Is Jeffrey Tayler Correct in His "Atheist Manifesto"?

Jeffrey Tayler, an editor at The Atlantic, has proposed a provocative set of ways atheists can "stand up for themselves". He calls it a "credo for atheists", posed as a list of "concrete responses to faith-based affronts, to religious presumption, or what Hitchens called clerical bullying.'"   I tend to see it more as a kind of atheist manifesto.  As Mr. Tayler puts it:

"The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others."

Which is a point  to which I'd have no objection. In general, I'm quite willing to leave people to their own devices and beliefs - whether it's a claim that God is all around them and helping them, or a claim that vitamins are useless garbage- but then, if it is brought up in a public arena I feel quite free to add in my two cents, and provide a rigorous debate. Of course, some nitwits can't be debated because they lack the neurons to do so intelligently, such as those who insist the agnostic atheist "is an oxymoron like an honest thief". Uh no, Einstein, it is a legitimate variation of atheist, first defined by George Smith in his book, Atheism: The Case Against God, viz. p. 9:

The agnostic atheist maintains any supernatural realm is inherently unknowable by the human mind. And further - not only is the nature of any supernatural being unknowable, but the existence of any supernatural being is unknowable as well

So we leave out semi-educated dunderheads because their IQ and their knowledge base are too low to justify extended interaction.


Anyway, let's examine Tayler's list and see if it is possible for the rational person to find concordance:
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Herewith, some common religious pronouncements and how atheists can respond to them.

1.  “Let’s say grace!”

No, let’s not. When you’re seated at the family dinner table and a relative suggests clasping hands, lowering heads and thanking the Lord, say “No thanks. I’m an atheist. So I’ll opt out.” Nonbelievers have every right to object when being asked to take part in superstitious rituals; in fact, if children are present, they are morally obliged to do so. Courteously refusing to pray will set an example of rational behavior for the young, and contribute to furthering the atheist zeitgeist.
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I completely agree with this take, and I also concur it's the atheist's bounden duty to spoil the expectation of uniform compliance at a meal if a Xtian unthinkingly -or deliberately - demands all those present say grace. The atheist who complies because he doesn't wish to ruffle feathers is basically a wimp and not fit to use call himself an atheist. Maybe he is a pretend atheist, or poseur.  Of course, the refusal needs to be done courteously, no one in his right mind is going to say "F*ck off, bozo!" But to refuse to do it is to become an accomplice to the expectation that Christianity dominates the nation and all minorities must kowtow to its themes and preferences.


2.  “Religion is a personal matter. It’s not polite to bring it up.”

No, religion is fundamentally collective, and since time immemorial has served societies in fostering union, but also in inciting xenophobia and violence (especially against “unchaste” women and “impure” minorities), often on a mass scale. Nonbelievers need to further advance the cause of rationality by discussing it openly; doing so, as uncomfortable as it may be at times, will help puncture the aura of sanctity surrounding faith and expose it for what it is.
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Again, I agree. Religion  (and faith) receives too much passive gravitas by no one challenging its presumptions. One of these is the social script that we are all to behave as good little do -be's and never bring it up for debate or discussion. On the contrary, all religions need to be held open to critical review and examination, no matter what the setting....dinner parties, family gatherings, picnics, whatever.....if the opportunity for robust engagement presents itself.


3.  “You’re an atheist? I feel sorry for you.”

No, please rejoice for me. I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven.

Again, this is a Xtianoid fancy that needs to be fought vigorously. Most high and mighty Xtianoids believe they're superior to atheists because they've already been granted "a seat at the Lord's table" before they even croak.  But as is my wont, all I tell them is they have purchased an afterlife insurance policy that is probably useless. They've suppressed their will and subjugated their reason, as well as sacrificed felicity, all to gain a 'pass' when the lights go out - not realizing that when death arrives the lights really do go out. (Think of the last time you had general anesthesia in surgery).

If the Christian foolishly plays the Pascal wager game, I have an answer for that too. He may claim that I ought to play the wager because if I lose (i.e. cast aside my disbelief and assume afterlife reality exists) I win by gaining heaven, whereas if I maintain unbelief I lose my eternal "soul".  But Philosopher Michael Martin actually turns the originally proffered Pascalian choice on its head in arriving at an alternative view of the Wager, based on a negative deity he calls the “Perverse Master” which (he imagines) acts in consistent contradiction to the “just God” of orthodox Christians.

For example, rather than rewarding belief or faith in itself, especially if such belief is predicated on fear of torment, this entity punishes it for any supernatural being (including itself) while rewarding disbelief with eternal bliss. (Clearly this “PM” prefers not to have millions of “yes men” surrounding it, who’ve only espoused belief to save their sorry hides!)

