Religion is basically a submissive and militant form of mental-slavery which was an instinctual and primordial state of mind that became beneficial for our Darwinian survival. Today it is simply a consolation and reassurance for people who are basically afraid of not knowing what will happen to them after they die. Like what the Knight confesses to Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal: “We must make an idol of our fear, and call it God.”
Because of such fears people need to constantly delude themselves with supernatural falsehoods, since without such delusions the grim realities of the natural world would be too unbearable for them to accept. I don’t believe in God simply for the fact that there is no substantial evidence that proves the existence of any supernatural deity.
Like the Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins famously states in his very popular book ‘The God Delusion,’ “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” I’d also like to add a tyrannical dictator who completely endorses both slavery and the stoning to death of women, while unfairly convicting one of thought crime while asleep, and punishing them for petty acts such as masturbation and blaspheme.
With such historical atrocities such as the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Roman Persecution of Christians, the Crusades, the sexual abuse scandal of the Catholic church, and the Islamic Jihads, God and Religion are an unbeatable team; as they’ve shown to break all records when it comes to oppression and bloodshed. These heinous events should be enough for any sane and ethical person to turn away from the confines of religion, especially females and African Americans. In a recent study African American women ironically were among the most religious groups in the country. You seriously can’t make this stuff up.
If there really is a permanent, all-around the clock divine supervision, who governed, controlled and supervised everything I did, thought or said, I would find that concept ghastly and extremely wicked. I also find ones reward of heaven not very encouraging. I can admit, I do like the notion of my soul being reunited with all my friends and loved ones. But the concept of going to a permanent place and constantly thanking, praising and groveling at the feet of a God for all eternity seems less like a heaven and more like a celestial North Korea. Like the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
Religion and blind faith is a direct threat to the survival of human civilization. It is a submissive and obedient wish to be a slave and I emancipate myself from such slavery. I don’t wish to be owned by anyone. Why does God have the audacity to think he should have ownership rights to a human being? I understand that the Bible calls for slavery as it calls for genocide but I choose to not be mentally bonded by such supernatural chains. Religion deprives people to independently think for themselves and ancient myths belittle the grand and magnificent mysteries of the universe. It is a tragedy to base your entire life and how you live upon a belief system for which there is absolutely no evidence, only because it brings you a false comfort.
If you really take the time out and read the bible you’ll discover that “it is a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, which was repeatedly composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.” Add to that all the numerous literary inconsistencies and contradictions within its various teachings all throughout both the old and new testament. And yet still, even today, people continue to remain blindly loyal to their holy book.
We all have our blind spots, and we all have those weak-minded areas in which our much beloved rationality selfishly takes a back seat to emotion, prejudice, and personal interest. I don’t care what people personally believe in. When it comes to scientific evidence I only care about what is true. Personal opinion which is not backed up by evidence should be allowed to be discredited. Why should religious belief be uniquely immune for open criticism? Like the great author and orator Christopher Hitchens once wrote: “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
I want to get two common misconceptions out of the way that many creationists constantly ask Atheists to discredit science. The first is the scientific term ‘theory.’ “The way that scientists use the word ‘theory’ within our field is a little different than how it is commonly used in the lay public,” said Jaime Tanner, a professor of biology at Marlboro College. “Most people use the word ‘theory’ to mean an idea or hunch that someone has, but in science the word ‘theory’ refers to the way that we interpret facts.”
The second misconception is one of the most asked questions from creationists who are completely ignorant to evolutionary biology: “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” Well, let me quickly clear this up. We (homo sapiens) are not descendants of monkeys (chimpanzees). We’re both descendants of common ancestors from about 6 million years ago. That common ancestor than produced two branches, one of them went to us humans the other one went to chimpanzees, branching further to produce Bonobo’s and common chimpanzee’s. We are all cousins; we are not descendants from chimpanzees.
It’s astonishing that there are highly intelligent and educated men and women of the 21st century, completely logical in almost everything they do in their day to day lives, who literally believe in the fairy tales of Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, walking on water, a virgin birth, a man rising from the dead and a talking snake. How can this possibly be? I was perplexed by this and I decided to do some research on the subject.
What I discovered is that intelligence is in itself compartmental. Look at many of history’s greatest thinkers who were masters at their own field of expertise but complete disasters in their personal life. They could make brilliant discoveries like the theory of relativity but could not wrap their heads around common sense decision making or the intricacies of human social interaction.
Intelligent people can also believe very irrational things if you indoctrinate them at a young enough age. Much of this involves cognitive dissonance. For example, have you ever seen a tree that’s grown up around a fence post, wrapping itself around it as if it is a part of the tree itself? That happens when the post was there before the tree even sprouted. If you can instill a belief structure in a developing mind early enough, all the reasoning powers like intelligence and education will develop around those illogical beliefs in such a way as to leave them undisturbed.
