'All for ourselves and nothing for other people' seems in every age of the world to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. -Adam Smith "All the 'truth' in the world adds up to one big lie." Bob Dylan "Idealism precedes experience, cynicism follows it." Anon

Atheism vs Theism


Teaching a child one religion = indoctrination

Teaching a child all religions = inoculation




Bertrand Russell on God (1959)





Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell

http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html


"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." Anonymous

"Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology." Christopher Hitchens

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."Christopher Hitchens

"Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow." Friedrich Nietzsche

"Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous." Will Durant

"The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?" Sam Harris, The End of Faith

"The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil (this is traditionally called the problem of theodicy) is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics. Surely there must come a time when we will acknowledge the obvious: theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings. ... There is clearly no greater obstacle to a truly empirical approach to spiritual experience than our current beliefs about God." Sam Harris

" A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it. Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith." Sam Harris

"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call "spiritual". No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered.Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this." Sam Harris

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism." Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"The only reason to call oneself an atheist is because there are theists. If nobody claimed to know that a god exists (a theist), there would be no atheists. ... Atheism is part of the scientific outlook, which is called naturalism." Floris van den Berg

"Saying atheism is a religion is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby, off is a TV channel or bald is a hair colour". Non-Stamp Collector

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions." Thomas Jefferson






LARRY BEINHART ON RELIGION

In the following series of articles Larry Beinhart examines what religion really is. At the end of the first article he writes:

God, religion, faith, spirituality -- whichever face of the prism we are looking at -- runs like a vertical pillar through all the levels of our lives. Our international policies are fixed largely around this war on terror. Our most volatile domestic political issues -- regulating our sex lives, abortion, birth control, homosexuality, separation of church and state -- are rooted in our religious views. Our social circles, our family structures, our individual lives, our world views, how we live and die, our health and happiness -- are organized around our spiritual views, or lack thereof. All this, without a serious attempt to find out what religion really is. That's why we need to examine God, faith and religion.

1.  We're Witnessing the Return of Religion as a Principle Cause of Warfare  -  Why did faith re-emerge as the driving force in America and in the politics of many Islamic countries?

2.  Why Atheism May Be the Best Way to Understand God  -  Only a lack of belief in God offers the possibility of increasing our understanding of him or her.

3.  Why Belief Isn't That Different for Atheists or Religious People  -  We never know 100 percent about anything. There's always an information gap between ourselves and certainty.

4.  Why Do People Believe in God?  -  Many people continue to clutch to their belief in God, even though there's no evidence of a higher power. Why?


GRETA CHRISTINA ON RELIGION

Greta Christina is one of my favorite bloggers. She addresses many of the common misperceptions about atheism and atheists (she also writes on a variety of other issues as well). In the process she demolishes the most common arguments of religious believers. It is obvious from her clear, cogent writing style that she has put a lot of critical thought into her analyses. There are too many articles to link to all of them here, so this link will take you to the index page of her blog where you will find her articles related to:
  • Arguments against/ critiques of religion (specific religious beliefs, and religion in general)
  • Arguments for/ defenses of atheism, skepticism, and science
  • Atheist/ humanist philosophies of life
  • Atheist/ humanist philosophies of death
  • Deconversion
  • Meta-atheism: atheist politics, community, debates within the movement, analyses of my own atheism, critiques of other atheist positions, etc.

LINKS TO MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES ON ATHEISM AND THEISM

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