Apart from this, what does that say about the presumed Christian deity? That it would accept a craven human’s false belief (to save his or her eternal ass) over a courageous atheist’s integrity? If indeed it does so (as the Christian debaters imply) it is nothing but a mere cosmic joke, a petty tyrant too insecure in its being to tolerate unbelief. Yet it would accept a “yes man” in a nano-second!

Pascal's wager is bunk because Pascal rigged the medieval dice and weighted them -or loaded them- in his favor to make the 'wager' come out the way he wanted, while foreclosing all other alternatives.

4.  “If you’re an atheist, life has no purpose.”


This is another load of  religious bull pockey  and really discloses the religionist for being an existential sissy. He is so bereft of balls and vision that he has to formulate an invisible Being to direct his every waking hour  toward some "higher purpose", as opposed to forging his own purpose. I always laugh at this sort of baloney, because it definitely shows how religion has eviscerated people's brains. The problem for those who believe this BS is that can't fathom in a million years how a person could independently craft and direct his life apart from some superimpose hypothetical plan. In many ways, they remind me of the mammoth Powerball winners who, though they win $200 million, state they plan to stay at their boring ass jobs to "have a purpose". They are too pathetic to use their imaginations (and money) to travel, see other cultures, or expand their learning and vision.



5.  “If you abolish religion, nothing will stop people from killing, raping and looting.”

No, killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction. The catalogue of notorious barbarities – wars and massacres, acts of terrorism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc.
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Again, it's amazing how many believers still bring this idiocy up when they ought to know - if they're the least bit educated - that human morality evolved with human culture, it didn't start from religion.
This sort of communitarian moral order became endemic as agriculture subsumed hunter-gatherer culture and human communities  became more organized and interdependent. It was this interdependence that formed the basis of settled societal laws, legal systems . No supernatural law or commandment ordained specific moral or legal behavior. Instead it was the conscious and deliberate recognition that the promotion of the welfare of others was directly linked to the one's own welfare. Compromise others' security, and you compromise your own.  This was embodied in Hammurabi's code in the words,

 

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Which "Golden Rule" or ethic of reciprocity became the basis for nearly all ancient, post-Bronze Age ethics. Incredibly, many Christians actually think Christ spoke these words!  The point is, a coherent morality pre-existed the Bible and Christianity and hence the claim made by the Christian is patented malarkey. I'd be more worried about a Christian going ape shit and slaughtering dozens of people, because "my God told me to do it".

 

6.  “Nothing can equal the majesty of God and His creation.”

Humbug! The universe is majestic enough with its many wondrous sights and objects, i.e.:


Neither of which can be said to have been "created" other than by natural, physical means, i.e. electro-magnetic and gravitational forces acting in concert with basic thermodynamics to shape the final result.


The point? I can immediately access natural majesty just by taking my telescope out on a clear night and observing an object like the Orion Nebula or M13, the globular cluster in Hercules.  I don't need to invoke the phony construct of an invisible Being  to relate to the objects seen.

7.  “It is irrational to believe that the world came about without a creator.”

No, it is irrational to infer an invisible omnipotent being from what we see around us. The burden of proof lies on the one making supernatural claims,
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Again, Tayler is correct. Besides which a number of papers, research have been done (all the total embodiments of RATIONALITY) to show the cosmos incepted from a quantum vacuum.

Those interested can reference my detailed debunking of this argument here:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/09/debunking-anders-primary-cause-fantasy.html

One of the more hilarious analogies used by fundie dunderheads and dopes  to justify their faith in an unseen creator is: "if a plane is flying in the sky you can't see the pilot but you know someone is flying it". Uh, yeppers, Jethroe, but planes are PHYSICAL objects and pilots are physical (and biological) too in order to operate the aviation controls! BUT you're using a PHYSICAL analogy to justify faith in a supernatural entity, you dope!

8.  “I will pray for you to see the light.”

ROTFL!  

Typical palaver from supercilious, smug know nothings who mostly: 1) don't accept evolution, 2) think the Sun is "young" and 3) believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and 4) believe the fundie dope (Jason Lisle) who professes such BS is an "astrophysicist" .   If this constitutes the "light' they see I will happily remain beyond their "light"!


9.  “If you’re wrong about God, you go to hell. It’s safer to believe.”

Pascal’s wager survives even among people who have never heard the name of the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician.

And I already dealt with the wager earlier under No. 3. Again, expressing "faith" merely to save one's ass is the coward's way out. If belief isn't held sincerely but merely as an afterlife insurance policy one really doesn't deserve to call himself a man, certainly not an honorable man. He's a sniveling little skunk coward trying to use his "faith" as a ticket to a safe afterlife destination not realizing there's nothing that comes after you croak.  He's even more of sniveling skunk if he himself cowardly uses his faith shtick to try to browbeat others when he himself doesn't demonstrate the first principles of being a decent human being.