Religion, especially Christianity and Islam also teaches us to distrust ourselves. The notion of human sin and guilt is driven in us before we even learn to read and write. We are taught at an early age that human reasoning cannot be trusted. With a narrative like that, is it any wonder that Christians and Muslims grow up suspicious and distrustful of the human mind? We were constantly taught to distrust our own instinctual intellects even within those subcultures which otherwise value science, education, and exploration.
Evolution deniers continue to ask evolutionary scientists: “Where is the evidence?” Even if one clearly explains that the evidence can be found in various fossils (just take a trip to the Smithsonian museum), and can be discovered if they open an elementary textbook on Biology (of Natural Selection and DNA), evolutionary deniers will simply disregard it.
When you look at Charles Darwin’s the theory of natural selection, or read his science literature book (The Origin of Species), what you will discover is a beautifully arranged hierarchical pattern in which our DNA is extremely close to a chimpanzee and slightly more distant from monkeys, rats and lizards. Like Charles Darwin famously said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
And if that isn’t enough to convince a evolution denier, just tell them that their body is in its own way a museum of evolutionary evidence. Look closely and you’ll see parts of your body that are there, not because you need them, but because your animal ancestors did. No longer serving their previous function but not costly enough to have disappeared, these remnants of our deep history only make sense within the framework of evolution by natural selection.
You’ve got a vestigial muscle in your forearm which is connected to the palmaris longus, a leftover muscle that around 10 to 15 percent of people are missing, which was used among our ancestors who used their forelimbs to scramble around through tress.
There are three other leftover muscles that are attached to the outer ear. We can’t get much movement out of these muscles anymore, but they were beneficial for our mammal ancestors who moved them around to locate the sources of sound.
Another futile effort by our vestigial body parts is when we get goosebumps. When we’re cold, tiny muscles attached to our body hairs pull them up which causes the surrounding skin to form a bump. For our furry mammal relatives, the raised hair increased the amount of space for insulation helping them stay warm during the winter.
And finally there’s our tail. At the end of our spine are a set of fused vertebrae’s called the tail bone which is what is left of our ancestor’s tails. Everyone of us had a tail at one point when we were early human embryos. In many other animals it continues to develop into a full tail, but with humans and of apes the tail cells begin to die inside the embryo a few weeks after they appear. Very rarely a mutation allows a human baby to be born with a true vestigial tail.
It’s frightening that Americans have such narrow-minded arrogance towards science and evolution, while some even like to think they know more than an evolutionary biologist does. It’s also extremely disrespectful that some religious fundamentalists will publicly speak out and denounce evolutionary scientists, while even having the nerve to question their professional motives and moral integrity.
I like using the analogy of a car mechanic: The average customer probably doesn’t know the technical intricacies of how a car engine runs. But they naturally put their complete trust and confidence in their mechanic because they understand that the mechanic’s expertise specializes in knowing such things. No one ever seems to denounce or personally criticize the mechanic’s knowledge and experience within his profession. And yet when it comes to scientists many people in the general population will criticize and condemn all the hard effort and the many extraordinary discoveries that scientists have achieved, simply because of the fact that these scientific discoveries contradict with their own personal beliefs.
Evolution isn’t the only scientific area that much of the public seems to be uninformed about. Many are equally uninformed when it also comes to climate change, homeopathy and vaccinations. The word ‘faith’ is one of the most dangerous words to have ever been linguistically formed and conceived within the grammar of the English language. Faith is the great cop-out, the elephant in the room, the one socially acceptable excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of common sense. Why is blind faith, believing in something without evidence, considered a good thing?
I remember attending bible study when I was a child and being forcibly indoctrinated in listening to various biblical stories. I believed what I was hearing, because what child would think that an adult (especially an authority figure) would be spewing me lies? It wasn’t until I got older and began to use critical thinking when I started to question what I was always coached to believe.
“Where is the hard scientific evidence that any of these biblical stories and events actually historically occurred?”
“If God does exist why would he take great pains to conceal himself?”
“Why must God deviously and cruelly hide in a midst of vague promises and invisible miracles?”
“I happen to be brought into the christian religion. If I had been brought up in Iran I’d be a Muslim. If I had been brought up in India I’d be a Hindu. If I was brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings I would be believing in Thor. If I been brought up in classical Greece I would be believing in Zues. What particular reason should I arrogantly think the Judeo-Christian God, in which by the sheerest accident I happen to be brought up in, just so happens to be the correct one?”
“What will become to those who live in other parts of the world who have never heard of or gotten the opportunity to learn of the Christian faith? Will they be sent to an eternal hell even though their lack of a christian education was beyond their control?”
