Dispelling Five Myths About Atheists

Christopher Hitchens, one of the foremost atheists (who died in 2011), had no patience for Xtian idiots who attempted to portray atheists in a false or distorted light.

As more and more of the younger generation engages in critical thinking to do with religions and migrates to the group known as "Nones" (no religious affiliation) , it is essential we skewer the myths to do with atheism.  To that end I provide the top five myths below and the reasons for saying so.

1. Atheists Deny God

This is perhaps the most popular myth, because on the surface it appears to make sense. Careful thought, however, might disclose how absurd it is. For example, one generally refrains from "denying" anything for which belief is withheld. Let’s take the example of alien colonies on the Chesapeake. Someone or group makes the claim, they exist, and are planning to siphon water to take to their planet.

Fair enough. I hear the claim, but in the next breath ignore it. It's of no concern to me because it is simply too preposterous to waste investing intellectual resources. The reason is that evidence-free claims can be regarded as false or spurious until such time a modicum of evidentiary basis is provided. If this is so, it follows there is even less reason to invest precious intellectual resources to deny the claim! Why the need?

Indeed, if one “denies” a specious claim, he’s already given it a plausible (if unconscious) underpinning. Any active expenditure of mental energy in denial presumes there is at least “smoke” (if not “fire”) to deny! On the other hand, if the claim is totally nonsensical, simple withholding of belief quite fits the bill and is more than adequate. As I noted in an article published in the Mensa Bulletin, March 1994:

"Let's be clear about what constitutes Atheism and what doesn't. The Atheist - to put it succinctly, absolutely withholds investing intellectual/emotional resources in any supernatural claim. Indeed the word Atheism itself embodies this definition: a-theos, or without god.”

What is happening here is not active disbelief, i.e. in making a statement “There is no god,” but rather simply passively withholding belief in a statement already made. Hence, the deity believer has made the positive claim. The ontological atheist’s is the simple absence of belief in it. No more and no less. It does not and never has implied aggressive rancor or a vehement and militant opposition to the beliefs. (Though yes, some militant atheists – or what we call “strong atheists” – do have such attitudes!)

Let me quickly add here that this withholding of belief is the more natural position, as opposed to advocating belief, which is unnatural. Consider a different context: a neighbor runs over and informs me that aliens have landed in his yard in a spacecraft. Until I actually go over and try to verify his claim I am under no obligation to accept it as a statement of fact. Thus, the default intellectual position is always skepticism, irrespective of the claim made. This again is because the onus is always on the claimant to make good, not the skeptic to “disprove” it.

2. Atheists reject morality

This is one of my favorites because it’s preposterous on its face. It’s also important because many otherwise sober people believe that atheists live by the rule “anything goes,” since we don't acknowledge any god. On many occasions in Barbados, I've been telephoned by religious types who ask: "If you don't believe in God what's stopping you from going out and raping, robbing, murdering or doing anything else? If you don't believe in God, then you don't believe in God's laws."

Invariably, I respond that decent, civilized behavior doesn’t depend on god belief or adhering to 'laws' of a god. Rather, it depends on rational and objective analysis of a situation, and sound decisions maximally promoting the welfare of all concerned.

As William Provine notes, people should be encouraged to think rationally and critically concerning ethics, not out of fear of some divine force, but to protect their own long-term self-interest[1].

In line with this, any persistent observer of human social interaction will note that the vast majority of people are law-abiding and decent folk who naturally practice a common-sense, utilitarian ethics similar to what has been described. No supernatural law or commandment ordains this behavior. Instead it is the conscious and deliberate recognition that the promotion of the welfare of others is directly linked to the one's own welfare. Compromise others' security, and you in effect compromise your own. Undermine their welfare and you also undermine your own. No god is necessary.

By contrast, religious morality is predicated on some formal codification of expected human behavior in terms of absolutist propositions, not subject to debate. The typical moral code of a religionist, whether Muslim, Pentecostal, Catholic or Jewish, isn’t subject to evolution or variation based on contingencies, or externalities. Thus, from this one beholds the Vatican still mandating its flock continue to reproduce - despite the planet being overpopulated. Now, under the name of their absolutist "natural law" they are pressuring exploding human populations to live in more and more desperate, unnatural conditions!