10.  “Religion is of great comfort to me, especially in times of loss. Too bad it isn’t for you.”

George Bernard Shaw noted that, “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”
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Which I can't do much to exceed in terms of analogy. Besides, the existentialist isn't in need of "comfort". He doesn't regard the world as a giant 'comforter' to wrap himself in, but rather as an entity to be examined, scrutinized to explain by scientific principles. Loss, well it's to be expected. Life is a pattern of loss, and to believe one can surmount it or avoid it is magical thinking. Better to deal with it on the realistic plane than a magical, supernatural one which only allows false comfort.


11.  “As you age and face death, you will come to need religion.”

The truth, hard as it is for many to accept, is that with age comes a clearer, no nonsense grasp of reality and more likely becoming more atheistic, not less. By the time one is 70 he certainly ought to have put behind the things of a child, and that includes false beliefs in fairies, Santa Claus and everlasting lives - post death.

As Taylor aptly puts it:

Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation.



12.  “You have no right to criticize my religious beliefs.”

Wrong. Such a declaration aims to suppress free speech and dialogue about a matter influential in almost every aspect of our societies.  No one has a right to make unsubstantiated assertions, or vouch for the truthfulness of unsubstantiated assertions on the basis of “sacred” texts, without expecting objections from thinking folk.

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Again, Tayler is totally correct. If the believer keeps the religious beliefs to him-herself, that's a different matter. But once they are publicly advanced then all bets are off, and it's game on. I will give as good I get, and I hope you are up to it. And that means a lot of rational criticism, unless you profess to be like ol' "Pastor Mike" who used to think he was above criticism  - and his KJV carried the solemn word of God (as opposed to the ravings of ancient madmen, lunatics and unethical copyists) Of course, one with the ethics and morality of a groveling pig (but who uses the fig leaf of faith and religion to disguise it) would do the things that would only make such a pig proud: i.e. like proposing a "National Atheist Registry" based on a sex offender registry!


13.  “Jesus was merciful.”

If he existed – and there is still, after centuries of searching, no proof that he did – he was at times a heartless prophet of doom for the sinners he supposedly loved, commanding those who failed to give comfort to the poor to “depart . . . ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
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Here, I have to correct Taylor as one must be totally aware of how words were often put into Yeshua's mouth by the unethical copyists I noted above. Ehrman in his book ‘Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why’, documents numerous copyist errors and multitudes involving deliberate mistranslation. As he observes (p. 209):

“The King James version is filled with places in which the translators rendered a Greek text derived ultimately from Erasmus’ edition, which was based on a single twelfth century manuscript that is one of the worst that we now have available to us!”

Oxford scholar Geza Vermes (The Authentic Gospel Of Jesus) adds even more examples of how numerous passages represent words never uttered  by Yeshua, but put into his mouth. So  - I take most of the quotes that Tayler claims  are "vile" in the NT, to issue from the vile minds (and hands) of copyists and deliberate mistranslators, not from Yeshua himself. Having said that, the issue of Yeshua being "merciful" is still irrelevant - because the same passages that expose mistranslation, errors, also disclose he was no God-man. He was an ordinary flesh and blood human Rabbi, but with charisma and genuine heartfelt sympathy for fellow humans. So, yes, in this sense he was "merciful" but not in the sense of acting as a sacrificial deity (via crucifixion)  for the expiation of "sins" to secure "heaven" for one and all.


14.  ”You can’t prove there’s no God.”

Correct, at least epistemologically speaking. Reasonable atheists, “New” and old, would not argue with this. Richard Dawkins, for example, has told audiences that he is nominally an agnostic, since proving that something does not exist is impossible.
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But the crux of the matter, not brought out by Tayler  (at least under this header), is that it is always the positive claimant who is obliged to provide proof for his existence claim. Since the God-ist or theist is making the positive claim, i.e. adding to reality by postulating a supernatural mega-Being, it is HIS duty to prove its existence, not the atheist's to disprove it.

In the same way, if I postulate that invisible aliens from Tau Ceti inhabit the city of Manitou Springs, I have to prove it!  I would not be daft enough to think the good citizens of Manitou are obliged to disprove my claim!

It is unfathomable that Theists and religionists can't seem to get this into their thick noggins, but there it is. The problem always comes because before the debate is initialized the one making the actual claim isn't usually identified. This is extremely important to do, thus - as in a scholastic debate - you have to first identify which person speaks for the "affirmative" (the claimant) and who is speaking for the negative. Invariably it is always the atheist who take the negative, which means the proof must issue from the affirmative (existent claimant) side.