God’s ethical ways of doing things didn’t exactly parallel my own humanistic morality, reasoning and integrity. This ultimately led me down a faithless path and I began losing my christian belief system, making me as of this present day officially and proudly an Atheist. Richard Dawkins once stated: “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
It’s human nature to ask oneself, “Why are we here, or why does life exist?” Richard Dawkins answered it best: “Why does anyone think they have any right to ask such a question? It’s not a meaningful question, unless you specify the kind of answer you’re expecting. For scientists it is very easy to answer why a bird has wings for example. They can do that in Darwinian terms. But if you say however, ‘Why do mountains exist?’ Well, there are some questions which simply don’t deserve an answer. You could give an answer to it by its geological processes which give rise to mountains. But that’s not the kind of answer people want. They want the ‘purpose’ of mountains or ‘why’ do mountains exist, a sort of philosophical answer. Such an abstract question is silly, meaningless and doesn’t deserve an answer. The mere fact that you could ask or frame a question in the English language doesn’t mean it’s entitled to an answer. For example, if I ask you: ‘What is the color of jealousy?’ It’s a perfectly grammatical English sentence, but it’s not a question that deserves a educated answer. The correct answer would be, ‘Don’t ask silly questions.’”
I’m astounded on how much of our American population not only believe in a cosmic deity, but also the irrational laws of what many call ‘the supernatural’. The world is full of various cultures and traditions that believe in superstitious nonsense, such as ghosts, miracles, spirit possessions, astrology, psychics, angels, tarot cards, spells, fate, reincarnation, black magic, near-death experiences, faith healers and the demonic powers of the Ouija Board. In most cases such nonsensical beliefs can seem quite harmless, but for people to actually disregard the physical laws of the natural world, that kind of thinking can lead to irrational and dangerous repercussions.
Unfortunately a lack of a proper scientific education in the school system and a desperate need to hold onto historical customs, practices and rituals, could be a large reason why superstitions continue to prosper. Our mainstream society also perpetuates these supernatural beliefs, especially within the world of the arts, including media and celebrity pop-culture. Three out of four Americans believe in the world of both the supernatural and paranormal, while pseudo-science self-help guides outnumber science books three to one. Lately there have been a string of successful christian movies, being used not only as religious propaganda, but a recruiting tool to enlist newcomers into the christian faith.
The public’s gullibility in the supernatural is big business for psychic readers, especially the likes of Peter Popoff, Sylvia Browne, Uri Geller and Theresa Caputo. All psychics who supposedly communicate to the dead are frauds, scam artists and complete charlatans who make a profit simply by exploiting the grief and suffering of vulnerable people. Psychics can become damaging to some people, stopping those from being able to let go after they lose somebody that they love, while also not allowing them to progress, move forward, and have some kind of closure. To achieve the illusion that psychics can speak to the diseased, they basically use a set of techniques called ‘cold reading’ which implies that the reader knows much more about the person than the reader actually does. It’s simply a game of 20 questions.
The paranormal debunker and former magician James Randi decided to do an investigation involving the renowned psychic John Edwards. Randi was sent a videotape of one of John Edward’s supposed psychic readings and closely evaluated the first 45 seconds of the tape. What he discovered was that John Edwards took 45 seconds to make 23 quick guesses (which is more than 1 guess every 2 seconds). 20 of these guesses were misses (wrong) and only three were hits (right). That’s 87 percent wrong! Just imagine if a kid came home with 13 out of 100 on a test paper. I doubt the parent’s would be pleased.
But the three that John Edwards got right was apparently enough for the man he was reading, as the man began to sob uncontrollably while his wife tenderly embraced him. Randi explains that most people when listening to a psychic tend to illogically tune out and disregard the amount of wrong guesses, and will focus specifically on the few they just so happen to get right. With those three right hits Randi states that, “John Edwards already proved to this man in just 45 seconds that he successfully contacted the spirit of his deceased father.” So what were the three things that John Edward’s got correct out of the 23?
1. This man was dead.
2. He’s an older man.
3. There’s a younger man connection with him (the man he was reading).
These were the only three things that John Edward’s got right. He had nothing significant to tell this man except for obviously banal and clique assertions and yet this man was reduced to tears all in a matter of seconds. That’s how easy it is to be a cold reader. Mystical beliefs that don’t require any shred of scientific evidence or rational thought is dangerous and is a detrimental mindset which will prevent our human species from progressing and moving forward.
In the 1980’s James Randi discredited a man named Peter Popoff, an American televangelist, fraudulent faith healer, and self-proclaimed prophet. Popoff conducted revival meetings and hosted a nationally televised program, during which he performed seemingly miraculous cures on audience members. At the height of his popularity, Popoff would accurately announce home addresses and specific illnesses of audience members during his healing sermons, a feat that he implied was due to divine revelation and God-given ability. James Randi became immediately suspicious and decided to do a thorough investigation. And so with the use of computerized radio scanners Randi discovered Popoff was using electronic transmissions to receive his information. Popoff’s wife, Elizabeth, was using a wireless radio transmitter to broadcast information that she and her aides had pulled from prayer request cards filled out by audience members before the show. Popoff received the transmissions via an in-ear receiver and repeated the information to astonished audience members. After Randi exposed Popoff, his ministry’s viewer ratings and donations declined significantly and in September 1987 he declared bankruptcy.
