My Life As An Atheist -Part V

This entry is a continuation of "My Life As An Atheist." To view part one, click here.

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After a year back to college, my youngest brother John had become a born-again Christian.  I couldn't believe it.  I was floored.  A few months earlier he had been pounding shots with me on his 21st birthday and barfing in the street.  He was my cool, unmarried brother that I could go drink and have a good time with.  I don't remember him mentioning Jesus once in the first 21 years of his life.  Shortly after his conversion he sent an e-mail about it with pictures.  He had dipped himself into a trough filled with holy water and began speaking in tongues.

The "reply" button on my e-mail was pressed rather suddenly.  I remember saying something like "If you're a Creationist we are fucking arguing.  I can't believe you're doing this."  I felt like my brother had been taken away from me, and in a way he was.

He responded and said that he would rather discuss it in person than over an e-mail.

This may have been a big change in John's life, but it was the start of a big change in my life as well.  I really wanted to understand where he was coming from.  In some ways I felt like a father-type figure to him and that I had failed.  Furthermore, this was the second time that I had heard nothing about Jesus or religion from one of my brothers, and then one day they shock the hell out of me by announcing that they are born again.

I was also worried about myself.  Was I next?  Is this some kind of genetic predisposition that will make me susceptible to believing that the bible is a truly perfect and historically accurate book?

So I met up with him.  After all, I had just taken a Life Science class and knew a little about evolution.  Maybe he just never really learned the science.

WRONG.

We started talking and he began to explain his transformation.  This eventually escalated into a debate about evolution.  A debate, which I must say, I was ill prepared for.  

He absolutely slammed me in the corner.  I had no idea how deeply he'd been studying this subject.  He had learned the science, but he'd learned it from religious books.  Before I knew it, there were 5 books on the table and he had refuted every argument I had.

I was very annoyed at this point.  I made a comment about how dumb he sounded and left.

John opened my eyes that night.  

I couldn't get it off of my mind.  In the coming months we exchanged around 5 trillion e-mails discussing this topic, each one more immature and pointless than the one that preceded it.  I figured that if I found compelling enough evidence that I could convince him that he was wrong.

Additionally, his arguments from our first meeting began to sink in.  He told me a lot of information about evolution that I'd never heard before.*  His arguments made some sense, but I was not informed enough to make a decision on the topic.

*(I don't want to get into these arguments here.  This subject is discussed all over the internet, and it's not my aim to use this blog to restate old information.  If you want a good resource for Q & A to creationist/evolution arguments, go here.)

I worked in a high school computer lab at the time.  I remember proctoring a science standard test and seeing the images on the computer screens of transitional fossils.  I thought to myself, "Is there something to what he was saying?"

For clarity, I was in no way becoming religious.  John had simply made me think differently about evolution, and this challenge to my previous knowledge began to spread into other areas of thought.  What if everything that I knew was wrong?

John would send me articles to read, and I would give him the benefit of the doubt and try to read them objectively. 

I accepted a challenge from him to read the new testament of the bible.  I remember people saying things like, "Not you too," but I wasn't afraid.  If there is actually something about reading the bible that will convert you, then why not read the bible?  If that is the way to God then I should be able to read it and see what my brother saw.  If, as a side effect, I was converted into Christianity and truly believed that Jesus is Lord, then so be it.  After all, if someone figured that the bible would show them the truth just by reading it, and denied reading because they don't want to be Christian, they'd be lying to themselves.

I was doing these things, trying to understand where he was coming from, trying to figure out where this all started, and never saw it.  Reading the bible seemed overly familiar and uninspiring.  The "science" articles John sent me were full of false premises and weren't very convincing.  

As John and I exchanged articles, I began to learn a lot about the debate between evolution and creationism.  I also learned a lot about the nature of religion.  In one of the last articles I sent him, I'd thought I really had something that might help convince him that he was wrong.  His response was something along the lines of, "That's interesting.  I can't explain that.  I'll have to pray about it."  

At that point I realized that there was no convincing left to do.  I had lost.  I realized that I had made the fatal mistake of assuming that religion was about science and facts.  It is about faith.  Even if I had presented him the most convincing piece of evidence and refuted all of his arguments, it wouldn't have mattered.  Maybe we'll have a time machine one day and figure it all out.

I apologized, stopped sending e-mails, and didn't know what to believe anymore.  

