Atheism & Hate

 What atheism doesn't have is dogmatic and prescriptive hate. We do not have a dogma telling us we must hate this group of people or that group of people. Now, individual atheists may take on their own particular views and some may be quite angry. I have my moments, just like anyone else, but none of those are prescribed specifically by atheism. Atheism does not prescribe.

And, of course, we argue over and negotiate our definitions - of atheism and that which assails us: theism entrenched in quite often very hateful religion. There are different ideas of atheism among atheists, usually deriving from their individual path to atheism. There are those who left their god-think based on their changing views of morality, or those driven away by the prescriptive dogmatism that is religion, or those who, embracing a stricter standard of evidence like scientific inquiry, question the meaningfulness of ideas that do not have empirical referents. And all combination thereof. I, myself, am a "from the cradle" atheist, and I have views subtly different from those who left a religion just for that reason.

And, of course, there are those who have left their former religions but still exhibit some of the artifacts of that religion, like retributivism or evangelism, and we even have a generation (not just stray individuals like me), who grew up without their parents indoctrinating them into a religion. Some of these have replaced religious prescriptivism with another form of dogmatism, like social engineering mentalities.

We atheists are a diverse and rough-hewn gathering of individuals. Before the internet, we were pretty separate and far flung, without any social functions, gatherings, or cohesion. The internet gave us community and those communities will have any of the issues other human communities share.

Religious Rites and Rituals

 I don't celebrate holidays, nor do I take part in the them. This has been a source of consternation to some people around me for most of my life. They just don't understand and they wonder what is wrong with me. Even among skeptics and atheists, people still celebrate holidays, renaming them or attempting to assimilate them or even just simply trying to ignore the religious aspect of them. Excuses, excuses.

I have a profound respect for the power of symbols (which is not the same thing as a respect for specific symbols). My experience is that they turn on you. I wore a pigasus for a while until I discovered the organization it represented didn't have the courage of its convictions.

Following is a retelling of the moment I went from atheist to anti-theist, on a very personal level. Perhaps it will help shed some light on my views on holidays for anyone who might be interested. I wrote this for a board I participate in. I have toned down my description of the priest in the story for delicate ears (yes, this is toned-down).

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Actually, the last time I was in a church (Church of England) for a wedding really opened my eyes. Up to that point, I had pretty much gotten the academic side of things down, was a public atheist, etc., but I didn't have that sense of understanding, on a very personal level, about how virulent religion really is. I was an "each his or her own way" kinda person. I kept things, more or less, to myself.

The priest used their wedding as an excuse to put forward a "there is an atheist in the crowd" rant, and I saw red - not so much because I perceived myself as the target of the attack, but because this twisted little parasitic homunculus had the temerity to assume the right to abuse the wedding of some of my loved ones to attack one or more persons in the crowd. I realized at that moment that this [person] was in the business of annexing our humanity and wielding it against us. What was supposed to be a celebration of two people's love became a mere opportunity to push an agenda for this piece of parasitic detritus. There are very few times in my life I can claim to have seen red. That was one of them. That moment was when I went from atheist to anti-theist. I decided I would never permit one of these monsters to have any claim on me.

I didn't say anything then. I was desperately trying to think of my uncle and his new bride, seething at the realization that the priest was using that I was doing so for his twisted little purposes.

I dropped all religious celebrations that day. I'm not saying anything to anyone else about what they should or should not do. Your life; your business; your call, but I will not allow religion any claim on my humanity, not in any way, shape or form, ever again. I will not hold my tongue ever again. It is probably better for anyone else that I never enter a church again.

If that makes me a "dick," then so be it. I will still not tell you what you should do. Extend the same courtesy to me, please. If you can't, brace for impact...

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This turned religious dogma from an academic exercise into a vivid personal prescriptive force, virulently wielded. It exposed the vicious nature of the deeply abusive relationship between belief and believer and the parasites that (I can't say "who") use it to steal free room and board and spread hate and malice.

Some have tried to find ways to work around the religious content of holidays on my behalf, and I thank them for their efforts, but I just can't stomach the poison...

A Buffet of Ideas

 Most modern christians feel they can dismiss the Old Testament out of hand and the New Testament is supposed to represent some kind of new deal with god. But none of that jazz alters the fact that the primary function of the monotheisitc religions is to provide a basis for absolute objective morality. Once they compromise the integrity of the absolute, it is not an absolute anymore. When they dismiss this moral truth or that moral truth in favour of this new moral truth or that new moral truth (which contradicts the old ones, of course) they are engaging in dishonest moral relativism games, which undercuts their entire mentality. The instant one of them starts yapping about "social context" or the "context of the times" they make themselves into extreme fools because at that point their supposed trump question, "Where do you get your morals from?" can be wielded against them with, actually, more force than it was ever wielded against real relativists, since most real relativists don't make claims to absolute moral truths.

Even that aside, however, some stories are fundaments of the mentality involved with religious dogma. Let's take the story of Abraham and Isaac. The particulars of the story are really irrelevant; what matters is the subjugation of humanity in favour of a philosophy (sacrificing our humanity for God). If they wish to write off the Old Testament, then that story gets written off as well, but they cannot afford that. They must keep that story or else humanity takes precedence again. So they waffle - "Oh, the sacrifice never really took place, so...." Yes, it did actually, the moment Abraham decided to conduct the sacrifice. The intent to subjugate his humanity for God was the real crime of that story, not whether Isaac was actually killed or not. The story of Abraham is about setting priorities. God above humanity, even one's own children. If they toss that story out, their God gets superceded. Can't have that, now can they?

And that, boys and girls, is the true "evil" of christianity, indeed all three of the monotheistic horrors (and possibly of all religions) - they all prescribe surrendering our humanity to a mere philosophy (it can be a "who," a "way'" or an "understanding"). It is the most fundamental betrayal imaginable, sacrificing your own children - physically, intellectually or emotionally. And if the word "evil" means anything in the real world, there is no conceivable anything more evil than this, which is at the heart of all prescriptivity. That is the crime from which all other religious violence and crime arises - the understanding that we serve as cogs in a dogmatic meat grinder. That is the true root of all evil.