3. Atheism is a Religion

This claim is absurd on its face. The misplaced strategy, however, is always to attempt to place atheism within the same logical context as religion and then attack it on the basis of occupying an analogous “belief” spectrum. In the end, this is a fool’s errand.

For one thing it turns the very meaning and basis of religion on its head. We know all religions embody centralized beliefs or dogmas that issue from some sacred scripture or a body of theology based on scriptural interpretations.. Atheism has none of these, since there are no central propositions or beliefs with which all atheists agree.

First, atheists withhold belief, they do not invest it. This alone separates atheists from religionists or people of faith. Second, atheists make no positive claims for any transcendent existent that requires their worship or obeisance. They simply acknowledge no god or entity with which to build a religion in other words. Third, atheists maintain no sacred works, scriptures, or ancient artifacts, from which their “truths” are extracted.

They have no analog to a Bible, Qu’ran, Talmud or anything remotely similar. Instead, atheists pursue objective truth via open inquiry predicated on current science, which may provide fewer certainties or answers than if they merely placed their faith in a book. However, this doesn't mean they treat "science" as their god, because any hypothesis is always given falsification tests.

Fourth, atheists convene no regular rituals, services or ceremonies to honor, or propitiate any entity. By contrast, the centerpiece of 99 percent of religions is precisely some social ritual, for the purpose of assembling together like-minded believers toward a common goal. Moreover, their churches, synagogues, temples etc. dot the landscape, taking up room that could be used to house the homeless in each respective area or locale.

Perhaps most importantly, there is no "acceptance" of atheist principles from any “congregation” since there’s no homogeneous congregation to bestow it. Atheists often disagree on as many things as they agree on, precisely because no formal coda exists to fix beliefs within a uniform dogma. This means one is just as likely to encounter a wholly Materialist-Naturalist atheist as a non-material one.

4. 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.   Historian Robert Payne notes [1]:

“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 (2).

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.

5. Atheists Despise all religions

This simply isn't true. Atheists have great respect for those religions which are life-affirming, and which tolerate others rather than condemning them, or trying to employ spiritual apartheid or one-upmanship. In this way, Buddhism is perhaps the closest religion to atheism, especially as its goal of "Nirvana" is just nothingness, or what end the atheist also anticipates.

Elements of Christianity are also acceptable such as embodied in Science of Mind and Religious Science, and made popular in a number of books, e.g. Ernest Holmes Science of Mind. These sects have in common the unifying theme that evil is an illusion and each human can become a “Christ” unto himself (and indeed is an embodiment of divinity like Christ) and also that every material abundance becomes available once one acknowledges that he too, is God. 

Their import for the atheist is that they’re benign forms of Christianity that renounce the odious Heaven-Hell doctrine in favor of either cosmic unification or sequential, progressive reincarnation. They are also realistic in foursquare rejecting such latter day Fundamentalist inventions as "the rapture" - which, of course, denotes spiritual apartheid carried to an extreme. Thus, the righteous and "saved" get magically lifted up into their Lord's arms - while five billion Hindis, Buddhists, Muslims and non-saved Christians as well as all agnostics, infidels....get to be tormented by the "Anti-christ" (another fiction, but convenient to try to drumbeat the gullible and weak into the fold)

In addition, they embody esoteric forms that have much in common with Eastern religions such as Buddhism.  

Intelligent Americans, who also need to bone up on political ideologies (socialism, Marxism, fascism, capitalism etc.), need to also grasp what atheism is - and what it isn't.  This as opposed to knee-jerk assumptions and imbibing false information from non-atheists.



[1] William Provine, ‘Evolution and the Foundation of Ethics’ (MLB Science, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1988, p. 25)

[2] Robert Payne: 1973, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, Praeger Publishers, p. 15 

The "Mother Teresa" Hype Knows No Bounds - And Catholics Have Another Fake Saint

Dr. Aroup Chatterjee insists Teresa's claimed wonder works have been oversold to a gullible world.