The new and big difference in my beliefs was that I stopped feeling indifferent about religion.  It dawned on me that we can't just believe what we want.  That doesn't make any sense.  How does that get us to any sort of truth?  We can't say, "Ehhh, I don't like that," and use that as justification for what we believe.

We're all stupid humans, not Gods.  If we believe whatever the hell we want then we're just believing in some made-up self-religion that doesn't exist.

What are we worshipping at that point?  Some thing in the air?  Do we just believe in God because we feel it?  Could those feelings come from some other source?

Do those feelings even mean anything?

Muslim terrorists feel that they're doing God's will.  How do we know that they're wrong?  How do we know that the Koran isn't the truth and God doesn't want us to commit a Jihad?  Just because we don't believe in violence?  What if God wants us to be violent?  How would we know?  How do we know that the terrorists are wrong?  If they are wrong, how did they get there psychologically?

When the weather is nice, some Christians on campus stand outside with a cross and scream in people's faces that they're going to hell.  Other groups prop up pictures of aborted fetuses in protest of abortion, while others just simply read aloud from the bible. Is this what God wants me to do? 

These are the very committed believers.  I can respect the point of view of a very committed believer because they are mostly consistent in their beliefs.  I don't agree with their beliefs at all, but at least they aren't cherry picking the parts that they like and throwing the rest in the trash.

I began to doubt any and all religions and start over from the beginning, before I believed in anything.

Most Americans are raised to believe in some god.  As they grow and change, those people at least believe that there is some kind of God.  Even when those people give up on all existing religion they typically say, "I don't know what the answer is, but there's gotta be something, right?"

Maybe.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate start with the question, "Is there something?" then take it from there?

That's where I was, and that's what I asked.

That's where I remain.

Is there something?

I have no idea.

I began reading whatever I could, claimed a biochemistry major, and began listening to a heap of podcasts.  I discovered a community of people known as Skeptics.  

Through the skeptics and skepticism I found a lot of information on all sides of many arguments relating to science.  I was able to find information about the arguments against evolution that my brother had introduced to me.  I was turned on to a whole new way of evaluating information.  I've made more of an effort to hear out other people's arguments and to research what I believe before I believe it.  Even then, after I have reached my conclusion, I've learned to be willing to change my mind if a compelling argument or evidence is presented.  That is one of the cornerstones of Skepticism and of Science.

In my findings I have found that the answer about God is:  no one knows.  

There is no one on this planet that I have encountered that has given me a reason to believe that there is or is not a god.  It seems reasonable that unless I find a reason to believe anything, I first want proof.  A negative cannot be proven.  No one can prove that there is no God, especially if that god doesn't follow the laws of nature.

It's a misconception that atheists believe that God has been disproved by science.  Atheists recognize that you can't prove a negative and hold out for sufficient evidence that something supernatural exists.  An atheist may have a higher standard of evidence than non-atheists, so maybe that's why we're viewed as closed minded.  We simply look for the most reasonable explanation to a situation.  If you ever encounter an atheist that says, "I know that there is no God.  I know absolutely positively without a doubt that when I die, I will just rot in the ground," then that atheist is either exaggerating, a liar, or just hasn't looked hard enough.  Not even Richard Dawkins makes that statement.

I consider myself to be about 85 to 90 percent agnostic.  Most atheists do.  Besides, "a-theist" just means "without theism."  That only means that we don't have a religion.  I guess the word "atheist" is just a quicker way of saying, "Oh me? I'm 85 to 90 percent agnostic, and I don't subscribe to any set of religious beliefs."

For me to believe in God, it would take some sort of event that could only be explained as God, with no other possible explanation.  It could not be a dream or something that my subconscious might tell me.  It could not be something that could be explained as a random coincidence.  It wouldn't have to be something that I could prove to others or repeat in a laboratory.  If I was brushing my teeth and my window flew open and lightning began burning holes in the wallpaper that spelled out the words "Believe In Me," and then God appeared and gave a brief explanation of himself that was consistent with one of the existing religions, I might be convinced.  First I would check my building to see if anyone was playing a trick.  Next, I would go to a doctor to make sure there was nothing wrong with my brain... and so on.  Only as a last resort would I accept a supernatural explanation over a natural explanation.

Over the last year or so I've had to struggle with the idea of being an atheist.  It isn't exactly a comforting belief to think that when you die, you're done.  You just rot in the ground and cease to function.  I now fear death more than I used to.