15.  “My religion is true for me.”

A soppy, solipsistic and juvenile declaration and cop-out bordering on the delusional and contradicting Christianity and Islam, neither of which recognize the other, and both of which espouse universalist pretensions. You will not find a scientist who will say, “quantum physics is true for me.”
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Again, Tayler is spot -on and I would only add here that we need to note the post-modern overtones of this type of statement, "true for me", which really says nothing of import.  The reason is that truth is only significant if universal. Thus, asserting the "Sun is extremely hot ionized plasma" is a universal truth in the context of its temperatures and substance relative to human experience. Same with asserting "the stars are distant objects".

While this sort of solipsistic statement is indeed vacuous, it's at least preferable to the fundie bigot or bully who loudly and brashly proclaims HIS truth must apply to all, and by god if you don't accept 'You is going to Hell, boy'!   Sadly, this 52-cards short of a full deck goober doesn't grasp that he's conflating a truth with his own twisted, personal belief.

16.  “Don’t take everything in the Bible literally.”

Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on “revealed truths”) literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for it.Pastor
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I will also add to this by saying it allows those who profess to take the good book literally, i.e. fundies, to weasel their way out of any debates by invoking "interpretation" and "hermeneutics" when convenient - e.g. trying to repel claims of biblical contradictions. But as I have repeatedly noted, they can't have their cake and eat it. If they therefore profess the bible is inerrant and that it must be taken literally, they can't also invoke "interpretation" because literalness is mutually exclusive with  textual analysis or hermeneutics.

That said, we can't expect extreme pseudo-religionists, especially argumentative fundies, to "play by the rules". Like robbers, brigands and other n'er do wells they will feel it their "right" to use their book any way they want to try to get the better of Materialists, atheists.

The problem for them is that we know what they're up to, and most intelligent observers do as well.

So, bottom line, with a few tweaks Tayler's points make a nice Atheist Manifesto, or at least a first approximation to one.
            

Even IF Hell Did Exist - It's Nothing to Worry about!

Image from a Christian fundie's blog showing an atheist burning up in "hell". A nice cartoon rendition, but hardly plausible!


All right, let's concede (though I already showed its logical improbability and incoherence), e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/03/hell-has-been-disproven-get-over-it.html

that the fundies are half right, and some kind of "hell" awaits all those terrible unbelievers that refuse to be saved. Do we have anything to worry about, even if this "hell" is somehow around in the after life?

I argue here, NO! And for emphatic rational reasons, which can be traced to the believers' own bible! (Including the KJV)

First, even if it does exist there can't be any "fires" such as depicted in the image above from a fundie's blog, showing an atheist burning up. Fire constitutes a physical, thermodynamic plasma which cannot exist in any supernatural realm. Yes, some plasmas can reach nearly one trillion degrees, but they can't exist in any supernatural realm or in terms of a putatively surviving consciousness even IF the afterlife realm is supra-physical and not supernatural. If supra-physical only quantum waves would prevail, and these couldn't support anything as macroscopically extensive as "fire" or "burning". Indeed, even if one were to put his pinky finger into the Sun's 2 million K corona, he'd not be burned because the corona is essentially a vacuum with almost no density. Plasma must be sufficiently dense to impart a burn! This would be reinforced in a post-death quantal energy realm.

Thus, we may emphatically rule out any kind of "burning", though I do concede it makes for a colorful form of scare mongering. (Note: some fundies insist the fires are "supernatural" as is the "burning" but they've never explained precisely how this manifests, nor even proven a "soul" for it to manifest can exist!)

Second, the believers' own good Book discloses that if it does exist, it cannot be "everlasting" or eternal. So, worst case scenario, we're there just for a bit - which makes it more analogous to the Catholics' purgatory.

Bear with me.

The Greek for "everlasting punishment" in Matthew 25:46 is "kolasin aionion." Kolasin is a noun in the accusative form, singular voice, feminine gender and means "punishment, chastening, correction, to cut-off as in pruning a tree to bear more fruit." Meanwhile, "Aionion" is the adjective form of "aion," in the singular form and means "pertaining to an eon or age, an indeterminate period of time..

Critical examination discloses the Bible speaks of five "aions"(minimum) and perhaps many more. If there were "aions" in the past, it must logically mean that each one of them has ended! When one uses terms such as "past", "present" or "future" he's no longer referring to anything that's everlasting because the latter concept admits of no temporal distinctions!

The New Testament writers spoke of "the present wicked aion" which ended during that very generation.

Obviously then it was followed by another "aion"-e.g. the "aion" in which we presently live, which will be followed by a future aion.The point? If there are "aions"past, present and to come, it must mean that aions don't last and the one we live in will also end. Thus, these "aions" are in no way never-ending or everlasting.