Out of all the supernatural beliefs and superstitions I can probably find the concept of apparitions (Ghosts) to be the most plausible. When I was a teenager I actually believed I had seen a ghost. I was outside one day when I casually looked up at my kitchen window and saw a woman with a stoic face piercing at me from inside my kitchen. Of course when I was able to build enough courage to walk into the house the apparition was obviously no longer there.
And yet just that one incident made me absolutely convinced ghosts existed and all the way up until my early 20’s I remained a strong believer in the paranormal. It wasn’t until I began studying the fundamental laws of both science and the natural world when the first spark of skepticism and disbelieve began to officially arise. Ghost sightings are cognitive and result in part from the power of suggestion. If you think you might see a spirit while entering an empty house at night, you’re more likely to perceive an experience. This sensed presence, or seeing a shade or shadow from the corner of your eye, usually occurs to individuals who have become isolated in an extreme or unusual environment, often when high levels of stress are involved.
The existence of ghosts not only remains highly improbable but there is absolutely no substantial evidence to back up its superstitious claims. The power of the brain is complex, and at times can be quite persuasive as tangible evidence. And yet we know the brain is extremely flawed, defective and at times deceiving, and we shouldn’t rely on it as strongly as we think we should. This is probably why eyewitness accounts has been known, all too often, to be shockingly inaccurate and are considered very unreliable in a court of law.
There are also various contradictions inherent in the ideas about ghosts. For example, are ghost’s material or not? Either they can move through solid objects without disturbing them, or they can slam doors shut and throw objects across the room. Logically and physically, it’s one or the other. If ghosts are human souls, why do they appear clothed and with inanimate objects like hats, canes and dresses; and how can they physically walk or ride inside ghost trains, cars and carriages without falling through the floor? One interesting tidbit: Why do the media always advertise the intentions of supernatural entities as being both threatening and frightening? Personally I would be ecstatic to witness a real-life ghost encounter, because that would finally be the definitive prove that I would need that an afterlife truly does exist after I pass.
Another reason why I am skeptical of ghost’s existence is because after all this time why haven’t we gotten even one clear photo or shot of a ghost on camera? Just think about how long TV and movie cameras have now been around, and the fact that almost everyone in the developed world (and many in the developing world) has been walking around for several years now with a high quality video camera (on their cell phone) or in their pocket. If there were ghosts, poltergeists, Big foot and aliens running around as much as anecdotal evidence suggests, we would surely have thousands of hours of convincing footage to view. We have none whatsoever. We have to learn to be skeptical, especially with ourselves. Like I stated, the brain is a powerful organ and Cognitive Suggestion can be extremely convincing.
We would like to believe that in the 21st century science, rationality and critical thinking would finally have superseded such delusional Bronze Age myths. Still, there are people today who continue to rely on faith healing, the power of prayer, demon possession and exorcisms. Because of such irresponsible and dangerously reckless behavior, many innocent children become the unfortunate victims of misidentified mental disorders, child negligence, psychological abuse, religious hysteria and reckless homicide.
In 1975 a German woman named Anneliese Michel underwent Catholic exorcism rites and died the next year. Later investigation determined that her parents and the priests responsible were charged with negligent homicide. It has been scientifically proven that demonic possession is various types of mental illness and neurological disorders including schizophrenia, epileptic seizures or multiple personality disorder. This specific case attracted media and public attention because of the Catholic Church’s denial of proper medical treatment and of their radical decision to employ the 400-year-old ritual of exorcism, something that had been rarely seen since the 18th Century.
I find the power of prayer to have no rational basis whatsoever. It is simply a cognitive form of meditation or mental hypnosis that gives one neurological comfort. If prayer really does work like many religious people claim it does, then go ahead and pray away. But doesn’t God supposedly have a divine plan? If the thing some people want isn’t in God’s divine plan isn’t it rather arrogant to believe he will suddenly change his divine plan just for you? And if he chooses to not answer your prayer because it isn’t part of his divine plan, than why bother praying in the first place? Some religious believers sincerely claim that they share a close and personal relationship with the large surveillance camera in the sky. Some even acknowledge to have had actual back and forth conversations with their deity. In many cases, especially with the disturbing use of speaking in tongues, this behavior could be an early indicator of schizophrenia or serious mental illness.
As harmless as prayer can be, some fanatical Christians rely so deeply in the power of prayer, that it can have dangerous, if not, fatal consequences. Some Christian’s choose to not call on doctors, but rely solely upon prayer for healing. A few years back a fundamental Christian couple’s 7-month-old son Brandon died from dehydration and pneumonia when his parents decided to pray for him to get better rather than seek medical attention. At the time, the couple was already on a 10-year probation for their 2-year-old son Kent’s similar death years earlier. The terms of their probation required them to seek medical attention any time one of their seven surviving children got sick. They were found guilty of the third-degree murder of their son. How could a mother and a father refuse proper medical treatment for their terminally ill child? I can’t give an answer for that, but Richard Dawkins expressed a profound quote that forever stuck with me: “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
When it comes to God he seems to be very concerned about how people live their lives. But he seems extra concerned about what they do between the sheets. When you look at the roots of sexual morality through Darwinian eyes you see that sexual lust is not inherently sinful, these impulses are natural and universal, and all mammals have evolved ways to manage them. The sex psychologist Darrel Ray scoured the evidence about sex and religion. Through an online survey he interrogated over 14,000 people who have left their churches about their sex life before and after religion. He asked them four questions.
