s existence and other close contact sports, has turned into a debate of some sort; which camp is more arrogant than the other?

I’ll whack my own penis on the table by claiming that, apart from very few individuals, neither side is intentionally arrogant or offensive. Angry, perhaps, and perhaps justifiably so. Sarcastic, definitely. When faced with something we perceive as arrogant, we have a tendency to respond in a manner that comes off equally arrogant. This will cause a further drift towards polar opposites and unnecessary monsterization of our ‘enemies’.

Just the basic idea of denying deities in itself can be offensive. For many, religion is not just a hat they wear, it’s a part of who they are. An atheist, by just definition, denies an integral part of a religious person’s being. A person of some other faith does that too, but there is a crucial difference; most of us have respect for religion. We reserve some amount of respect for the faith of others, even if we disagree with it. An atheist doesn’t have this cultural, magical shield. The religious person expects that their beliefs are respected, without granting the same kind of respect to his opponent’s world view. It’s a game with loaded dice from the start.

In any given argument on atheist/religious matters, the religious person is likely to quote a holy book sooner or later. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God“. This isn’t an argument. If by definition, your opponent places zero value to what you might think your god might think, it’s pointless to quote scripture. To state things like, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing“, to an atheist, sounds downright arrogant. Yes, you might have had good intentions, but you just called someone an imbecile moron. You have nothing to gain by quoting scripture to a non-believer. To an atheist, it is not an ultimate truth that can be wielded as a battleaxe of wit and wisdom. You just brought a wet sock to a gunfight.

In the scientific field, there’s nearly unanimous agreement for evolution, among atheist and religious scientists alike. Even half of Evangelical theologians agree with evolution. For a person who doesn’t subscribe to any kind of faith, things like Young Earth Creationism can be truly baffling. No evidence exists to support the view, plenty of evidence exists to completely debunk it, yet someone believes in it? Well, the key word is “believes”. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to be logical. It doesn’t need any scientific support, let alone consensus. It’s their right to put faith above what you consider as logic. To the other side, it might seem like a logical choice to take what they believe is the word of an infallible god over what’s just words of fallible men.

In countries like the United States, balance between the religious and the irreligious is quite lopsided. There’s certain amount of defensiveness that comes from just the fact that as an atheist, you need to navigate in an environment which is highly saturated with Christianity. There’s quite a lot of loud and visible religiosity. It’s in your face, under your skin, challenging you every step of the way. Living in that kind of environment will eventually lead you to walking with your fists up, ready to fight. Likely you’ve had to defend your lack of faith on at least a few occasions. When you hear commonly repeated fallacies regarding, for example, atheist morals for the n:th time, you’re ready to throw a punch before your opponent, quite possibly completely sincerely, even knows they’re in a fight.

Faithless or with faith, it just might be a good idea to assume good faith.