 Roman Catholics now profess to have a new member added to their pantheon of sainthood.  Mother Teresa, aka, Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu,  was officially declared "St. Teresa of Kolkata" on Sept. 3rd,  by Pope Francis. However, there are those- including me - who call into question this entire Vatican dog and pony show and the ongoing agenda to name new "saints" to take the minds of the faithful off past priest abuse.

Years earlier,  atheist Christopher Hitchens, in his book "Hell's Angel",  had excoriated Bojaxhu as  "a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf”  and taking donations from dictators.  Such charges were, of course, denied by the RC Church though it had a much more difficult time denying she received largesse from the sleaze bag behind the infamous Saving and Loan scandal, Charles Keating. See e.g.

https://howgoodisthat.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/charles-keating-gave-other-peoples-money-to-mother-teresa/

And:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html

Bruno Maddox, in a review for the New York Times,  described how Hitchens had concluded that Mother Teresa was “less interested in helping the poor than in using them as an indefatigable source of wretchedness on which to fuel the expansion of her fundamentalist Roman Catholic beliefs.”

More to the point, Hitchens' work wasn't totally original but depended heavily on the account of Dr. Aroup Chatterjee.  Chatterjee, an Indian-born British writer, had worked for a year as an intern in one of Teresa’s charitable homes, and documented a catalogue of criticisms against her. In summary, he found fault with the conditions in the facilities of her Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, which one journalist compared to the photographs she had seen of Nazi Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Quoted in a NY Times Profile piece (Aug. 27), Dr. Chatterjee asserted:

"I never saw any nuns in those slums that I worked in. I think it's an imperialist venture of the Catholic Church against an Eastern population, an Eastern city , which has really driven horses and carriages through our prestige and honor.  I just thought this myth had to be challenged."

But was it really a myth, or more a branding exercise? One could make the strong argument it was all about the latter. Indeed, as Douglas Roberts writes in yesterday's UK Independent:

"With everything happening in the world, why is this particular person getting so much posthumous airtime? The Catholic Church, after all,  does not enjoy the same access to our political system as the Church of England, so what is the relevance here? Well, it's quite simple really if Mother Teresa was a celebrity, with a very well-managed brand."

In other words, Bojaxhu like Trump had succeeded in creating and catering to a brand, only this case, a religious brand - that of "serving the wretched of the Earth". Those donations from dictators and the likes of Charles Keating subsidized her misshapen brand much like Trump's numerous bankruptcies subsidized his.  There is a parallel to behold if one makes the effort.

Note the  "Mother Teresa" brand also conveys power, and likely much more than Trump can wield. Teresa-Bojaxhu expostulated often against both birth control and abortion.  This is especially odd in the first case, given how the dire misery and destitution for which she claimed a ministry can be directly traced to overpopulation.  Hence, the claim by many skeptics that she loved poverty, not the poor. See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/earth-day-alert-biggest-problem-remains.html

Getting back to Dr. Chatterjee, he subsequently traveled the world meeting with volunteers, nuns and authors -researchers who were familiar with the Missionaries of Charity. He conducted over a hundred interviews and heard volunteers describe how workers with very limited medical training administered 10 to 20-year old medicines to patients - while "primitive facilities forced patients to defecate in front of each other" and  "blankets stained with feces were washed in the same sink used to clean dishes."

How could the practices then be anything other than disease -producing? It would have been like a Potemkin care center where hundreds of sick came in, got cursory attention then got sicker - as they also made other patients ill from contact with their bodily effluent (from blankets etc. never properly sanitized the first time).  In other words, Teresa-Bojaxhu  presided over a whole monopoly of sickness and misery  - but used the meticulously cultivated care façade to garner attention and push her zealous moral agenda.