1. When did you start masturbating?
2. When did you start looking at pornography?
3. When did you start to give or receive oral sex?
4. When did you start having sexual intercourse?
He then looked at those people who were most religious against those people who were least religious. And what he found was that there was almost no difference. He did see that the older religious people got, the more they used pornography. And they actually succeed non religious people by 5 or 10 percent with the use of pornography. But whether your religious or not, biology happens. You’re going to start masturbating; you’re going to start having sex. But what’s the difference? Guilt. Religious people feel a lot of guilt about the premarital sex they’re having or about the masturbation they started. And they don’t know what to do with it. But there really is no difference in the sexual behavior that religious people and non religious people indulge in. The only difference is the guilt they feel. And religions preach against pornography, preach against masturbation, preach against premarital sex, and it does no good.
The highest use of pornography in the United States is in Utah and Mississippi, which is in the heart of the Bible Belt. So these are things churches preach against and yet their members are using it even more than secular people do. Darrel Ray stated that when he gives his talks on sex he asks people in the audience how many of them masturbate. When it’s a secular audience about 90 percent raise their hand. When he would ask that same question to a religious audience nobody will raise their hand. But we know somewhere in the neighborhood 95 percent of men masturbate and 75 percent of females masturbate. So if no one in the religious audience is raising their hand, that tells us they’re lying. Religious people lie. So the extraordinary thing is not only does religion fail to stop people from sinning, it also forces them to live a lie.
Astrology can be incredibly pervasive because just about everyone has been indoctrinated in the alleged character of their star sign. Astrology is a primitive, superstitious, 2nd century AD belief system made up throughout the centuries as elaborate pseudo science. It arrogantly makes humans the focus point of the universe as the movement of the planets is supposed to signify petty developments in a person’s career or love life. Today a full quarter of the population tend to believe in astrology despite the discovery of new planets and despite a shift in the earths rotational axis that has thrown Zodiac’s out by 23 degrees. I do not understand the attraction of newspaper horoscopes, and yet even still, day in and day out astrological horoscopes get far more newspaper columns then science.
When it comes to the foolish gullibility of astrology, psychologists have identified what is known as the Barnum Effect. This effect is where people tend to believe statements that are accurate for them personally, when in fact they are general enough to apply to anyone. Scientists actually have conducted a trial where they selected 20 people at random and asked them to read that week’s horoscope for Capricorn, but as a test they told them it applied to their own star sign. Astrologists say that this should fit just Capricorn and not the rest. But what happened was that the same number of people agreed the horoscope was accurate for them as disagreed; as similar results are found in proper large scale experiments. Technically all of but one of their group should have disagreed, namely their only Capricorn.
Astrology is relatively harmless, but if you stand back and seriously think of the simplistic concept of astrology, it is basically lazy stereotyping. How would we react if a newspaper published a daily column that read: “Germans, it is in your nature to be hardworking.” Or, “Chinese, your business successes will serve you well.” It seems that astrology discriminates individuals and divides humanity up in exclusive groups.
Throughout the last century scientific medicine came to understand how germs cause disease. We learned to wash our hands, sterilize surgeries and created vaccines, antibiotics and drugs that are proven to work. Life expectancy doubled in 50 years. Today science is being treated with suspicion and the medical world is challenged by irrational superstitious belief and a new form called alternative health. Unproven scientific quackery is now becoming mainstream among the public as a survey reveals a third of us spend 1.6 billion dollars a year on therapeutic health remedies, which, as far as the evidence can show, don’t work. If any remedy is tested under controlled trials and scientific conditions and proved to be effective it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn’t been tested or it has failed its tests.
People pay to want unproven potions and spells, and alternate medical lobbying is being embedded in our natural health service. The hottest alternative health fad is doing a booming trade in high street pharmacies and 500 million people world-wide claim to use it. Homeopathy is one of the more popular of the pseudo-science being used today. It was dreamed up in the late 18th century as a way of boosting the body’s vitals. Unlike a vaccine which introduces the diminished form of a virus into the body in order to provoke its immune system to kill a particular disease, homeopathy makes the unfounded claim that a dilute solution of water can successfully cure diseases, even though various tests have proved it to be untrue.
