Paul had a thing about women. Benedict and some of Rowan’s lot still do.

A renowned philosopher, Jason7463, once wrote the immortal words:

Thats the problem with atheistism,its so damned depressing.Basically says,your fucked so get used to it.

As is so frequently the case with deeper thinkers of this stamp, the wording, punctuation and homophone-swappage is fully sic. Still, let’s transcend that barrier, and look deeply into the void that is “atheistism as seen by Jason7463″.

Firstly there is “atheistism” to consider. I am grateful to Jason7463 for the peculiar wording he has employed in his exposition, as it serves to throw a common error into stark highlight. A person may be an atheist, but to consider atheism as an “-ism” in its own right is to overlook the derivation of the word. A- (meaning “not”) -theism (meaning “believing in a god or gods”) is not a belief, but the rejection of one. To imply that a belief must fill that void is to fall into error. This is usually illustrated by showing that baldness is not a hair colour, and that not collecting stamps is not, in and of itself, a hobby.

Now, is this “absence of belief in a god or gods” as damned depressing as Jason7463 claims? From personal experience and testimonial evidence available, I must say that the opposite applies in the majority of cases. This seems especially true when the subject has experienced belief.

Relieved from the stress of trying to reframe my entire existence to ensure its relative popularity with the invisible distributor of vengeance, largesse and misfortune, and all the forgive me this, show me the way that, and fitting the bigger picture against prophecy… not to mention the sizable cognitive dissonance between “Jesus said” and “Church does”, I am actually beginning to enjoy life.

Of course, we can safely dispense with the “damned” bit…

Basically says,your fucked… I don’t think so. If anything, now that I don’t rely on intangible (and let’s face it, non-manifest) means of support, I tend to plan all details of a project with the most pessimistic outcomes in mind. (The optimum and most likely are also considered: it’s a project management thing.)

The result is a tendency to be more mindful of circumstances and interdependencies: in short, to be careful. I may eventually wind up “fucked”, but entropy guarantees that for everyone.

…so get used to it. The fatalism implicit in such a statement is more indicative of the “let go and let god” type of person. Any situation has options: acceptance, avoidance, negotiation, or even aggression.

I’m alive for now. This is all the life I get, and I’ll play the ball as it lies, go to the clubhouse, or picnic on the fairway if I deem it suitable. I don’t have eternity to waste on harp lessons.
Life is mostly okay, and there’s plenty undone yet. “Used to it”? Only a person who missed a lot of interesting stuff could say that.

I buried my Stepfather today. He was more of a dad to me than the gene donor.

He was not a learned man, although he was more than brilliant in practical ways. Bush mechanicking and skill with even difficult animals were just two of the things that, like his ears, stuck out.

We had to try a little harder to get along together than is the case for blood-relatives (I’ll excuse my father from this particular comparison), but I thought I knew the man.

His entry into christianity was gradual, as this man had a low tolerance for bullshit. He was apparently scared into the flock by some of that alarmist material Stan Deyo was putting out in the late 70s.

The man I knew was kind. Not a soft touch, and guaranteed to give the “pretend-looking-for-work” bloke some actual hard work to do, but a fair reward at the end. Of course, association with church people influenced him over the years.

I haven’t had a lot of contact with the old man since my mother died. He went to stay with the sister I can’t stand, and I gather he attends her church in the relatively-affluent suburb where she and her unpleasant husband live.

I don’t know what sort of tolerance and charity Affluent Jeebus teaches, being of the sort who thought, even when a believer, that the whole Jesus thing was more about the unempowered.

Still, when the only email I get from him in months is all BIG RED LETTERS, saying:

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… then I know the man I once held dear has died.

And may they put Anglo Jesus in the ground with him, before I piss on it.

When the apologists and polemicists have had their say, waggled their texts and retired to sharpen their pointing fingers, the whole god business comes down to a matter of faith. There is much encouragement in christian culture to keep meeting and talking together, and mutually reinforcing that faith.