Even so...

The superficial content of the religious works are only part of the story. The dynamics (underlying assumptions and prescriptive force) of religious philosophy itself inherently lead to violence.


Let me give a related analogy. Western societies are built on the idea of change, not only scientific, but social, moral, attitudinal and otherwise. The structure of the society is such that it incorporates change in its everyday function. Courts take input from juries, political policies are determined by voters, etc. The result, just as one would expect, is change.

Theocracy-based societies are built on the denial of change, at their fundaments. Believing they already know the Truth(TM)*, change can only be evil. Perfectly reasonable, if one thinks one knows the Truth(TM), and in a static environment. The result, just as one would expect, is stagnation.

These are not so much expressly stated as implied in the policies, such as means of arbitration and, for example, the legality of blasphemy.


As long as we only talk about the obvious negative (or positive) events in the religious texts, we are only observing the symptoms. The sickness runs much deeper and is systemic on a philosophical level. The primacy of God over humanity is at the core of the monotheistic understanding. That is the meaning of the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. In such a view all human concerns, including such trivial things as considerations of suffering or life-span (and the role of the caregiver of children) are necessarily downplayed or redefined such that humanity is expendable in the name of the idea. That is, necessarily, a violent understanding since any and all means are rendered acceptable to the maintenance of the faith. Now, if the faith is evangelical in nature, and God has primacy over humanity, then any and all means are acceptable to the spreading of the faith. The inevitable result is violence.

What most people fail to recognize, is that the horrors or the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament (and the other "revisions" for the other two monotheism) are supposed to be "Good" things on an underlying level, as they are expressions of something beyond their mere trivial example. That is what it is for a story to have a meaning. Well, just as coughing, phlegm and back pain can be symptoms of the lungs filling up with fluid, so too a willingness to adopt just about any means and methods of maintaining and spreading the faith are symptoms of something as well - namely of a philosophy that dehumanizes and trivializes us and turns us into expendable cogs in a dogmatic machine.

Ever read any Rapture Ready stuff? For them, the wholesale slaughter of all humanity is a "Good Thing(TM)." (They, of course, would not use that wording.) These are sick, sick people, but their sickness is not something merely alien and strange - it is a natural result of a deeply held conviction that our lives are trivial, indeed meaningless, in the face of some greater ideal. It is a prescribed sickness, actively promoted by the dogma. The Rapture Ready people are just a few openly expressing the sickness.


* (TM) = Trade Mark - a way of painting how ridiculous the idea of absolute morals is.

The Value of Philosophy

Philosophical Inquiry

I see philosophy as the primordial soup from which ideas arise. Some are good, some are bad, some are merely laughable. But it is all worth it for the few good ideas that arise.

Scepticism (note the "c") was a good idea, even if it has been denounced throughout human history by the powers that be and their mindless followers. Scepticism taught us that the dogmatism with which the dishonest addressed epistemic ground zero was a ruthlessly and epistemologically bad idea, and indefensible. Humans are still struggling with this today.

The modern version of scepticism is scientific skepticism (note the "k"). It doesn't have the all-inclusive scope of philosophical skepticism, but for the work for which it was was intended, it serves.

So, if you ask me what good philosophy is, my answer is that without it, nothing new in human thought ever arises.

Logic, in recent decades, has been under attack, replaced in modern curriculums by "critical thinking" (which is anything but). This is an attempt to try to stop logic from putting a stop to internally inconsistent nonsense of new dogmas. That was part of logic's purpose after all, to put a stop to nonsense, so it had to be decimated or redefined to permit the nonsense.

Of course logic had its own issues. In my view logic is not the impartial path to truth that most envision it to be. It is prescriptive, with "true truth values" being good and "false truth values" being bad. Also, the "maps on to" links between analytic logic and synthetic reality can be as strong or as weak as we wish, and that is unfortunate. Also, the initial hope of logic being the pathway to new and novel truths didn't quite pan out as hoped. This is to be expected since all the information in any argument is already present in the premise(s). This is fairly obvious now, but it took humanity a few hundred years to start to figure that out. We are still working on it today.

So, is philosophy valuable, even today? I say it is, because we still need to keep that primordial soup bubbling to get new insights an ideas. What - do you imagine we understand all there is to understand now? We imagined that at every age in human history, and we were always wrong - always. Investigation requires deep intrusion into held and sometimes difficult ideas and for that we need the detachment of philosophical inquiry.

Fortresses of Nonsense

Today (and of late), we do philosophy like we are building and fortifying towers, every brick painted and designed to keep anyone within or without from asking if the ground is secure, or if the structure inside is sound.

More often than not, the mortar is corruption or irrational normative nonsense, and the stones' shapes and paint are prescriptive dogma - demanding orthodoxy of belief through the command force of language (perlocutionary force).

Our struggle as modern thinkers is to keep the relentless mind-washing (seductive lures or polarizing rhetoric) of loud and shining prescriptive dogma from all sides and angles from dulling our critical faculties and/or our will to inquire.

The question about the value of philosophy is an expression of surrender - of our bowing to the dogmas that surround us. I do not ask this question - I already know the answer.

Atheism, Advocacy, and Skepticism

On Describing Atheism as a Faith, Advocacy as Evangelism and Skepticism as Fundamentalism

There is mistaken perception (I'll say "perception" rather than "delusion" out of politeness) among the religious that all ideas are equal - rest on an equal footing - that there is nothing to choose between ideas at the most basic level. In their minds, all ideas are affirmations, made despite epistemic nihilism, and supported only by faith. Hence, we get the claim that atheism is just another faith.

 In order to try to bring all ideas down to their level, the religious will often refer to characteristics of other views in their terms, terms like "fundamentalism" or "evangelical" or "zeal." These terms traditionally have a particular religious content involved in their use. The goal is to present any idea as just another baseless competing ideology.