There are also verses describing "the consummation of the aions" (from which eons is derived) showing that each "aion" (nee, eon) ends, hence again can't be eternal!

Other notable examples:

-"the coming eon" (Matt.10:30, Luke 18:30)

-"the present wicked eon" (Gal.1:4)

-"the oncoming eons" (future) (Eph.2:7)

-"the conclusion of the eon " (present) (Mt.13:39,40)

-"the secret concealed from the eons" (past) (Eph.3:9)

Obviously, the Greek word "aion" transliterated "eon" cannot mean "eternal." A study into the Greek of the Biblical period and before will bear this out. Thus, Matthew 25:46 which embodies the Greek, "kolasin aionion", cannot mean "eternal punishment" but rather a "temporary punishment" or "temporary chastening.

Thus, even IF Matthew 25:46 does refer to a real, putatively active "Hell" it can't be "everlasting, only temporary only. Since "Aionion" is the adjective of the noun "aion", then this argument applies to ALL forms, passages, words that contain these words, no exception.

Hence, we must conclude that either: a) Matthew 25:46 is a bogus later addition, or b) Matthew 25:46 represents the deliberate, fraudulent alteration of an original text in which the Greek forms were changed to reflect an "eternal" as opposed to non-eternal duress or punishment.In either case, the hellfire fundies are either liars or ignorant, take your pick.

What form might the "chastening" take if any? I suspect from exegetical analysis it could take different forms according to WHO is chastened, and it may not be all one-sided. That is, the assumption that only atheists are to be chastised and not Christian bible bangers.

For example, I believe a Christian Fundie bible banger will face chastisement if he cops to a belief in "being saved" purely to save his hide. The Power that Be, assuming it exists, would likely reincarnate this fundie as a poor, starving African and make him live out an extra existence in rank poverty and in a different religion (Islam, or some African tribal cult) to learn religious humility and dump the exceptionalism.

The mirror chastisement might apply for a head strong or belligerent atheist. He might be born again as a Christian fundie who is also forced to learn all their bollocks and blather, including biblical inerrancy. By the time he's exhausted that life, he's mastered at least some respect for what the captive fundies have to endure.

I also note that rebirth into a temporary new life that is more humbling, chastening and deprivating compared to what one had, is a kind of ideal "aion-ic" punishment which would likely meet the temporal requirements implied in Matthew 25:46.

My point is, even if some punishment awaits humans, it won't be anywhere as horrific as the crazed fundies claim, nor will it last forever!

Myths About Atheists (2)

We now continue looking at more myths - apart from the one illustrated in the graphic - which assumes atheists are all unforgiving "grumps".

3. Most criminals and insane are atheists

In a way, this is derivative from the preceding myth. After all, if one doesn’t adhere to a God, it’s possible s/he has no morals and may be criminal or insane because of it. I used to think this had only a small following until I accidentally got a glimpse of Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show(The Situation: aired on June 23, 2005 under the segment header “Doctors.”), in which he presented survey statistics that disclosed a majority of physicians “believed in God.” He acknowledged (to an atheist guest or at least someone playing Devil’s Advocate) that this was a “good thing” since otherwise doctors might think they were gods.

Leaving this foolishness out, since the existence of a single, uniform deity hasn’t yet been proven or even minimally demonstrated, he then went on to assert it was a good thing for people in general to think someone was “looking down on them” since otherwise: Who knew what they would do?

I refer to this as the “Big Daddy in the Sky” motif, since it’s predicated on an infinite version of Celestial “Homeland Security” where each human is tracked every second, every minute in every thing he or she does. It’s also totally preposterous, apart from being insulting, debasing and childish. Certainly, from a rational point of view, anyone who avoids wrongdoing because of fear of being “caught by Cosmic Daddy” has a much more primitive and degenerate morality that an upstanding atheist who simply acts decently because he believes all humans merit respect and basic tolerance.

One can query why any God worth Its salt would accept such a loser into his “Heaven.” I mean, this person isn’t obeying out of innate love of God, but because s/he fears getting caught and ending up in the eternal barbecue pit! Is there a real case to be made here for the divine to embrace cynical, exploitative cowards?

But let’s return to this “Homeland Security of God” racket. Despite Tucker Carlson’s childish TV slot endorsement, it actually has had a long history in the Roman Catholic Church. That is, early on in Church history “sins of thought” were incorporated into the “mortal sin” transgression matrix. The architects of these “sins of thought” pointed to a biblical verse for validation, noting that even Christ said that a man who merely looked at a woman with lust in his heart had committed fornication, at least in thought.

From here it was but one step to introduce the ubiquitous “impure thoughts” as mortal sins in their own right, meaning that if one entertained them then died in a sudden accident his (or her) soul was as Hell bound as if actual illicit, premarital sex acts had transpired.