There are also professional faith healers who make millions off patients including those with terminal diseases, and even though they are allowed to legally open and hold a medical practice, rarely any of these faith healers, if any, even went to medical school. Some healers even hijack scientific and medical terms for their own use, like ‘quantum mechanics’ for example, and instead of using these terms accurately, they use them poetically or as a sort of metaphor, even though the words them self have nothing to do with either quantum mechanics or physics at all. This is basically known by most scientists as scientific mumbo jumbo, or gobbledygook, which pseudo scientists deliberately use on their patients, because using such a complex scientific language that a patient wouldn’t understand makes them ultimately sound more legitimate.
The internet and social media is revolutionizing how we use and consume new information. But the impersonal algorithms of internet search engines and the wide spread of social media information do not weed out robust evidence from unsourced, unscholarly and uncollaborated assertion. In the virtual sector of the World Wide Web a lot of nasty lies can circulate as truth among the blog community of paranoid, racist and religion fundamentalists. Now such people can find each other anywhere in the world instantly, whipping up scares, mass hysteria, and reinforcing their paranoia and delusions.
As evidence is devalued, even medical progress has become a target, as the web can become a world of private hunches and no respect for evidence. When one report was widely discredited wrongly linking MMR vaccines to autism, an innuendo circulated that the scientific establishment was conspiring to risk our children’s health. It led to hundreds of thousands of parents failing to vaccine their own children from the threat of measles, a serious disease in Afghanistan that kills 35,000 people a year.
Why are humans so self-important? Why are human’s so arrogant as to believe a supernatural deity would come down and ‘bless’ them, suggesting that they were specifically chosen over everyone else, even the millions less fortunate, to personally reward them? Why are we so conceited as to think we are uniquely different and distinctly special? Almost all of us would like to believe we each have a specific purpose on this planet and a meticulously set plan which is deliberately laid out by God. I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but homosapian’s aren’t any more special than the other 8.7 million species that are living on this planet. Just do the arithmetic: Planet Earth has existed for four and a half billion years. Human beings have only been on this planet for 100 to 200 thousand years. Over 99 percent of species that has ever existed have already gone extinct, while one more species becomes extinct at a rate of 25 a day. Our planet already has lived through five mass extinctions and biologists believe that we at the moment are witnessing the sixth.
Like comedian George Carlin once said, “When the time comes, the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas”. The planet will still be here long after the human species fades out into existence and we will become just another evolutionary mutation. And like prior, the planet will heal itself. And the planet will cleanse itself. And such as the dinosaurs before us, something new will arise and exist temporarily. So when you really think hard about it, we are all petty and insignificant in the large scope of things. If believing you are special gives you a sense of solace and consolation than all the better. But just because such self-absorbed feelings are reassuring and comforting doesn’t necessarily make it true. Because the universe doesn’t owe us a sense of hope.
Having the impression that we exist in a supernatural reality has us believe we are in control of our own life. It gives us a comforting feeling of purpose. And we like to believe there is a deliberate intention to things that happen and that it isn’t just the randomness of nature. Because the thought of a supernatural organizing force at work in such a bewildering and complex world gives us a more comforting feeling of meaning and significance. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
Our Darwinian minds tends to look for patterns within the randomness of nature because they like to create a cause and effect to things. All wild animals look for patterns whether when it’s hunting for food or trying to avoid predators. This primal mindset was inherited from our primitive ancestors and has been necessary for our survival for hundreds of thousands of years. But the problem with this fabricated meaning is that we can instinctively fail to detect patterns when there is some or we can seem to detect patterns when there isn’t any. Today, many who believe in this mystical pattern that they impose on reality call themselves spiritual. But that’s not spiritualism. That’s superstition.
Sixty years ago the American psychologist B.F. Skinner investigated the behavior of pigeons, rewarding them with food when they learned to peck a key in the feeding apparatus. But then Skinner set the apparatus to reward the bird at random. Now the pigeons had to sit back and wait. But that isn’t what they did. Instead, the majority developed what Skinner called ‘superstitious behavior.’ When an individual pigeon for example happened to look over its left shoulder and the reward mechanism just happened to click in at that point, it would have gotten the idea that it was the looking over the left shoulder that was what got it the reward. And so they tried it again. By sheer luck the reward mechanism happened to reward and deliver food at the same time again. And so the pigeon was reinforced with this idea that looking over the left shoulder was what got it the reward. And it went on and on and forever would look over its left shoulder. Human’s can be no better than pigeons. We constantly create false positives. We knock on wood for luck, see faces in clouds and toasted bread, fortunes in tea leafs. These provide a comforting allusion of meaning. This is the human condition. And in the irrational mindset, if you believe the mystical pattern you oppose on reality. You call yourself spiritual.
Yet, what does spirituality actually mean? I meet a lot of non religious individuals who tend to tell me they are deeply spiritual and yet almost all of them can’t really define its meaning. And yet the word today has become a sort of priced commodity, in which we are told to respect spiritual people. They call themselves spiritual souls, with their apparently deep insights, New Age interpretations and profound perspectives of the world. I can understand spiritualism if it means feeling reverence and awe about the beauties of nature and the mysterious wonders of the natural universe. I can even understand when people say they get a spiritual reaction when it comes to listening to a piece of music, looking at a piece of art, or reading the works of poetry. But that word for the most part has been hijacked by religion and by people who believe in the irrational world of the supernatural.