 This is not the case. All ideas do not suffer the same weaknesses as dogmatic religion. There are approaches to the challenge posed by epistemic nihilism that do not just assume as true in the form of an affirmation. Instead they posit provisionally. This is important in that it is subject to correction as the need arises, rather than subject to orthodoxy requirements like affirmations are.

 There are two possible responses to epistemic nihilism:

(1) do not accept that we do not "know."

(2) accept that we do not "know."

Human history has been of trying to desperately avoid accepting that we do not know with certainty. This has been a fool's game and has had tragic results, as orthodoxy has been traditionally enforced by the sword. In order to deny accepting that we do not "know," various campaigns of rhetoric have been conducted to paint the acceptance of not "knowing" as irrational, or contradictory or even just with negative connotations.

 However, if we accept that we do not know, then we can take a different approach. At the heart of epistemic nihilism we find ourselves presented with a question: What now? Do we:

(1) Curl up in a fetal ball and die?

(2) Affirm truths without basis?

(3) Posit provisionally and see what happens?

Some think that 2 and 3 are the same. They are not, as I indicated earlier, precisely because 3 is provisional and subject to correction, while 2 is not.

 In order for an idea or philosophy to posit provisionally, it must call itself into question without negating itself. The reason it must do this is because, if it holds any ideas as "sacred cows" (with apologies to DJ), then it has effectively become an affirmation. A tall order, but it just so happens we have such a philosophy - the only one of its kind: skepticism. And it just so happens that a methodology based on calling itself into question (error-correction) and eschewing certainty exists as well: science - and science is ridiculously effective.

 The religious (and dogmatic "scientific skeptics") would have us believe that skepticism contradicts itself. If you are skeptical of skepticism then you have negated skepticism, right? Wrong. Doubt is not denial. (We can get deeper into that later perhaps). So let's ask ourselves what happens if we subject skepticism to skeptical inquiry. We find ourselves in a state of uncertainty, a state of doubt - and this persist through as many meta-levels of skeptical inquiry as you care to conduct. At every level we are left in a state of non-assent - which *IS* skepticism. In this way, skepticism critiques itself while resulting in skepticism. No sacred cows; even the most basic ideas are subjected to critical inquiry.

And this is where the distinction between a critique-based philosophy and an affirmation-based one comes into play. Skepticism does not assume itself as an affirmation. It is the result of critical inquiry, and that is different in kind from affirmation-based philosophies (like religions).

And this is part of the reason the religious want to paint all ideas in their terms - to hide the essential error of presuming that skepticism negates itself - that critical inquiry negates critical inquiry. To affirm affirmation. To make the idea of sacred cows itself a sacred cow. To pretend we "know" when we don't. This is why they try to refer to atheism as a faith, all advocacy as evangelism and basic ideas as fundaments (hence fundamentalism). They simply cannot conceive of such a thing as a critique-based approach - it's been socialized and internalized out of them by a lifetime of conditioning. They've been indoctrinated into a terror of "not knowing." Hence we hear derision of people who say, quite properly, "I don't know," as if even admitting lack of knowledge is some sort of weakness of character somehow, rather than just being honest.

All ideas are not created equal, nor are they held equally - and how they are held (as truths or as provisional) matters. It influences how one approaches information and the ability (or inability) to revise information. Provisional holding of information allows for error-correction. Holding information as truth does not.

Philosophical skeptics, like myself, are doing something radically different than what the religious do, and painting me with those sorry terms to try to disguise or hide that is worse than disingenuous - it is an outright lie.

Dogmatic Sociopathy

What a Virus Wants

There is a danger in talking about what the virus "wants." It's a virus. It doesn't want. It has no volition. And most importantly, it is not political. It doesn't care what party you support. It is a virus. It cannot care.

So, when doctors talk about what the virus wants, the doctor is speaking metaphorically. Attributing volition where there is none. But the effort to make it more understandable backfires in the minds of the conspiracy minded.

The virus has no dogma, no agenda, no political affiliation. It doesn't care, it cannot care, it doesn't want, it cannot want.

Only humanity deals in normative values. Most of nature doesn't. At all, ever. Repeat that until it sticks. Climate change is the same. The non-human world doesn't care about your political conspiracies. It is what it is, and nothing more. Non-human reality doesn't promote shoulds. It presents musts. No compromise, no mercy, no deliberation, no negotiation, no forgiveness.

It doesn't care about your political hatreds, your desires for a prosperous future, your views or perspectives. It doesn't care about what you care about. It doesn't care about your "freedumb," or mine, or anyone's. It is not the sort of thing that can care about these things.

We, however, can care. We can intelligently react - rationally, reasonably, with clarity provided by our best explorative methodology ever created (science) - deliberately, mercifully, with humility and kindness and concern for your fellow human being.

So wear the damned mask. It protects others from you. Don't be a sociopath. That's why you wear it. It doesn't offer much protection for you. The only gain you get is the pride and confidence that you are not being a vector. But that is worth a lot for human beings who are kind, responsible, and moral.

Anti-Mask Hysteria

Eventually, we will likely have effective treatment for SARS-CoV-2. The oxidative stress mechanism can already be partially offset, but nothing can take the place of avoiding spreading the virus. Wear a fucking mask.

It is time to stop playing nicely with and appealing to the humanity of sociopaths. If they are so fucking stupid that they demand a police state. As long as they threaten the lives of others, make their dystopian dreams come true.

Even in gatherings, large gatherings, people can still wear masks.

You cannot negotiate with, intimidate, or supplicate to a virus. You cannot make it respect your freedumb.

Skepticism vs Denialism

We are now seeing the true danger of the "conspiracy theorist" mentality. This is why we need cautious skepticism, not dogma-based denialism. Remember, doubt is not denial.