But what is being reinforced?   The biblical Jesus and early christian church, for example, did not believe in doing anything about the government of the day, apart from obeying it. The moral standards they chose for themselves were simple: avoiding sexual immorality and not eating meat offered to idols. What is more, these standards were for the believers themselves, and there was no call to enforce compliance among the unbelievers.

There are so many add-ons in the churches of today which are merely constructs of political and social engineering. It takes a lot of bible-twisting to justify them. Ironically, the church hierarchies (unbiblical in themselves) have managed to bury Jesus in a pile of new material, and it says a lot against his divinity that he has so far been unable to dig himself out.

God speaks? No, people do that.

Whether it’s the Voice of Doom telling us there’s a Pudding with our name on it unless we comply, Danny “Catch The Liar” Nalliah telling the gullible about the Invisible Soul-Snatching Goblins, or just the domestic-model nutjob with a hobby or a fancy, wanting to add a little more authority to his demands… people speak on behalf of god.

It’s a neat trick. With enough cult indoctrination, you too can learn to develop voices in your head.  Or pretend you hear ‘em, and say what you jolly well like.

Remember:

• Be solemn (unless you’re Pentecostal, in which case just avoid making the chicken noises too often);
• Use the Third Person… “The Lord says…”  (don’t want the audience thinking you’re doing it off your own bat!);
• Plausible deniability helps: “if your faith is great enough” is a trusty standy;
• Only tell the parishioners you fancy that “God wants us to be together” in private… (Bonus points if you check for a mike first).

Now I’m prepared to allow that many of our faith-afflicted readers cannot tell the difference between a site set up to comment on the “Jeebus – Don’t Say Anything About The Churches (but really that’s what we’re plugging)” campaign and an attack on their religion, person, and loved ones… after all, most of the great christian thinkers are dead, and the new lot don’t seem keen to read their writings… but I reserve the right to delete your unapproved comment if it doesn’t deal, even obliquely, with one of these:
∙ the JAAL campaign;
∙ actual content of a post here;
∙ something of even nugatory interest;
∙ other devious christian selling tactics.

Oh: unless it’s worthy of comment due to egregious stupidity. (Hi, “bob” from Burwood!)

Simple, beautiful and only a meanyhead would deny the existence of such a wonderful being! You cannot disprove this.

No, we’re talking about the unicorn.

(A nod of the goateed chin to our friend Mr C.T. Pot!)

THE Victorian government is expected to announce today that religious groups will be allowed to discriminate against gays and single mothers in a controversial compromise reached on workers’ rights.

Poor Christians!

Would these religious groups think it fair that it was enshrined in law, that one was able to discriminate against those with faith, based on the fact it undermines lack of belief?

I think not!

This is just plain bigotry.

The State Government’s religious education advisory panel is going to fight a pilot program that offers ethics classes to primary school students who have opted out of scripture classes.

We know whats best for your children

They are fighting against critical thinking. It’s dangerous to religion as they want people to believe that only their particular god defines what is moral. Bigots.

Are they saying, that without their belief in their god, they would run around raping and pillaging, murdering and abusing? How interesting. Morals and ethics can completely be explained with science, and are not the total domain of religion. Evolutionary biology and sociobiology. I find it degrading that religion passes this basic fundamental humanistic quality off to their god. Recently, the concepts of ethical evolution has become a major area of study in scientific circles, due to the overwhelming observable evidence.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzAuXwwEZCo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIYQ4zK2HUA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo3be0F7sE8[/youtube]

The only controversy over it comes from the religious. But then again, it happens to everything that does not fit their world view.

Our morals came about from the fact we are a social animal, we have highly advanced social morals that are very well explained by science.

Indeed Darwin brought it up in Descent Of Man, it’s nothing new :

“any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.” (ch. 4)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics

Blatant assumptions of the total nature of everything being attributed to a god is degrading to the sheer enormity and brilliance of life. Always the ‘magic man’ did it for them.