It’s unfortunate that educated men and women of the 21st century still succumb into believing the cryptic words of the Bible, an ancient book from the Bronze Age which was written by uneducated peasants, who didn’t know at the time what a germ or an atom was, and where the sun went at night. What I don’t understand is the blind arrogance of some of these religious fundamentalists who are so damn sure that their indoctrinated perspective of the world is 100 percent correct. Than again, is that really a surprise when 95 percent of Americans are scientifically illiterate? The continuous dumbing down of America, the lack of attention spans, medium television programs, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), and the various infomercial’s that promote pseudoscience, homeopathy and superstition, all are a kind of celebration of ignorance.
When it comes to Jesus Christ, one of the most beloved historical figures in human history, I’m not denying the fact that this influential preacher and religious leader at one time historically existed. But I do doubt that he was born of a virgin and performed various supernatural miracles, like turning water into wine, healing the sick, walking on water, curing the blind and rising from the dead. Philosopher David Hume once stated that a miracle is defined as not part of the natural order, but a suspension of it. You can’t say something like the Big Bang, which is the scientific foundation of the natural order, is a suspension. However if you meet someone in the street who you yesterday saw executed you can ask yourself, “Either an extraordinary miracle has occurred, or you are under a very grave misapprehension.” David Hume’s logic on this is irrefutable stating: “What is more likely. That the laws of nature have been suspended, in your favor, and in a way that you approve, or that you made a mistake.” And especially if you didn’t see it yourself and you’re hearing it from someone who says that they did. Let’s go even further and say you’re hearing it from someone who also didn’t see it them self, but tells you that they read it from someone who says they did, and this event that this person they read who claimed had saw it occurred nearly 2000 years ago. How reliable can that claim be?
Intellectual Christopher Hitchens frivolously rebutted the miracles of Jesus in his book ‘God is not Great’ writing, “Even if you could prove that Mary, the mother of Jesus, had no male intervention in her life at all at that time, yet she delivered herself a healthy baby boy, and even if that suspension of belief was proven as unthinkable, it still does not prove that Jesus performed miracles or is the son of God. And it wouldn’t prove that any of his moral teachings were hereby correct. Nor if I seen him executed one day and I seen him walking the streets the next day would that prove his father was God, or his mother was a virgin, or his teachings were true. Especially given the common place nature of resurrection at that time of place. After all Lazarus was raised from the dead, no one never said a word about it. The daughter of Jirus was raised. Didn’t say a thing about what she been through. And the gospels tell us that at the time of the crucifixion all the graves of Jerusalem opened and the occupants wondered around the streets discreet. So in many ways resurrection was something of a banality at that time, and not all those people risen were clearly divinely conceived as the son of God. So anyone can give you all the miracles and you’ll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack.”
The irony is strong with people of faith whom actually believe that the Christian God is perfect in every way, shape or form. Because when you actually stand back and really look at the entire scope and grandeur of the universe you’ll discover he is probably one of the most incompetent and laziest supernatural architects that has ever existed. Hitchens brilliantly emasculates God’s inferior cosmic design by saying, “Basically God has created a world that has a constant number of collapsing stars, imploding galaxies, destroyed universes, and failed solar systems. Plus he created a species where 99 percent of them went extinct, while placing human beings on just one planet in this tiny corner of this petty solar system, which can only support life some of the time on some of its surface. That’s some designer.”
God represents for most people a deity that is both all ‘good’ and ‘all powerful.’ And yet if you look at the history of natural occurrences like asteroids, earthquakes, volcanoes , hurricanes and floods, which have killed millions of people throughout human history, why would this God (who presumingly controls the forces of nature), create such forces to either kill us or have us go extinct? So these kind of events has me ask myself, “If there is a God — than either God is not ‘all powerful’, or ‘God is not all good,” (if we define good as being interested in your health and longevity). So when people define God in those ways, I don’t see it, especially the ‘all good’ part.
Religious believers like to argue that if a person lacks religion, they clearly lack morality. People don’t get their morality from the bible. Almost all of our morals come from our Darwinian history which has continued to be modified and refined through culture and civilization. Today we have the best system in developing morality. Through historical time we developed a civilized consensus of reason that is argued, discussed and thought-out, through systems of legal and political theory and secular moral philosophy. This does not come from religion. But what are the morals that one can get from religion? Stoning women for adultery? Death to apostasy? Human sacrifices? Punishment for breaking the Sabbath?