Let's also register that the British medical journal the Lancet published a critical account of the care in Teresa’s facilities in 1994. Then an academic Canadian study a couple of years ago found fault with “her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce.” Multiple accounts say that Teresa’s nuns would baptize the dying and that she had a reputation for proselytizing. Dr.Chatterjee  published his own extremely critical book on Teresa in 2003 which documented a "cult of suffering"  with children "tied to beds and little to comfort patients but aspirin".

But never mind, Teresa-Bojaxhu  and her accomodationists kept the brand going with inflated stories of the success of her care for Calcutta's destitute.  But Dr. Chatterjee's take, in the NY Times piece, is that her "place in the Western canon was enough for some Indians to lionize her as part of an ingrained colonial mindset".

At the same time, he insists Calcuttans "do not associate her with miracles and mumbo jumbo"  just as they "don't associate her with opposition to birth control and abortion."

As for the claimed "miracles" - these appear to have no more than circumstantial support, just as in the case of those claimed for John Paul II, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/01/sainthood-for-john-paul-ii-unbelievable.html

In Teresa-Bojaxhu's cases, the claims arose from a woman  (Monica Besra) in India whose stomach tumor disappeared and a man in Brazil with brain abscesses who awoke from a coma.

Interestingly,  both credited their dramatic recovery to prayers offered to the nun after her death in 1997.   Neither claimed any direct "hands on" intercession or in -person declarations from Teresa-Bojaxhu that they'd been cured.  In effect, acceptance of their cases as miracles is merely a permutation of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. That is,  assuming a causal relationship from a merely sequential one. Event Y (in this case an apparent remission or cure) followed Event X (prayers offered to a nun) therefore Event Y must have been caused by Event X. Most people learn to shun such nonsense when they take Logic 101.

Also, in the case of  Monica Besra's alleged "cancer cure" the state health minister has debunked it from the claim's inception and long maintained that Besra had been suffering from a cyst, not a cancerous tumor. The doctors have said she recovered after she received tuberculosis treatment for several months at a government hospital in Balurghat. In other words, if you must attribute the cure to a miracle make sure it's the miracle of modern medical science.

All of this is even more reason why the more advanced sectors of the Roman Catholic Church would like to dispense with the miracle malarkey as well as sainthood and leave the medieval rubbish behind. But their hands are basically tied, because the demographics of the Church have altered so drastically. As the Europeans (and many North Americans) have abandoned the faith, millions in the less developed world - who put lots of emphasis on superstitions and magic - have embraced it. Since the RCs don't wish to lose population power and influence they can no more ditch the mumbo jumbo than they can the opposition to birth control.

A far more potent reason to keep the "sainthood" wheels spinning is to keep the mind of the faithful - as well as outside critics - off the horrific priest sex abuse scandals. Those scandals totally undermined the Church's moral authority and the RCs know it. However, by shifting the accent to morally authoritative squawkers like Teresa-Bojaxhu and earlier, John Paul II, the Church believes it can regain some moral credibility.  I hardly think so, but then I am no longer a Catholic having renounced the baggage of superstitious, medieval rubbish decades ago.  Thus what I think may not matter a whit to hundreds of millions of believers currently awed by the "Saint Teresa of Kolkata" spectacle.

At the same time, it is inevitable that one day the Church will have to change and it will probably come with the arrival of a truly modern Pope who will no longer be hostage to primitive thinking, beliefs and  nonsense. That awakening may take 40 years or 100, but it will happen, you can bank on it.

And what about the campaign of Dr. Chatterjee? He is adamant it will continue even as Western audiences "don't care about whether a third world city's dignity has been hampered by an Albanian nun."  And "so obviously they're more interested in the lies, the charlatans and the frauds going on". But he is intent on getting them to see the whole story, not selective parts to soothe their own wounded souls or fragmented being.  To that end, he says "I will not go away, it's as simple as that."

See also:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa

Excerpt:

"Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. (...) Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of Mother Teresa. Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions."

Indonesian Gets Tossed in Prison for 19 Months – For Declaring Atheism!