It's also why we need science. Science informs us, provides us with a course of action - a way to combat something barely within our comprehension. It gives us personal efficacy in a time when we may be otherwise feeling helpless and afraid. Fear is not the way to deal with the virus. Wearing a mask is that effective personal action. Unfortunately, anti-science conspiracy denialism has convinced people to not wear masks - to try to pretend not wearing a mask is a moral or political stance. It is neither of these; it is merely deliberate sociopathic stupidity.

Yes, I used the word "sociopathic." It applies perfectly. These people do not care about the lives of those around them. Some, perhaps, even want to see others die. There are cases of people deliberately coughing in the faces of others (in one instance, a baby's face). This is neither rational, nor even sane. What kind of person do you have to be to deliberately put other people's lives at risk when it is so easy to just wear a mask when out in public? What kind of garbage is in your thought bubble?

Ground Zero

Ground Zero

When it comes to epistemology, what happens to make you reach epistemic ground zero (when you realize that knowledge is, in fact, impossible) is only a small part of the story. It involves some honesty, but otherwise it is not difficult.

The real test comes after you reach epistemic ground zero. Here we quickly discern honest inquirers from the disingenuous liars.

At ground zero, do you accept that you cannot know and tentatively start suggesting means and methods of inquiry? Congratulations. That is called "intellectual integrity."

...or...

Do make up some shit, declare it the truth, and seek to ram it down everyone else's throat - even using force? Wrong answer. That's called "religion."

Skeptical of Skepticism

Be skeptical of skepticism. Seriously. Do it. Be critical of skepticism. Take it to its logical and inevitable conclusion.

Just remember: Doubt is not denial.

So where do you end up, if you are skeptical of skepticism? You end up in a state of doubt. The result is the same, however many meta levels you care to take it.

So what would we call that state of doubt?

Hence, I am a skeptic. Philosophical *and* scientific, with an unlimited scope of inquiry. This is the method that yields results, the accepts correction, that moves forward without dogmatic affirmations.

The abyss gazes also, and I've made peace with that. I prefer the intellectual and emotional honesty of skepticism at epistemic ground zero, to someone just making up whatever shit they want to and dogmatically screaming it at us. I will always take tentative positing, over aggressive affirmation of whatever shit someone just wants.

Epistemic ground zero is not an ugly place, to be reviled and escaped from any means we can imagine. It is a beautiful place, filled with opportunity and potential.

The really important point, is that skepticism is a critical perspective. We do not affirm in the way dogmatists do. We don't need to. We are tentative, provisional, always keeping firmly in mind that we might be mistaken. This is why skepticism is not dogmatic.

Skepticism is actually a positive thing. A positive mindset, one that can carefully build. It is the room for growth, and development, and correction. It is the opportunity to think again, unencumbered by dogma.

Skepticism is not an uncomfortable position. You have become a skeptic when you accept the critical result of your inquiry.

Reclaiming Our Imaginations

Here is an interesting article just posted in Aeon with regards to the creative aspect of science. The article laments the apparent subjugation of imagination in scientific work, and the title poses a question that every skeptic and atheist knows the answer to.

Why is the imaginative aspect of science "treated as a secret?"

Aside from the obvious need to try to link ideas with the empirical world, the enemies of science are the primary reason. Religious dogmatists are relentlessly trying to make science look like "just another narrative" to discredit in order to prop up their anti-human flights of sheer fantasy.

In the same vein, every atheist knows that theists are always trying, quite obviously incorrectly, to place atheism on the same slippery epistemological ground the theists themselves are always teetering on. Theists constantly claim that atheism is just another "faith," just like theirs is.

Any hint of the imaginative creative aspect of scientific thought is a battleground between the scientists and the relentlessly hawkish theists trying to discredit science by any means they can find. If the theist senses a creative process at work in developing hypotheses, they spring to the attack, completely oblivious to the obvious fact that science has that one essential rule that theists routinely ignore and denigrate - the linking of the creative process to empirical reality, falsifiability (a concept theists despise for obvious reason).

Religious belief is not constrained by reality, theists imagine, and therefore is free to run wildly amok in the demented minds of zealots. The idea of placing an arbiter (reality) over their wildly absurd normative demands is their antithesis. The integrity of the scientific hypothesis is beyond their grasp, so let the scourging plague of theistic nonsense begin!

And that is the reason why science must always clearly delineate between the descriptive and the prescriptive. But that is a slightly deeper topic for another time.

The imaginative aspect of science is "treated as a secret" because enemies of science are constantly looking for a weakness to exploit.

This is also why some atheists try to sound as certain as theists pretend to be. To be careful to distinguish between what can be known and what cannot is seen as weakness by theists and the audience they seek to control. This is especially important in the labyrinthine rhetorical scuffle that is public discussion. We atheists have to sound as confident in our claims as they do, or risk being trounced in the public arena of rhetoric. Theists leave atheists little room for more subtle and essential inquiries.

Theist claim such grounds as theirs in the realm perhaps the most important, deeper inquiries. Of course theists are quite ill-suited to conduct such inquiries honestly (theists constantly want to twist discussions into compliance with their normative claims rather than accept reality as an arbiter over their petulant demands).