I have recently been able to find positives and become comfortable.  Realizing that the world is harsh and random is quite pleasant when you get used to it.  You figure out how to ground yourself as if you're standing in a creek as the water and dirt flow by.  When I was more spiritual I used to drive myself crazy trying to figure out the meaning of every situation:  why are we here, what am I supposed to be doing with my life, what did it mean when (fill in the blank) happened to me?  The true secret to life's answers is that there is no secret.  

Another pleasant facet about atheism is that I realize that I'm only going to be here once, then I'm done.  If I want to make a name for myself, influence others, or see the world, I shouldn't sit on my hands.  This is not one of many lives.  There will be no afterlife.  Whatever I do, it must be done in the next sixty years.  I find that motivating, and it makes me appreciate life, society, and my family so much more.

I now spend less time trying to figure out how the world is connected as a whole and just start accepting the random chaos.  Happiness can be found anywhere and everywhere.  We can be good to each other even if we don't have all of the answers.  There may not be the same security in atheism as a theistic belief, but that's what I like about it.  Atheism doesn't feel simple.  There are no specific rules, commandments, or judgments.  There is nothing but an infinite search for the truth, which I may never find.

And I'm okay with that.

:: Thank You For Reading ::

:: Coming Soon:  My Life As A Skeptic ::

Name That Logical Fallacy: ELVIS!

It's time for another round of Name That Logical Fallacy.

As usual, you may want to review the list of fallacies before beginning.  The idea is to pick out what is logically incorrect about the statement.

Sure, it's nerdy.  I don't care.

Ready, Set, Go!

Name that logical fallacy:

"Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong."

Time's up!

Now of course, this is just for fun.  In fact, fifty million Elvis fans may be right.

The implication of this statement is that Elvis has to be awesome because so many people think so.  The fallacy here is "Argumentum ad populum" or sometimes called "appeal to the majority."  However, just because a large number of people believe or think something doesn't make them correct.

I've never seen a ghost or an alien space craft, but so many people claim to have witnessed these things.  Since so many people have had these experiences we could try to conclude that aliens and ghosts must exist, but we would be committing the ad populum fallacy.

We would need to do a little more than that.  We should demand evidence.

The fact that so many people make these claims is a good reason to investigate.  There has actually been a lot of investigation resulting in very little compelling evidence for ghosts and aliens (We can get into these details some other time).  

SO!  In order for fifty million Elvis fans to be correct, further investigation would be needed.  Fifty million Elvis fans CAN be wrong after all.  

This is good news for us because it also means that fifty million Jonas Brothers fans can also be wrong.

::Thanks::

My Life As An Atheist -Part IV

This entry is a continuation of "My Life As An Atheist." To view part one, click here.

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About a year later, at the end of the year 2000, I graduated from music college, and began experimenting with religion. I was looking for guidance and trying to find out what happens to us when we die. I tried Scientology for a brief time, but quickly figured out that being a Scientologist was worse than being a Christian. (Read this blog entry for more details.)

I had an inclining interest in Buddhism and Eastern philosophies. I read some books and meditated, and became interested in Zen and Enlightenment.

It was very casual, but it was cool.

With any religion comes the goofy stories about the weird feats that some guy did thousands of years ago. I always threw those stories right out the window as soon as I heard them. Buddah once sat under a tree for 302,394,034,214 years... Cool. Who gives a crap?

I liked Buddhism because even though it had those stories it wasn't about the stories. It had a set of philosophies that made sense and that helped you feel better. It was about unifying yourself with your surroundings and feeling good so that you could go out and be good to others.

There were Zen centers and similar places around, but the only places I knew about charged money to go to the classes or to meditate there. I, being a broke guitar teacher, could not afford the fees. As a result I never attended.

That didn't matter to me. I saw it as more of a philosophy on life and a way for me to keep my head on my shoulders.

On my 25th birthday, I went back to college. This ate up most of my time and I didn't have a lot of time to think about religion or Buddhism. From time to time I would meditate and even took a Tai-Chi class for my gym credit. While I always respected Buddhism and its philosophy, I've never considered myself a full-blown Buddhist.