Incredibly, many parts of the world remain backwaters of advanced tolerance or true religious freedom. Such a place is Indonesia, which actually threw a young,  self-declared Atheist into prison for 19 months for coming out of the closet and openly declaring his atheism. (‘Embrace of Atheism Put An Indonesian in Prison’, NY Times, May 4, p. 11).

Indonesia, one of the most populous Muslim nations, professes religious tolerance but its state ideology, Pancassila “enshrines monotheism and makes blasphemy illegal”. Alas, this means if you declare yourself an atheist or non-believer and say “There is no God” (which is basically what Mr. Alexander Aan did in a number of Facebook comments) you leave yourself open to the charge of “blasphemy”.

Specifically, Mr. Aan – having become disenchanted with Islam  (his religion of birth) not only embraced atheism but joined an Indonesian atheist  group based in The Netherlands.  In 2011, he began posting commentaries outlining why he didn’t believe a God existed – a bad idea given that in 2008 Indonesia’s zealots passed a law restricting electronic communications on religion.

 Evidently, some of his Islamic peers in Indonesia had read some his  commentaries and pitched hissy fits, demanding Aan “stop saying there is no God” – because it made them depressed and they couldn’t sleep at night….boo hoo hoo.  When he didn’t a mob showed up at his place of work (at a gov’t planning office). After these whackos again demanded he retract his unbelief, Aan insisted he had a right express his beliefs- causing them all to go ape shit.

To make a long story short, the cops were called in to prevent violence and escorted Aan to the local police station. He was formally interrogated (Jeezus peace! What they thought he was a t’errist?) and then charged him with “disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred” and the next day he was charged with blasphemy.

 Are you kidding me? He was expressing his own sincere beliefs! It wasn’t his fault a bunch of morons couldn’t bring themselves to “change the channel” and just had to read what he put up. What, did someone hold a gun to their stupid heads and force them to read his posts? Sheesh!

 Anyway, he faced trial – was duly convicted in July ,2012 and the electronic information law, and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He was released for good behavior after 19 months and again restated his position:

“What I posted was for discussion, not to incite hatred.”

Good point! But see, zealots and their ilk will never see it that way.

All of which inspires even more respect for Mr. Harrison Ford – who appeared in the first installment of Showtime’s ‘Years of Living Dangerously” and faced down Indonesia’s Minister of the Environment – basically telling him he was a fraud in so many words for not adhering to that nation’s laws to enforce rain forest protection (from the ravages of the palm oil plantations.)

In a subsequent episode, the minister was shown pop-eyed and with veins bulging from his forehead as Ford basically “read him the riot act” on what he was allowing to be done with Indonesia’s forests. We almost thought he’d come under the hammer of these tin horn bureaucrats then recalled that the camera crew was likely his only protection. How would it look to see the once and future star of ‘Star Wars’ (as Han Solo) unceremoniously locked up for his “rudeness”?

But others weren’t so lucky. As the Times’ piece notes, a homemaker was jailed in 2009 after what she said was an incorrect hospital diagnosis in a private email that found its way online. Then in February a Twitter user was sentenced to a year’s probation  for “libelous tweets” against a former national lawmaker who’d been sent to prison for corruption. Hmmmm…..last I knew, stating the truth wasn’t libel. But I guess in Indonesia it is.

Further, Indonesia also appears to be going the extremist route. As the Times relates (ibid.):

“More than half of Indonesia’s 491 provincial districts  have enacted various bylaws inspired by Islamic law or Shariah in recent years. Evidently so much power was given to local authorities that wherever Muslim organizations dominated there were violations against religious freedom."

 All of which plays into the  narratives recounted by the late Chris Hitchens and also Sam Harris (‘The End of Faith’) that Islam is the most reactionary religion when it comes to the treatment of non-believers.

 While fundies may be annoying and stupid (like Pastor Rick Joyner recently featured on 'Years of Living Dangerously'), the Islamic fundies want to carve out their own piece of flesh  - if they don’t agree with what you’re writing or saying. Another reason for practicing atheists to avoid Indonesia.

As for Mr. Aan, he’s still active on Facebook and Twitter but no longer writes on religion, or his criminal case.

A pity.