To reinforce this point, a former Franciscan priest named Emmett McLoughlin once cited statistics to show Catholics were more preponderant in mental hospitals than other religious populations. He noted that “sins of thought” were at least partly to blame for this. (McLoughline, Emmett, 1962: Let the Statistics Tell Their Tragic Story, in Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church, Lyle Stuart Books, New York, pp. 189-214.) Thus, a Catholic teen that entertains “impure thoughts” knows he can as easily be earmarked for the eternal toaster as if he had actually committed fornication.

The beauty of “thought sins” is they open the gateway to perpetual mind control. As each xxx thought registers it becomes the 800 lb. gorilla in the room (your mind). You try your best to ignore thinking of the latest Playmate in all her nude splendor, but she’s sitting right there in your consciousness, so you can’t. The more you try to avoid her, the more she returns, until you finally relent and give in to the wicked thoughts. When you do, the attendant thought that “God has recorded it” instantly impinges. You must then run, not walk, to the nearest confessional! “Bless me, Father, my last Confession was five days ago. I just thought of that naked July Playmate again!”

As the cycle of thought betrayal and confession continues, one becomes more paranoid that in the next permutation he won’t make it to confession in time and will end up as Satan’s fodder. This leads to a persistent mental torment that afflicts all devout Catholic youths, sending them into precarious mental states and neurosis.

Had I not escaped the mental straightjacket of Catholcism's “thought sins” I’ve no doubt I’d have remained a virgin at least to the age of 35, and perhaps much longer. I’m also convinced my frustration levels would have metastasized to a critical breaking point, as well as mental instability driven by fear, shame and guilt. So, to me, leaving the Church was a matter of personal survival and one might even say “personal salvation.” I had no choice but to do it, or spend decades in the looney bin.

4. Atheists Always Recant Near Death.

I confess that I haven’t been able to address this for myself yet, mainly because I haven’t come close to death. However, I would hope that if and when that fatal hour comes, I would hold firm to my principles and not simply cop out and squeal for the nearest priest to administer my insurance policy in the form of Extreme Unction because I feared some vague eternal fate.

Giving optimism on this score, are the deaths of two foremost American atheists: Isaac Asimov, and Carl Sagan. Neither capitulated to superstition in the final hour, though the prospect of death did bring further opportunity for reflection as it would for any sentient and intelligent being.

Nevertheless, those who embrace the traditional form of “Pascal’s Wager,” assume I am merely being an obstinate idiot. “What have you got to lose?” they ask. “If you believe you lose nothing in this wager. If you’re wrong and there is no God after all, so what? All you forfeit is your pride. But if you don’t believe, you stand to lose everything!”

Hence, they argue, the sane bet is to believe, rather than withhold belief.

I disagree. Let’s consider it from two viewpoints: one of which assumes a real infinite (non-local) entity and one that doesn’t. In the first case, and ironically, the most plausible basis for a real deity is that quantum non-locality governs consciousness. The result is a transpersonal and super-conscious state that precludes localized classes, or manipulations of such.

In this super consciousness, all times are immediately accessible, the past as easily as the future, because in hyper-dimensional consciousness all times are linked. This consciousness is not locked into a serial process of events that unfold one at a time. It “sees” everything at once. Ego-less, it’s without a sense of personal identity or self in the sense of asserting power/status, occupying territory or projecting hegemony over nature. In addition, language and logic, with their built-in divisiveness are not comprehensible to this entity. The separation of subject from object, as well as logical categories, would be perceived as purely illusory artifacts.

Physicist Henry Margenau has compared reality perception for a finite being (such as a human) and a boundary-free being on the basis of “time slits”. In particular, he notes the latter would lack a time slit and this absence is precisely what makes all times instantly accessible. Humans, meanwhile, “are constrained by a narrow slit in the time dimension”. This narrowness of temporal dimension creates our sense of isolation, along with our limited three-dimensional body and sense apparatus. This can be understood better by reference to the diagram below:

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The wider expanse brackets (visualize in 3 dimensions and actually infinitely wide) enfolds a tiny human "time slit" (center) which is all the human consciousness can access of reality. The minds that we have (finite as they are), obviously, can only process within the limits of our time slits and the perceptions attendant on them. Thus, asked to envisage some eternal “punishments” compatible with our God-concepts we invariably arrive at those emphasizing isolation and separation first, and extreme punishment (“Hell”), second.

The problem is that this limited time slit version of Hell, which is a human byproduct, doesn’t square with the only genuine transpersonal or non-local entity that might pass as a God! Indeed, it contradicts it! What it does, essentially, is demand that the non-local, time-slit liberated version of deity revert to a narrow time-slit version of deity when applying punishment – presumably for those who eschew belief in it. The problem is that if it reverted to this time-slit version it would have to contradict its own nature!