Trying to understand enlightenment, I would have discussions with my Tai-Chi teacher, who was a Taoist. He didn't even believe in enlightenment. A belief in enlightenment didn't matter in Buddhism anyway because a major paradox was that in order to reach enlightenment, you had to not care about or think about enlightenment. One of my books described enlightenment as no big deal. Once you reach enlightenment you just have to keep going anyway.

I guess it would be sort of like passing your freshman year of college.

Over time I developed a kind of "Personal Philosophy Religion" that many people typically have where they say things like, "I don't really know what to believe. Religions say and do all of these crazy things. Religious people scare me, so I don't know if I want to get involved. I feel like there's a god, but I don't know what that god is." I definitely didn't believe strongly in one religion, rather I believed in a mesh of all of the religions. All religions overlap somewhere, and wherever they overlapped, that's what I believed -don't kill, don't steal, be good to others. If there is some kind of afterlife, whatever god existed would understand the confusion about world religion and see that I was a good person.

:: Part V Coming Soon ::

My Life As An Atheist -Part III

This entry is a continuation of "My Life As An Atheist." To view part one, click here.

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After a year or two of selfish hatred for my parents, I calmed down.  I didn't call myself Satanic anymore, quit smoking pot, and just existed to live.  I became bored.

When I was in high school I knew that if there was any possibility of me going to college I had to try to get better grades.  I started working for my dad and studying whenever I could.  I was also in Confirmation classes which were kind of fun.  I put my early teenaged bull crap behind me.  I started to believe in God again, but I never believed in Catholicism ever again.

After I got confirmed I became indifferent.  I had never believed the bible to be 100 percent fact, and I barely believed that it was true.  I would go to church with my parents every week and not put up a fuss, mostly because it made them happy.  Sometimes the priest would say some interesting things about life, or I could let my eyes wander around the pews for cute girls.

On more than one occasion my mother had me bring my two younger brothers to church in their car.  Instead we ended up going out to get pizza and telling my mom that we went to church.  She didn't trust me and always asked what the sermon was about.  I always said that I didn't pay attention which was an easy out because it would have been true even if I did go to church.

I just didn't care.  I didn't believe in it enough to care about going all of the time.

When I was in my first years of college, my younger brother Paul went through a transformation.  Up to this point he had been kind of a smart ass and began hanging around with some sketchy friends.  We had similar music tastes and hung out from time to time.  I came home one night to find my youngest brother John sitting at the computer with a giant stack of CDs.

"Where did you get all of these CDs?"  I asked him, knowing that he was too young to afford all of them.

"I went into Paul's room to borrow a CD and found them in his trash can," he replied.

I thought that there must be some mistake.  Maybe they fell into his garbage can.  Sure enough, I went into Paul's bedroom to see that his walls were bare and all of his rock and metal posters were taken down and in the garbage with a few other CDs that John had missed.

We began to divide up the discs and make claims about who got what.  At the same time I was concerned about why his music paraphernalia was thrown out, so we waited up for him and were prepared to return his discs if he wanted them.

When Paul returned home, he walked by the computer room.

"Hey Paul," I stopped him, "we found all of your CDs and posters in the garbage.  What's the deal?"

"Well..." he started, "none of that music really promotes God, so I didn't want to keep them."

I paused for a second.

"UUuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeee okay..." I said back.

That was the end of our conversation.  I thought it was weird, but I didn't put up a fuss.  If he wanted to be a Jesus freak and give me all of his CDs that was okay with me.  At least I can still skip church with my younger brother John.

::Click Here For Part IV::

Conservatives & Pornography

I am not a Conservative, Christian, or even very right wing, but in my quest for critical thinking and fairness, I felt the need to write about this article.

ABC News recently published a story that pointed out that states that are typically politically Conservative have the highest consumption of pornography.

The article can be read in its entirety here:

"Porn In The USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers"

"Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage."

If you know even a little about statistics, taking a survey, or doing research, you will hopefully see the flaw here.  We can't know that the same people voting red and going to church are the same people downloading porn.  We know nothing about the individuals other than the state where they live or the apparent zip codes where they come from.  This is a pretty broad assumption considering we don't know the sex (although I have a guess), age, political affiliation other than what is implied, religious background, occupation, or anything else about the individuals subscribing to the porn.  I'm sure that not EVERYONE in these states is religious and/or Conservative, and making large jumps in logic and science is not only dishonest, but it is also prejudice.

