Religions

Many religious people believe that faith in God (or some other divine entity) makes for a better society -- more moral, law-abiding, productive, and so on.Well, like lots of beliefs, this one is highly questionable. In a recent issue of Newsweek, Sharon Begley wrote in her "(Un)wired for God" article:In brief, the number of American non-believers has doubled since 1990, a 2008 Pew survey found, and increased even more in some other advanced democracies. What's curious is not so much the overall decline of belief (which has caused the Vatican to lament the de-Christianization of Europe) as the pattern. In…

One of the pleasures of having a blog devoted to the praise of churchlessness is being exposed to the strange reasonings of religious true believers. If you're a regular reader of comments here, you know what I mean.I'm sincere about the "pleasure" part. Disagreements are part of the spice of life. If everybody thought the same way, that'd be horribly boring. But I enjoy creative, strong, substantial arguments in favor of religiosity (or against science and rationality). After almost five years of hearing the same platitudinous, weak, flimsy arguments, I frequently start reading a fundamentalist's comment and think, "Oh no,…

Hey, it's a pleasant Oregon summer evening. I've got a full cup of hot organic coffee sitting next to my laptop. Seems like a good time to come up with some Indisputable Churchless Truths."Indisputable" is the caffeine speaking. I'm pretty sure that these truths will be disputed. In fact, I hope they are. After all, they're churchless truths. Which means, they're open to debate, discussion, disputation. If you don't agree with any of them, or want to add a truth, comment away. Just have a good reason. That said, you'll note that I don't supply reasons for the truthfulness of…

Thanks to Pharyngula I learned about The Story of Suzie, a clever video look at how religion warps how people relate to reality.

Here's a passionate answer to those who ask, "What's wrong with letting religious people believe anything they want?"Because innocent children die! Religion is dangerous! It makes people act like idiots!Case closed. Religion is guilty.But there still will be a trial here in Oregon, where prosecutors have charged Carl and Raylene Worthington with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month old daughter, Ava.I hope they punish these horrible parents as harshly as the law allows. Which is more than six years in prison. Not enough, but hopefully that will discourage other religious fundamentalists from forcing innocent children to…

When I showed my wife, Laurel, what book I'd bought at the wonderful Paulina Springs Book Company in Sisters, Oregon, she said, "Gosh, you've become as enthusiastic a believer in atheism as you were a believer in what you believed before."Well, that's a lot of "beliefs" in one sentence. And I have to disagree with one of them, because I don't consider that I believe in atheism.Rather, to me atheism is the default position that everyone should accept, absent demonstrable evidence for theism. It is the absence of a belief in God, just as aunicornism is what we could term…

I've always wanted to talk about deconstruction in a blog post. (The philosophical variety, not the demolition kind.) My only minor problem -- which shouldn't ever stop a blogger -- is that I knew next to nothing about the subject.But now I've read all 168 pages of "Deconstruction for Beginners," a terrific book. One of it's appealing points is that it takes a comic book style to deciphering Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction. And has quite a bit of talk about sex. Including drawings of naked women. This stuff isn't gratutious, as it contributes to understanding how deconstruction works…

Good news. We need counterweights to this country's out-of-balance religiosity.

Oneness. Unity. Enlightenment. Perfection. Salvation. These are abstractions. Nobody ever has seen, touched, heard, tasted, or smelled them. They're conceptions, but religious believers often take them to be more real than here-and-now reality. "The Guru Papers," which I'm enjoying a lot, says:The concept of oneness is an abstraction created by thought as a way of framing and attempting to describe the mystical experience. Insofar as Oneness is placed in a higher realm or plane than the world of separation and multiplicity (the Many), this is done by abstracting out and reifying a presumed quality or essence from life, and making…