The rhetorical battleground demands that we abandon the more subtle ground of skeptical understanding and inquiry in favour of presenting a stronger rhetorical position. For the same reason, science must appear to rigidly constrain the imaginative aspect of hypothesis creation.

https://aeon.co/ideas/science-is-deeply-imaginative-why-is-this-treated-as-a-secret?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=39a01bc1a8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_12_01_44&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-39a01bc1a8-70789453

Down the Real Rabbit Hole

It has always seemed to me that the thing to really delve into is the common features of all religions that make religions so dangerous, violent, and murderous. Hence I focus on dogma. Not the particular prescriptions of particular dogmas, but the features of dogma itself. My studies in analytic ethics helped me to understand that prescriptivity or prescriptive language is the one feature *all* religions have (yes, including buddhism), as well as all other ideologies. "Prescription" is, roughly, a term for the command function of language about morality. They look like claims of truth, but make no mistake, they are really commands. I found it immediately interesting (and horrific) that some philosophies (most obvious in deontic logic) want us to assume the legitimacy of normative language in ethical systems. "Shoulds," "oughts," "good," "evil," and a host of other words that have command (or "perlocutionary") force. But, even then, it is still not the particular perlocutionary acts that are interesting to me (although they may certainly be pertinent), but the perlocutionary force (as a control-command) of the language. And hence, it boils down to control and the levels of convolution we are willing to implement to enable control systems - like religion. Religion carries baggage, and even those who divest themselves of the god(s) sometimes still carry the baggage. Included in most carried baggage are retributivism-based moral paradigms (Garden of Eden story), normative prescriptivity, and lethal attitudes towards those not in the fold. Buddhism can also be used in this way because it carries the same of functionally identical content. Hence Myanmar. Dogmas almost invariably prescribe their own survival. What islam does is get in your face with their dogma's expansionistic, world domination oriented elements (including the "war of numbers" mentality that informs them to treat women as breeding machines). People reflexively want to defend themselves from it, and seek the ability to muster strength in their own dogma's survival elements. I'm not saying this justifies using the horrid elements of buddhism to suppress islam in Myanmar, but I am saying this is an inevitable result in the modern day - and it is the result islam wants, because it allows its followers to use its own expansionistic elements most forcefully. Whether we will ever be able to unwind ourselves from the need/desire to control is an open question, but if we are to survive as a species, I suspect we must.

"Everything Is Permitted"

"Everything is Permitted"

How often have we heard theists proclaim that without God everything is permitted. Below is a short post that folks seemed to like, giving my response:

When we speak of "forbidden" or "proscribed" we must also ask "by whom?" Who is doing the forbidding/proscribing? Theists get in a big panic because atheism seems to be removing the ultimate forbidder/proscriber and in a sense that is true..., but it is only true of a vision of morality that requires some... ultimate forbidder/proscriber.

There are other visions of morality that do have those who do forbid/proscribe - indeed offer most, if not all, of the definitive qualities associated with morality. Secular morality sees morality as a human social enterprise, of humans, by humans and for humans. So, when we ask, "Forbidden by whom?" those who posit secular morality, without god, have a ready answer: everyone else.

So, no, atheism is not an excuse to do the forbidden. It is a reason to become more sophisticated about one's understanding of morality.
When someone asks you, "Was it an AK-47 or a MP5K you used to shoot the victim?" it is perfectly legitimate to say, "Your question is a leading question. I shot no one with anything, much less with one of two particular weapons."

When someone asks "What is the ultimate source of morality without god?" it is perfectly legitimate to say, "Your question is a leading question. It assumes morality must have an ultimate source. I can account for all the necessary features of morality without an ultimate source."

Morality is a tool for helping people live together in a social context. In many ways religion is anti-moral, since it relies on conflict against "the other" to polarize its populace into not living with others or sharing a social context with them.

The Seeming Good Intentions

I am seeing a fair number of "let people have their religion if it gives them comfort" posts and comments of late. Now I can see why this sounds appealing, but all of these are proceeding based on a false assumption - that the religious will reciprocate by letting us have our lack of belief. That is not how prescriptive dogma works. They will NOT reciprocate. That is the horrific lesson of history, repeated over and over and over and over ...

But if the understanding that the religious will NEVER leave us alone is not enough to sway you, let's take an example of someone being left to their faith when the flood waters are rising around their homes. So far, so good - if someone wants to die from stupidity, then that's their life. Body autonomy and all that. But what about when they are keeping their family from leaving as the waters rise?

Oh wait. That seemingly trivial example is exactly what is happening on the climate change and decimation of biodiversity front on the political stage. Gosh, darn, is it really true that the religious seek political power to impose their intellectual failures on others? Why, yes, they do. THAT is how prescriptive dogma works.

Prescriptive dogma is a psychological illness that must be dealt with before it kills us all - especially when it is a death-worshiping cult savagely pushing a belief (with gleeful anticipation no less) of the demise of everyone via some apocalyptic event. Make no mistake; all three of the Abrahamic trinity of holy horrors is just that death cult.

I have lived under the threat of the bomb all of my life and so have you. All it takes is one believer with their hands on the political football, lost in their grotesque high-mindedness, to make all of everyone's deliberations meaningless...

So, about Mike Pence and letting people have their idiotic religious beliefs ...

This cannot be stressed enough. All our lives are on the line!

Regressing Our Way to the Next Inflexible Dogma ...

The regressive left models itself after the very monstrous things we had to spend generations ridding ourselves of - prescriptive dogma in the guise of religious garbage.

Human societies, it seems, runs in stages over time. A dogma dominates, skeptical inquiry tears it down (for a brief instant there is actually hope for real freedom from dogma), and then a new dogma arise to replace the old.

The regressive left is striving to rid us of the benefits we gained through free and open inquiry, in the name of their "new" dogma. They aspire to be the next dominant dogma. This is why the regressive left appears to favour islam. They are modeling themselves after it imagining, just like every previous dominant dogma, that they are Right - this time. Just like the last time.

This is why the regressive left is regressive.

Dogma is the true enemy of humanity. Religion is merely open and obvious bigotry against humans in the name of this god or that god or this fluffy ideal. Currently, competing dogmas are ripping human societies apart, at a critical choose life or choose death moment in human history.

It seems we never learn.

Bidding Holy Days Good-Riddance

I do not celebrate any religious holidays.

I am a "from the cradle" atheist. Don't think my parents particularly enlightened though. It was just neglect, masquerading as "allowing choice."

I am from about 2 generations ago, and when I realized (in isolation - no internet at the time) the malicious and dehumanizing nature of religious dogma (and indeed all dogma), I began to see religious holidays as anti-human events intended to promote an anti-human agenda. I gave up celebrating them for that reason - they are anti-human symbols of anti-human mentalities.