One is led to conclude that the most reliable concept of a deity: a transpersonal entity with zero time constraints (consonant with an infinite, non-local nature) would be incapable of applying punishment to lesser beings in its firmament. The reason is that such punishment requires actions on the level of “isolation” or “separation” that are incompatible with non-locality. A Being that so acted, therefore, would be cognizant not only of its creatures’ isolation but its own! Hence, recognize its own finitude and limits and could not therefore be omniscient or omnipresent!

To make this more concrete, if such an entity (which is more or less analogous to Bohm’s “Holomovement”) existed, it would have to be literally blind to any transgressions against it, and certainly to puny human disbelief. This “blindness” arises not from overlooking human deficiency, but rather from its non-local nature that cannot at once be boundary –free and also localized in perceptions, to the extent of isolating a part of existence for “punishment".

In the end, if this entity existed (and I reiterate we’ve no evidence it does, only that the attributes are most consistent with the traditional “infinite, eternal” Being) then the atheist has nothing to fret over. At death, his limited temporal existence is simply subsumed into a greater, timeless existence. In effect, belief or no, he (like all the billions of other humans who’ve ever lived) must be integrated within the same boundary-free, non-local existence. The bottom line is that orthodox Christians simply can’t have their “cake and eat it.”. If they want unbelievers to suffer eternal torments, then they will have to part ways with an omnipresent, eternal deity!

Pascal’s Wager for an atheist, based on such a nonlocal entity, is a “gimme.” But how can one be certain its vengeful, toting up snubs and sins counterpart doesn’t exist? We can’t, but there are many sound reasons for asserting that it doesn’t, and that the vengeful deity is really simply a vengeful construct fabricated by limited human minds. Isolated and constricted minds that have projected their own ego needs, personal defects and need for vengeance and “justice” onto it. As we already saw, one reason is that an eternal entity would have to have an infinite temporal “slit” rendering it essentially blind to temporal events. Alas, finite human minds with their presumptions, biases and faculties can’t deal with this.

Such limited and finite minds are bound to see concepts such as “justice” and “morality” in predefined, human terms. To these constricted minds, “an eye for an eye” sums up pretty well their entire theology. Besides, what fun would is it be to always act righteously, then finally get to Heaven and discover you’re denied seeing unbelievers roasted over an eternal furnace and hearing their screams? Not much!

The rational atheist takes a more expansive view and declares that faced with the prospect of eternal “torment” (especially in the form of perpetual “loss”) or keeping the company of a petty tyrant who’d burn any human for mere disbelief, the former is surely the better bet.

Michael Martin actually turns this choice on its head in arriving at an alternative view of Pascal’s Wager, based on a negative deity he calls the “Perverse Master” which (he imagines) acts in consistent contradiction to the “just God” of orthodox Christians(Martin, Michael: 1990: “The Wager Refuted,” in: Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Temple University Press, p. 232.) For example, rather than rewarding belief or faith in itself, especially if such belief is predicated on fear of torment, this entity punishes it for any supernatural being (including itself) while rewarding disbelief with eternal bliss. (Clearly this “PM” prefers not to have millions of “yes men” surrounding it, who’ve only espoused belief to save their sorry hides!)

In presenting a three-option truth table (based on probabilities, e.g. p1, p2 and p3) for the Wager, Martin is correct in observing that the problem with Pascal’s original version is there are other variants that he didn’t consider. None of those variants is ruled out a priori by Martin since, in the absence of irrefutable evidence for any one, all others have at least a finite probability. So it is with the “Perverse Master.”

Martin’s truth table ends up as a 3 x 3 matrix that carries within each ‘cell’ a choice resulting from the product of the individual probability and the consequence. The choices include: belief in the Perverse Master, belief in the traditional Judaeo-Christian God and belief in neither.

Next place in the table is for the Socinian deity, which is limited by never knowing more than the most advanced consciousness existing in the universe at one time. If limited in consciousness, the Socinian deity will also make errors. Physicist Freeman Dyson describes this entity almost like a child (Freeman Dyson: Infinite in All Directions, Harper & Row, p. 119.):

“The main tenet of the Socinian heresy is that God is neither omniscient or omnipotent. He learns and grows as the universe unfolds”.