Excellent news: a survey has found that the ranks of faithless, irreligious, and pagan people are growing rapidly in the United States. "nones"—people claiming no religion—constitute the only "religious" tradition that's growing in all 50 statesKeep not-believing, churchless brothers and sisters. We are overcoming!The only depressing part of the survey findings for me was how Oregon has slipped over the past 18 years. I feel like I should have done more to keep up my state's godless credentials. This nifty USA Today chart shows that back in 1990 Oregon was #1 in No Religion. Now look at us in 2008.…

Some days the financial meltdown has me feeling like our stock market portfolio -- trashed. In an effort to get some benefit from the holy shit! that bursts forth every time I take a peek at our Schwab account (my soma hasn't shown up yet), I'll attempt to suck some cosmic meaning out of the dry rind of increasingly bad economic news.What's been striking me is how similar a rapid decline in net worth and a sudden loss of religious faith can feel. Having experienced both, I can say that the defining emotional characteristic of each (for me, at least)…

Sometimes it's fine to tell a lie. Everyone does so at one time or another. But when lying is a permanent condition, a way of life, it eats away at the foundation that supports each of us.Reality.This is the big problem with religiosity -- lying. Believers lie continually. Whenever they say some bit of dogma is true, knowing that they don't know such to be the case, the best word to call this isn't faith, but lying.For many years I did this myself. I gave talks, wrote books, had conversations with people, all the while proclaiming that this-and-that was the…

There's no reason religious talks shouldn't be subjected to the same critical standards as any other piece of writing. So here's my take on Rick Warren's invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration last Tuesday.I'm viewing what Warren wrote and spoke as non-fiction. From his point of view. Naturally I see religiosity in general, and Christianity in particular, as being decidedly fictional. But Warren, and billions of like-minded believers, consider what he said to be gospel truth. Most of it, at least, depending on what brand of Christianity someone subscribes to. So let's see how the invocation stacks up against reality. My…

Here's a miracle: Bill Maher's anti-religion movie, Religulous, got us out of our Netflix habit and into a real movie theatre. Ensconced in Salem Cinema's alternative artsy atmosphere, munching on parmesan cheese-drenched popcorn and sipping a vanilla Italian soda, my wife and I relished Maher's skewering of the ridiculous side of religiosity. You can read about the flick on Wikipedia, which includes a summary of reviews good and bad. And You Tube has an interview with Maher that reflects the flavor of his movie. I enjoyed Maher's preaching the power and glory of the gospel "I don't know." For me,…

Sometimes you hear, "He's a left brain person" or "Creativity comes from the right brain." Neuroscience is a lot more complicated than that, but it's still fascinating to read descriptions of the specialized functions in the two sides of the brain. Such as Michael Gazzaniga's "Spheres of Influence" in the June/July issue of Scientific American Mind. He describes research on split-brain patients where the major connection between the two hemispheres, the corpus collusum, is severed in order to treat intractable epilepsy. This allowed Gazzaniga and his collegues to study how the two hemispheres dealt with a problem that has a…

I just got an email from someone who wanted to let me know about the dangerous immoralities of cults. He said this story left him speechless. Me too. Except I wanted to use a few words to write this post. The next time someone asks you, "Why are you so down on religion?" say "Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because true believers make their children eat their own flesh." Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg is right: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing…

There's long-term hope for America, churchless-wise, if 18 year olds like Laci (a.k.a. "gogreen18") are in plentiful supply. I learned about Laci via a blog post that featured her "Why atheists care about YOUR religion" You Tube video. She lays out the case against religion persuasively in five entertaining minutes. Have a watch (guys, do your best to keep looking in her eyes – you'll fail, as I did, but try just for the futile fun of it). I also enjoyed Laci's "I'm going to hell," in no small part because I've also condemned myself to hell (for a free…

Life is full of problems. But is life itself a problem? At the moment I feel like my wife and I have more than our usual quota of difficulties to deal with. Our septic system is acting up, not draining as it should. The dog had diarrhea last night, with a result best left undescribed. Jury duty calls me tomorrow morning at a time much earlier than I usually function. My dentist gave me a referral to an endodontist for a possible gum graft, which hopefully sounds worse than it actually is. No doubt about it: life, at times, is…