Since that time, not celebrating hatred of humanity has become pretty much a defining part of who I am. It is unthinkable at this point that I should return to it. Unfortunately for me, I suppose, the next generation's crop of budding atheists came in the form of almost deprogrammed religious people, who still bore fond memories of religious holidays - and a prime topic became whether people should or should not celebrate. Some of the deep programming, it seems, remains.

I rarely speak in terms of "shoulds," so I was at a disadvantage against a huge number of atheists leaving their religions, and wanting to keep the old, good times alive, despite what they were symbols for. They moved into redefining holidays in their own terms or reclaiming them from religion B back for a better/nicer/kinder religion A or some other such rationalization. I always saw the proper approach as creating new celebrations based on humans rather than dogma.

Hell, even our "atheist" groups are mostly led by people who have only recently lost their faiths, so now we see most atheists carrying baggage from their earlier lives, which they try to inject into atheism. They suffer a cognitive dissonance about celebrating holidays that I do not. Of course this is sort of understandable, since religions routinely seek to assimilate any celebration into their dogmatic terms.

The latest "millennials" generation is even worse, having re-embraced extreme dogmatism in the form of social engineering. Because, you know, they have it all 100% right *this time.*

That I see it this way does not add to my popularity, even among atheists, and when I describe an atheist or humanist accepting a xmas present as being like a jew accepting a present wrapped in swastikas, that doesn't sit well with some. Most are still unsure whether religion is humane or not whereas I recognize religious charity as a mere PR campaign. It isn't charity at all and it isn't about humans at all - it's an indoctrination technique.

However, that said, that is how I see it, and I make no demands or claims on anyone else. Celebrate what you choose to. I never really had a family, so familial reasons do not apply to me, as they might to others.

I shall continue to raise a toast on Darwin Day or on Carl Sagan's birthday and hibernate during religious celebrations. That is my way, and it helps to maintain the integrity of who I am.

On Agnosticism and Dogmatic Atheism.

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is merely skepticism about one particular concept.

I am an agnostic atheist. I make no knowledge claims about a concept that is designed to defy evidence one way or the other, *and* I also don't believe in god(s) for lack of evidence, and the slippery concept involved.

Agnosticism is the skeptical heart of any scientific exploration - the leaving open of possibilities. Some would call that skepticism, but skepticism is the heart of both science and agnosticism. If you imagine there is not more room for exploration, exploration stops. What N. deGrasse Tyson called a perimeter of ignorance. Although he spoke specifically about God-belief, I suspect we can consider it also true of any claim or concept that puts further investigation out of bounds. I also include "knowledge" is that group of claims/concepts that halt inquiry.

Open and free inquiry is necessary, *NECESSARY*, to continued human development. Period. If you want to continue human development, then you *MUST* maintain a skeptical core that questions what you think you know. Fail in that and you fail yourself and everyone around you.

Dogmatic atheists are not useful in the continued exploration. For every dogmatic, exclusionary atheist, there are 20 or more dogmatic theists who are just as "certain" about their truth. The dogmatic atheist is a drain on our thought processes and a reversion into "belief = knowledge" garbage.

Agnosticism merely points at a particular concept and says,"We cannot know this." They are simply correct about "knowing" about the God-concept. Sometimes you have to point at the flaws of a concept to start accounting for it. More thoughtful agnostics seem to do this, as do I.

Those who are interested in science will recognize that need as well, understanding that hypotheses must have empirical referents or they become matters of wild inference.

I don't have a problem with someone not believing in god(s) - I don't believe in god(s) either - but asserting it as a knowledge claim is the same idiot mistake theists have made for ages. We do not advance the subject matter that way, and it plays right into the theists' hands, portraying atheism as just another belief system.

We must rise above that. Agnosticism/skepticism allows us the room we need to do so. Dogmatic atheism is just more of the same hunkering down, entrenched in irrational and enthusiastic quasi-certainty.

I am not defending a "fence sitting." I am defending the possibility of inquiry. Stop relying on jaundiced soundbites you hide behind and fucking think!

We need skepticism. We need the recognition of fallibility. Agnosticism is merely skepticism about one particular concept.

Polarization

Polarization is the theme of the moment in our culture. Calm, rational, critical thought is falling aside in the face of the screaming. Atheists are not immune to its twisted allure, it seems.

One of the sad things is it's almost an inevitable outcome. Religious people proclaim their "certainty" at the top of their lungs and with absolute confidence, and many atheists feel the need to do the same just to be heard. That's part of how theists "win." To fight them we risk becoming them, unless we are very, very careful. What was that quote about battling not with monsters again...?

Reclaim Our Humanity

The very first thing we must do in terms of human values is to reclaim our qualities from the wretched dogma of the religious. For too long we have let them hijack and redefine (to suit their purposes) our finest qualities.

Are you in "love?" Not unless it's "through God" say christians. "Peace" is achieved only after islamic conquest of everything everywhere.

Our dedications to each other are enshrouded in religious trappings - so much so, the celebrations aren't even about we humans at all anymore. This shit needs to stop. It is one of the many ways religion is harmful, and why I am an anti-theist. I see the harm.

We need to reclaim our humanity.

Does anyone have a favourite human quality that religion has hijacked and redefined? My favourite is morality. They took what should be an opportunity to continuously elevate people to a higher standard and reduced it to a retributivistic punish - Punish - PUNISH!

Steps to Becoming Anti-Dogma

Now, please understand that these are not commands. I am not trying to proselytize here. It's is merely one route upon many possible ones, and my steps reflect , in part, my journey through philosophy as well as as a skeptic.

Step#1:
Move away from your religion. See the bullshit for what it is - become, through one or more phases, an atheist. It's OK to use a different word for it. Don't let anyone define you for you.

Step#2:
Recognize the harm of your religion. Be careful, this part is fraught with possible error. There will be a real temptation to entertain the notion that minorities can do no wrong, and so support other, minority, religions regardless of that religion's content. Millennials get caught on this one all the time, it seems. Of course the newer not-necessarily religious ideologies are pushing this craziness.