Making a long story short, if we regard Martin's table globally, we see at a glance that the infinite utility and disutility for Pascal's "god" cancels out. In the same manner, the high and low probabilities (for SG and HG, respectively) cancel out, or essentially so. The (+, -) expectations for NG (“No God”) reflect that a negative disutility with negative finite probability (- P/2) attaches to having a belief in no God. Meanwhile, (+ P/2) with positive utility and positive, finite probability is attached to disbelief or withholding belief in a deity. (For reasons that have already been discussed in this book, e.g. that the theist is the one making the claim to add to the reality, the atheist merely passively responds by withholding investment of his intellectual resources)

When all is said and done, four positive expected values (including one infinity) cancel four negative ones (including one infinity), leaving only null expectation values or zeros. This not only refutes Pascal’s traditional wager, but also the basis for a Wager belief in any other halfway credible deities!

From these expectation results we conclude the atheist is on very firm logical grounds for his disbelief, and making the traditional Pascal Wager is knuckle-headed and a waste of time. It merely discloses that the Christian’s “mark” hasn’t done his or her full set of homework!

Aside from the theoretical and logical analyses, one need only read various soldiers’ journals and accounts (many of which have appeared in newspaper letters, or magazine articles) to see that there are, in fact, many atheists inhabiting foxholes! Probably as many or more also inhabit cancer wards (as the late astronomer Carl Sagan once did). Again, the myth that no atheist would dare do so really pivots on the orthodox Christian’s own perception of what s/he would do! But truly, a Christian attempting to put himself in the deathbed atheist’s place to decide on how he’d do the wager is preposterous, not to mention presumptuous. This is because it will always be skewed by the projections of the Christian’s own fears on the choices!


5. Hitler was an Atheist.

This myth is intended to achieve exactly what it appears to do: slander atheism by association with the most monstrous human imaginable. If, therefore, Hitler can be painted as an “atheist” and if Hitler’s deeds were so cumulatively vile, it follows (in a bizarre sort of logic) that atheism can only produce vile deeds. However, technically Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Robert Payne notes (Robert Payne: 1973, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, Praeger Publishers, p. 15):

“Adolf Hitler's birth certificate records that he was born at six o'clock in the evening on April 20, 1889, and goes on to record that two days later, at a quarter past three in the afternoon, in the presence of Father Ignaz Probst, the boy was baptized in the local Catholic Church”

As is known from standard Roman Catholic doctrine, once one is baptized a Catholic, he or she technically remains a Catholic unless excommunicated, or until death. Payne later documents Catholic Church attendance by a number of Hitler's luminaries, including Gregor Strasser, Erich von Ludendorff and others (op. cit., p. 386).

Ian Kershaw (1998, Hitler Hubris - 1889- 1936, W.W. Norton & Company, p. 34)documents Hitler's regret and "mistake in antagonizing the Catholic Church". Primarily because Karl Lueger's Christian Social Party had made such a "deep impression on him" given that it "was soldered together to appeal to Catholic piety and the economic self-interest of the German speaking lower middle classes."

Both Payne and Kerhsaw also document the extensive fertile soil provided by the anti-Semitic Vlksich movement (which Hitler played to), by the German Catholic Church itself, i.e. in depictions of the Jews as "Christ Killers" such as in their Passion Play at Oberammagau etc.

While it is true that Hitler was probably no more than a nominal Catholic by the time of the invasion of Poland in 1939, this doesn’t mean he was an “atheist” any more than the two Columbine killers (who professed being “atheists”) as they threatened any peers that refused to budge from their faith during the 1999 Colorado killing spree. Obviously these killers merely postured unbelief, invoking the red-flag word “atheist”, as a vehicle for their anti-social acts or to garner more media attention.

In fact, given Hitler’s hatred of Communists (clearly and historically associated with atheism), it makes more sense that he would have grouped both in the same undesirable category. And, by that I mean earmarked them for “final solution.” Let’s also bear in mind that it was the Vatican that assisted Nazi war criminals to escape Europe along the infamous “rat lines” to south America, just after World War II.

Closer to the mark, but no less egregious, is the epithet that “Stalin was an atheist” and hence we atheists ought to feel terrible because of Stalin’s murderous reign. Again, the key point is missed. That is, conflating and confusing the deeds of voracious mass-murdering individuals (who manage to gain control of state machinery) with the coincidental philosophies they may claim to embrace at the time.

Let's also bear in mind that the Inquisition, for example, met with the blessings of actual popes who gave it their seal of approbation and essentially determined that it was consonant with the doctrines of the Church itself. (The rationale being to spare any heretics from the far worse fate of eternal torment!). Pope Innocent IV, for example, issued a famous (or infamous) Bull known as Ad extirpanda, which provided the machinery for systematic persecution as part of the state itself. This included seizure of property, possessions.

This is at wide variance to Stalin et al, who merely seized the power of the state machinery available but invoked NO godless doctrine per se to rationalize it. It was merely his own paranoia and lust for consolidating power, combined with megalomania and bloodthirstiness. But no doctrinal benediction as was the case with the Inquisition!

(To be continued)