What about hell, which is a place full of fire, smoke, torture and anguish, where one is to burn, rot and suffer for eternal damnation? It is detrimentally damaging for any adult to tell a child that they are going to burn in hell for eternity if they ever sin against God. I find that to be a harmful and traumatic form of child abuse. I am also trying to raise consciousness on ideological labels religious parents force on their children. Its incredibly grating whenever I hear anybody talking about a ‘Catholic child,’ a ‘Protestant child’ or a ‘Muslim child’. There is no such thing as a Catholic child, only Catholic parents. There is no such thing as a Protestant child, only Protestant parents. There’s no such thing as a Muslim child. Only Muslim parents. No parent would call their child a ‘Liberal’ child, a ‘Conservative’ child, or a ‘Socialist’ child.
To cruelly indoctrinate children by force ably labeling them under a belief system when they’re much too young to know what their beliefs are, is a morally inexcusable act. To label a child ideologically in any way, shape, or form, before the child is mentally aware to make their own decisions is an ethical form of child abuse. Parents should wait until the child grows up to an appropriate age where they are mature enough to make their own decisions on what they believe or not believe.
If you actually look at the morality that is accepted among modern civilized people in the 21st century, we no longer believe in slavery anymore. We now believe in equality for women. And we recently passed same-sex marriage laws. These are all things that are entirely recent and they have very little basis in biblical or Quranic scripture. And if you are the kind of person who only chooses not to rape, murder, steal or commit adultery, simply out of slave-like obedience and a dictatorial fear that you will be severely punished for it, you not only lack morals, but you lack human empathy.
When a Deist tells me that my religious faith is in the scientific method and my religion is science itself, they don’t seem to understand that science is actually anti-religion. Not only does it ask for evidence to back up their claims but science is also prepared to change its mind if contrary evidence comes in and continues to proceed by progressive refinement. Also just look around you. Think about that dependable alarm clock which wakes us up early every morning. Or the lights we turn on and off while walking throughout our home. Or the shower we use to get ready for our day. Or the stove we switch on when we cook our breakfast. Or the car that assists us in getting from our home to our job. This proves that science works. That’s the fundamental difference to religion. And if you disagree with a specific theory, you have every right to put forward your evidence, and if I disagree, I’ll put forward my counter evidence, and then we’ll have a civilized and respectable debate. Because in the scientific field there is no one’s views that are not subject to question. And unlike religion, science does not argue from authority. Science has experts like zoologists and physicists, but they are not an authority over anyone, and there should be no student that should ever be afraid of saying to a science professor, “You’re wrong, and here’s why.”
I think anyone who chooses to accept any kind of belief system without scientific evidence is obviously thinking irrationally and I do not agree with their delusional perspective of the world. But I also respectfully accept that it is their right to believe that. In this extraordinary country everyone has the freedom to choose any religion, or not, that they personally find consoling. If people want to remain scientifically ignorant than they have the right to do so. And I completely realize that there are people out there who are so strongly invested in their unshakable beliefs that it becomes virtually impossible to sway them.
There is one thing I will always protest and it is when religious fundamentalists come in and try and enforce their personal beliefs on everyone else. If your religion personally works for you, well, good for you. But just because it works for you does not mean it will work for everyone else. There are even some religious extremists in this country who will go as far as to try to instill their own personal beliefs into government and law. Some even want to bring religion into the public schools and the science classrooms. Religious Fundamentalists seem to forget the First Amendment of the American Constitution, which is called ‘Separation of Church and State,’ a phrase famously used by Thomas Jefferson.
Even the countries founding fathers understood that religion was based on faith and not on science, and made the logical decision to keep it out of government. So if a parent wants their child to be exposed to their religious beliefs than they have the right to enroll them into any private religious school of their choice. Public schools are for the taxpayers money so all the children can get an education in basic subjects like math, history and science. And if they want the right to pray than they are free to go to any church, Mosque or temple in their area. No one is stopping them.
What I find unnerving is that aside from all the contrary evidence, according to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 70.6% of the adult population still identify themselves as Christians, with 46.5% professing attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, and 20.8% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. The same study also says that other religions (including Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam) collectively make up about 6% of the population.
Remember the legendary astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was unjustly imprisoned by the Roman Inquisition? He contradicted the scripture by proving to both the public and the Roman Catholic Church that the Earth wasn’t arrogantly the center of the universe. Well, whenever I observe these startling statistics on just how many Americans firmly believe that the Earth is just 10,000 years old, I always come back to what Galileo once said: “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
In an age of the moon landing, the personal computer, the first communication satellite, cloning sheep, the World Wide Web, the artificial heart and decoding the human genome, you would think religious fanaticism and superstitious beliefs would have eventually faded into oblivion. And yet as you can see, much of it is still very much alive and continues to remain a frightening, irrational and treacherous combination. But if we want to live in a free and tolerant society we all have to make personal sacrifices and learn to accept opinions we don’t necessarily like or agree with. As long as its ideology is not bigoted or hateful towards others, every American citizen has the right to express a completely different opinion and belief system than we do. Yes, even if these beliefs are foolish.
— Matthew A. Sheldon
Matthew Sheldon's Creative Writings 