Religions

Way to go, Mr. Premanand. You're sticking with your non-faith and irreligion even though you're critically ill. I applauded your statement from a hospital bed in Podanur, India -- making clear that no, you're not having a death bed conversion to godliness. Here's an excerpt:I wish to clarify that as on today the twentieth of September, 2009 I remain a staunch rationalist and wish to place on record the following:a. I continue to be a rationalist of full conviction.b. I do not believe in any supernatural power. All the powers that we encounter are in the realm of nature and…

Thanks to science blogger P.Z. Myers, I've read some advice for atheists from a Christian who wants unbelievers to be nicer and more reasonable. Not surprisingly, the advice isn't reasonable. What a shock -- nonsense coming from someone religious. I love Myers' feisty style. He makes me seem like a churchless wuss. 1. Stop being so smug.Make me.Look, you start an argument, you don't get to whine at your opponent to be humble about his ideas before you've even taken a stab at criticizing them. Show me a reason not to be smug about atheism, and reason, and science, and the…

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)…