* * * *

I was able to fish up this study and have a chance to skim it (here).  The results were analyzed by zip code, but when it mentioned politics, it only referred to the state level.  There were other correlations in this study as well.  For example, zip codes with young people and wealthy people were more likely to subscribe to a pornographic web sites.  

"...adult escort sites are more popular in 'blue' states that voted for Gore in 2004, while visitors from the “red” states that voted for Bush in 2004 are more likely to visit wife-swapping sites, adult webcams, and sites about voyeurism."

The purpose of this study was to establish correlations about adult entertainment to assist in constructing federal laws concerning usage of internet pornography.  Many different types of correlations were found, but the ABC article focused on trashing the Conservatives.  There were plenty of other correlations they could have picked.  Furthermore, the authors of the original study try to tie political affiliation to their statistics arbitrarily.

Why use the votes from the 2004 presidential election?  Why not actually talk to the people or poll them anonymously? 

Age was also mentioned as a factor, but how can you properly asses age based on zip code?  For a few areas, such as college neighborhoods, you can make an educated guess.

It drives me nuts when politically motivated cornballs try to spin these types of stories and data, just to paint the other party as hypocrites.  The baseline for this whole article assumes that just because you've voted right-wing that you love guns and Jesus and completely hate gays.  That is a cartoon character only held by a certain percentage of the population that attended The Blue Collar Comedy Tour.  This type of a stereotype ignores Libertarian, Constitution Party, or even swing voters.  Hell!  These people may not have even voted at all!

The world is not black and white and people should stop filling in the blanks once a label has been given to them.  Liberals are not always PC Socialists, most Christians oppose the "God Hates Fags" protesters, Republicans are not always dumb rednecks, and most atheists are not closed-minded.

My knowledge of statistical analysis is probably flawed, but this just seemed like an attempt to correlate internet usage with political affiliation and didn't do a very thorough job.

Now it's your turn to tell me why you think I'm an idiot.

Discuss.

My Life As An Atheist -Part II

This entry is a continuation of "My Life As An Atheist." To view part one, click here.

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When I was in 5th grade my parents had made the decision to have a trial separation.  I had no idea what that was.  All I remember is that my parents sat us all down at the dinner table, told us something important, and some of my older siblings started crying.  I was probably daydreaming about Super Mario Brothers or something because my mom later had to explain it to me again.

That night I helped my dad load his clothes into the car and watched him drive away.

It was a new chapter in figuring out what the hell life is all about.  Just a year earlier I had learned what it meant to have sex, now I was learning about separation, divorce, family counseling, and learning what it's like to live in two different houses in two different neighborhoods with two different churches.

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Three years after my parents separated, they moved back in with each other.  I was 14, hormonal, and a complete asshole.  I hated my parents.  It felt like they were playing games by getting back together.  Before this point I had pretty much thrown in the towel on their marriage and was waiting for the divorce to be final, and now, here they were, changing everything up again.

I didn't believe them anymore.  I gave up on trying to understand them or be nice to them, and I gave up on their God.  I became Satanic.

If you're not laughing, you should be.  There's only one thing funnier than a real Satanist, and that is a wannabe Satanist.

I didn't know what it meant to worship Satan, but that's what I told people that I did and what I believed.  I hated reading, so the Satanic bible was out of the question, and I was too lazy to look up any Satanic Churches in the city. BUT ONE DAY... I was gonna do it.

I would also tell people that God doesn't exist.  Only Satan.  I drew pentagrams and anarchy symbols on everything including a little study bible that I had, and drew over pictures of Jesus with fire and horns while making him tell the children around him to "DIE."

My parents and I were not getting along so well.  We'd argue all of the time.  One Sunday I got into an argument with my mom about going to church.  I didn't want to go anymore.

"I don't even believe in God!" I remember screaming at her.  The anger and pain in her face after I told her that was sad enough to make Vin Diesel cry.  She yelled at me and told me to stop arguing with her.

So I gave up and kept going to church.

My passive-aggressive means of getting back at my mom was to grow my hair long and go to church wearing my most offensive metal shirts with a dirty flannel shirt that was held together with duct tape.  If I had to go to church, I wanted to be an embarrassment to my mother.

At the same time period, during the middle of the week my mom would drop me off at Wednesday night church class.  I would bring a bag of weed and a pipe, and me and a friend would sneak off into the woods to smoke pot until class was over and our mothers came back for us.

::Click Here For Part III::