Atheism = Religion?

I just have to make a post here because there are so many things I want to say, and I want it to be in a place where I can reference it for its weak arguments. It's a conversation that ensued after I posted a link to the Atheist Experience ustream channel for this afternoon's show.

...That's really about as far as it needs to go. Although this blog post is directed at my friend Eric, the ideas apply across the board. And this isn't a personal vendetta - Eric and I have a fun history and have had some great times - we do get along. :) But here's what needs to be said.

In retrospect, as a matter of fact, your selected definition of religion doesn't even apply to me.

Atheism in a nutshell:

"There is a god." <--- I don't accept that claim as truth.

That makes me an atheist. And no - I don't claim with 100% certainty that there is NOT a god, but that's not the point because that's not what atheism is. I also don't claim with 100% certainty that there's no such thing as unicorns. The burden of proof isn't on me to disprove something's existence, whether it's unicorns or a god (especially since there are thousands of gods... that'd be a lotta work).

The point is that atheism is simply the rejection of a claim. That's it. There's nothing that I "believe in and follow devotedly" with regard to religious claims.

But what the hell, let's go ahead grant that assertion for the sake of argument, and pretend atheism IS a religion:

"a religion about not believing in religion." There's a fallacy in your reasoning here because you're using two different meanings of the term "religion". It's not ironic. The definition you're applying to me is different than the one I'm rejecting.

And what this all amounts to is... well, nothing. It doesn't matter. Even if it was a religion that could be equated to others around the world, and I was part of it, the point is that MY religion depends solely on reason and evidence, and yours depends on claims without reason and evidence. There's no irony there unless you carefully manipulate the words to make it look that way.

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"lack of absolute proof does not disprove." I agree. It would be ignorant to claim with certainty something that couldn't be proven or disproved. See my second paragraph. The point is, not being able to prove a negative doesn't make the positive true. You can't disprove that the Loch-Ness monster doesn't exist, either, but that doesn't mean we should walk around assuming there is a Loch-Ness monster somewhere.

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You bring up quantum mechanics, which by the way, has roots in mathematics and physics. It fundamentally breaks off on an atomic level to explore a theoretical realm, but I honestly don't know enough about it to make claims one way or the other.

But again - that's completely irrelevant as to whether or not religion's claims are true. Not to mention - there isn't a worldwide institution of indoctrination based on the unproven hypotheses of quantum mechanics. I don't care if it's true or not because the weight of those claims is nothing compared to religion's. Moving on:

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"If hundereds of thousands of people had claimed to see the aliens," *

"The story fit together wth 100% perfection," **

"Noone could disprove it and it was widely believed by the masses" ***

Yeah, it'd be a lot more convincing if that was the story, wouldn't it? Here's the problem, though, and I'm assuming you're making a parallel to the Bible, here.

* Hundreds of thousands of people didn't claim to see the supernatural claims in the Bible. In fact, there's not a single first-hand (contemporary) account of those claims. It's all hearsay. Every single one is a story someone heard and wrote it down - it would have been very easy to put in whatever you wanted. The point is, two-thousand year old anecdotal evidence in the form of text with no firsthand accounts, that has been copied and translated time and time again has the least potential to show if something truly happened. And yeah, we could say the same about a ton of historical events, but we deny they're true if they make claims like zombies walking the streets or magical hands making the planets move.

** There are so many contradictions and inconsitencies in the Bible, it would be ridiculous to try to list them here. Just for a taste... http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html#contradictions

*** I don't care how many people claim that something extraordinary happened. Wiki "Argumentum ad populum." They need demonstrable evidence to show that it happened.

What this all boils down to (ignoring the terrible semantic argument claiming that atheism is a religion) is what you think is sufficient evidence to explain events in our universe. If you see or hear about something that is difficult to understand, it's perfectly okay for the answer to a question to be, "I don't know." If you read a book about a talking rabbit that granted wishes 20,000 years ago and there's nothing other than the book to show that it happened, it's up to your critical thinking skills to determine whether or not it's plausible.

~A

ZOMFG SLAVEZ

This is a message not to address any individuals, but the whole "movement" that I see revolving around the slavery conspiracy that's going on in our country today.


I take issue with the language used to describe the heirarchical business setup we have in our society. "Slavery," a term used to describe some of the worst atrocities committed by man in history, is now being used to describe a skewed commercial and industrial labor system. Yes, as of now, it favors greedy and selfish people on top who obtained and maintain their power/money by screwing other people over. But...


You are NOT a fucking SLAVE.


Slaves, by definition, don't have rights. They have no freedoms. They don't get choices. They were owned like property. They were owned, like your bike, or like a pet dog. But they were treated a hell of a lot worse than your bike, or your pet dog, or yourself by the people who you claim to "own" you. Slaves were beaten. Repeatedly. For their entire lives. Then, often killed. It was legal - and encouraged by society - to do so.


If you want to talk about bonded labor, or say you have debt bondage and basically have no way of earning enough money to pay off your debtors, then DESCRIBE it like that. "Slave" already has a definition with an extraordinary history, and it needs to remain as such.


Calling us slaves does a couple major things. Number one: It changes the meaning of the word, watering down the situations that REAL slaves had to live through, and in turn is an extreme disrespect to their memory and disruptive to the accuracy of our history. If we start referring to our situations as "enslavement" and it gets documented in the history books that way, there'll be some kids reading about it down the road that are gonna be wondering what the hell WE were complaining about. Try going back to the American South before 1830 and have a chat with a few of the guys there. You'll see what a fucking slave is.


Number two: You're becoming guilty of exactly the same goddamned thing the idiots in the corporate media are guilty of. You're blowing the circumstances way out of proportion by labeling them with something far more extreme than what it actually is. How many times a day do you hear Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends compare our country's situation to that of Nazi Germany or Stalin's regime? It's extremely disturbing to me; HOW DARE people compare our current state of affairs to the horrific things that took place in our history.


Are we someone's bitch sometimes? Sure. Thing is, nobody's going to beat or kill you if you don't do the specific work some ass hat manager demanded you do. Not only that, but if you're someone's bitch, and I'm someone's bitch, where's it stop? EVERYONE is someone else's bitch. Who isn't, at least at SOME point in their life? And being someone's bitch doesn't fucking matter if you can walk away - a freedom that we happen to have, by the way. Go learn how to do something well and offer your services to the public. Be your own boss if you hate working for other people so much.


We have choices. We can find different jobs, different employers. If we don't like someone, we can move on and try to find other work with other people. Hell, we can leave the country if we want to - you got a problem with the rules here, then get the hell out and quit whining to the people who are perfectly content with their lives. If it sucks so bad, then go where the grass is oh-so-much greener, then tell me how you feel.


On a lighter note, I think there's an end in sight with the birth of global communication.


http://www.facebook.com/TheOther98?v=info


Is our system rigged right now to cater to the few people on top? Yeah, but we're in the works of doing something about it. As more of the world gains access to computer technology and an internet connection, our system naturally becomes more and more transparent. As we progress, there are fewer and fewer places for the greedy top shots to hide; the potential for collaborative groups with utilitarian objectives will quickly overpower greedy and selfish individuals, because let's face it - who are those ass holes really going to turn to when judgment day comes for them? If all their dark deeds can be laid out for the world to see (Wikileaks, for instance), eventually they will fall. Egypt, anyone?


We're within generations: Even the youth of the world NOW is learning the power of communicating with people across the world to pool together the best ideas, along with ways to put them into practice. Collaboration - working together to reduce world suck. Empathy and compassion will conquer.