Step#3:
Recognize the harm common to all religions (become an anti-theist). Yes, this is the definition of an anti-theist. It's not about being anti theists, despite the wails of the people who oppose you. Instead, understand that they are victims of indoctrination and/or brainwashing.

Step#4:
Start digging deeper (intense skeptical inquiry), until you hit the prime content of any religion, which is to subjugate humans beneath dogma, beneath a narrative. The primary weapon for this is prescriptive normative "morality," which has no basis.

Step#5:
Proceed through the nihilist phase until you realize that you are still defining things as the religious want you to. Leave the religious definitions in the dust. Start learning and developing more human centered definitions, and leave nihilism in the dust of learned, necessary transitions, and overcome experiences.

Step#6:
Start exploring all the new potentials and possibilities of life post-dogma.

Building Our Understandings

(On Something Other than Religious Dogma)

I've mentioned this before, but after watching some Kurzweil talks, I am convinced it should be mentioned again. We are already running into severe difficulties with humans failing to keep up with an exponentially growing rate of technological development.

What we need, and have not done enough to develop, are an interlocked system of social programs designed expressly with the intent of helping people develop, not just the intellectual, but also the emotional tools and understandings to adapt to this rate of change.

The last time I spoke of this, I framed it as a kind of semi-comical "new religion" approach, but I now realize that putting this in the hands of religion is entirely antithetical to the intent of people adapting to advancing technology. Religion is all about stagnating and control - an imposed stasis of human minds, capacities, and attitudes. Rather than seeing advancing technology (and even learning) in a positive, exciting light, religion strives to divorce us from these exciting changes and isolate us into the poverty of inflexible, unchanging dogma. Religion is not the answer. It really never has been, and has locked us in a vicious mental/emotional stasis.

We need a new kind of thinking than anything we've had in the past, and it begins with leaving behind dogma, not just religious dogma, but dogma itself. It takes a clarity of understanding about how dogma works and how to counter it intellectually, *and* it also requires an emotional shift from certainty to skeptical thought that allows for a world of constant change to be emotionally comprehensible to all individual humans - thus allowing us to more easily adapt to constant change in a way that allows us to be active participants in our societies with a positive view to the future.

This is where skepticism can shine, as a positive force for future development, not just of our scientific understandings, but also of our emotional and social growth throughout our ever-increasing lifespans.

"How Does an Atheist Not Become a Sociopath?"

How Does an Atheist not become a Sociopath?

Please accept my apologies for the length of this. I have broken it up into rough sections to help with that. Please consider this essay a work in progress. There is much organizing and fleshing out to be done, but here are some beginnings to a secular morality.

Root of All Evil

Unlike some, I do think religion is the root of all evil, if "evil" can be said to mean anything in the real world. Religious moral philosophy, and this is true even outside the trinity of monotheistic holy horrors (the Abrahamic religions), makes basic assumptions about the human animal that not merely jaundice the view of others, but also the view of oneself. Internalizing the idea of humanity as an intrinsically evil monster barely restrained by means of internalized normative chains is about as disgusting an idea (and self-fulfilling a prophesy) as it is possible to conceive. Religions are actually in the business of convincing us that we are evil and need their metaphysical bullshit to avoid becoming raping, thieving, murdering, monsters. They are in the business of creating "evil" persons by emphatically telling us we want to be evil and that we necessarily are evil. If that marketing of concept of self and other hatred isn't "evil," what is?

And this ties in with the supposed "Where do you get your morals from?" critique - as if morality is impossible without religion. Now, given that religious people have been indoctrinated into thinking they are intrinsically evil and so are the rest of us, the "critique" becomes plainly obvious for the error it is. But this is only part of the story...

Extra-Human "Morality"

The religious, especially theistic, concept of morality is, to be perfectly straightforward, alien, bizarre and strange, incoherent and incomprehensible and worst all, perfectly inhuman. perhaps I should back that up...

The one rule from the Old Testament any of the miscellaneous offshoots cannot and will not rid themselves of is the primacy of god. Contrary to common opinion there are some advantages to studying philosophy - here's one of them. It gives on a sense of the history of maelstrom of ideas that humanity has entertained, a kind of time line, and it provides a context for the debates over the overarching conflicts of ideas. One of these is the primacy of god or humanity (god-centered vs human-centered). This is not a debate that started just yesterday afternoon over a Bunsen burner. There is a long tradition and history of god-centered thinking, and the theistic, in their "moral" righteousness, have worked very hard to quell and eradicate human-centered thinking. For the most part they have been successful until the modern era, in which we are seeing humanism rise again.

What does it mean to be god-centered, especially with respect to morality? We often hear phrases like, "There can be no morality without god, or "God IS love," and we think very little about what statements like these imply. What they imply is that we, as humans, have zero capacity for any kind of morality and just to drive the point home, the word morality is defined such that an extra-human agency is required for anything we can call moral to be exhibited. In many cases, religious folks actually conceive of moral agency as god working through a monstrous construct - namely us, as if we are merely conduits of some sort. So, to be god-centered is to dismiss any and all potential for humanity with regards to realms like morality.

So, god is intrinsically moral and humanity is intrinsically non-moral. Given this kind of understanding, we can begin to truly appreciate the force of the "where do you get your morality from?" critique. At the heart of it lies the conditioned assumption that all humanity is, by necessity, intrinsically without morality. Hence, I say "utterly alien and strange" because, according to the god-centered religious view, we, as humans, are innately estranged from morality.

As a side note: I refer to this as alien and strange because not only is the religious concept of morality defined as separate and apart from humanity, but it corresponds with almost no concept of morality as the word is used in natural language. Theologians are speaking a radically different language than the rest of us...

Human Morality

The question is, is it possible to conceive of morality by some understanding other than this alien and strange misanthropic view? Although humanist thinking has been under the sacrificial dagger for millennia, we are beginning to posit alternative understandings. Some are presenting concepts like weak-sympathy based on evolutionary biology, social necessity and other ideas. Some of us are throwing out the idea of intrinsic evil altogether and considering beginning fresh with a pro-human, social growth and learning concept of humanity. Here's a question to consider: if people did not conceive of themselves as innately evil, reveling in evil, desiring to be evil - as religion tells us we are - what kinds of effect would that staggeringly different mindset have on human behaviour. One skeptic has, as a tagline in a signature, "The default position is to punch the other guy in the face and steal his stuff." Now is this necessarily so, or is it a case of it becoming so because we have been convinced it is so? It would seem, on reflection, that pure naivety and pure misanthropy are extremes that may need tempering. Is it possible to account for deviance while still assuming, as a base-line, that deviance is the exception, not the rule? If you think not, then why do you think this?

Accounting for Deviance

Let's take the worst possible secular case - let's assume for the moment that we are nasty and brutish critters in need of controls on our behaviour. We can institute various means of instituting controls and they can come in versions that needn't be religious or non-secular. Social norms backed by rule of law are serviceable secular bases for moral understanding (assuming one does not specifically define morality beyond that realm) in that they provide reference beyond oneself. The primary traditionally understood functions of morality, prescriptivity and universalizability, are accounted for.

External Referents

Now this, it seems to me is critical; the idea that morality be a reference to something beyond the self. On this the religious and I seem to agree, but usually only in appearance. I say this because an understanding of morality that posits a source that is unverifiable and known only through revelation or, worse, subject to the whims of individual conscience, is to effectively deny external referent. It places morality entirely within a private mental realms, with only the illusion of external reference. In this way, the religious are actually guilty of the "flaw" they accuse atheists of! Really. We aren't the necessary sociopaths - they are, because their external referent is not an external referent at all.

Evaluating God

A local philosopher pointed out something interesting at the last freethinkers meet-up here in Saskatoon. If one cherry-picks from the Bible, one is not, in fact submitting to a higher moral authority, but one is, instead, actually referring to one's own moral standards to evaluate the Bible's content. Seems an "interesting and contradictory use" of an absolute moral external referent, doesn't it? Think about that for a moment...

The "where do you get your morality from?" critique actually has much of its force in being an accusation that atheists are refusing to look beyond themselves for their idea of morality. Now, first we must concede that it is possible to look beyond the self for a source of morality - even the religious must accept that or their idea of god qua moral source is meaningless. Can it be done in a non-religious way? Are there possible external sources of morality beyond the self that do not involve god? Why, yes, of course, there are, even if they are not absolutist. We are raised in a context of social norms which serve almost perfectly well as a moral realm. The definition of self, itself, is a very secular function.

So, Morality From Where?

So, to answer the question, I respond "From the people around me and the negotiated social context I live and participate in. Because, you see, to disregard the people around me and my social context, is to remove humanity and/or external referents from consideration, and if anything is to be considered sociopathic, surely it is removing human considerations from our ideas of morality which is precisely what god-centered, religious stipulations of morality do." We speak of human knowledge as growing and developing, in the sciences and in understanding, but not in the realm of morality. We seem to assume that we know the moral truths and that there is no room for growth, nothing we might not understand, that we have access to the Truth (capital T) and that there is absolutely nothing more to be learned. How strange an assumption this is. How else are we going to be able to progress and learn about morality if we cut off negotiations as a matter of absolutist policy? Doesn't it seem more rational to keep the lines of communication open? Is closing off all conversation what is considered the antithesis of sociopathic? How strange a twist in thinking...

Now, let's refer back to the idea of humanity as intrinsically evil monster needing to be controlled. Is it, do you think, more moral for people to hold a morality based on threat of violence or denial of self-interest, or for morality to based in mutual consent in a negotiated social context? Depends upon your definition of morality, I suppose. Still, one cannot be surprised if those advocating absolutism (while effectively making their morality perfectly subjective by means of denying external referents) demand a stipulation of morality that denies negotiation. Is that not practically the definition of sociopathic?

Does this all seem terribly Pollyanna to you, assuming that humans are not innately evil and thinking we might be a kinder, gentler people if we cast away the assumption of intrinsic evil? Well, is it possible that the Pollyanna interpretation is a function of your upbringing? Does it seem odd to suggest that the kind of people we are is greatly influenced by who and what we think we are? Maybe that's a centuries-long, generations-deep history of absolutist indoctrination, institutionalized and all-pervasive talking.

Anything is Permitted

We often hear moral absolutists claim make this claim about secular and /or relativistic morality. I'm sorry - permitted by whom? If we lose the absolute moral guide, then the context and meaning of the question is radically changed. The idea seems to be that without god there is something doing some sort of active permitting, or that there is not anything refusing permission. Consider that for a moment; remember my claim that religious philosophy posits us as intrinsically evil, needing constraint. In this context "permitted" seems to mean "unconstrained." Permission is a social construct, the word loses meaning without a social context. Are the religious really claiming that that without god we don't have a social context anymore? That is absurd in the extreme.

As an aside, anyone who wishes to refute my interpretation of that will likely find themselves confirming my claim previous that the religious are speaking a radically different language than the rest of us. Have fun.

So, even assuming we need constraints, or at the very least need to account for deviance, are we to say there are none without god? Ridiculous. We have societal norms and laws, whole realms of reasonable expectations both of ourselves and of others. Yes, you just read the "Golden Rule" there, although phrased in an analytic ethics kinda way.

How does an atheist not become a sociopath?

An atheist, like anyone else, avoids becoming a sociopath in the same way anyone avoids becoming a sociopath - by engaging and participating in a human social context. I posit that atheists are actually less likely to be sociopaths because they do not have a ready made extra-human moral philosophy with which to discard any mere secular concerns. We (atheists) also need not define humanity as intrinsically evil and need not deny the human meaning of morality in favour of some inherently alien and strange supernatural stipulation.