3 posts tagged “atheism”
I'm an atheist, and so is the kid in the video, above. His mom doesn't like his announcement, and someone thoughtfully videotaped the fallout (but, alas, not the whole fallout, just the beginning of it).
I can't decide if the kid in the video is actually an atheist, or if he's making the announcement as a teenage rebellion against his obviously faithful Catholic mother. Either way, I applaud him for choosing to use atheism as the fulcrum of his rebellion; it might be the worst lifestyle choice he could have made, if you look at the statistics. Yes, coming out to the hyperreligious as a gay son carries with it a great deal of potential (if not certain) pain. But hyperreligious parents who also happen to be smart (which does happen, apparently) might accept the facts, that homosexuality is not a choice - their son is born that way, and sometimes these sorts of parents might realize that.
But an atheist son? That little bastard made a conscious choice to stop believing in god, having dumped his faith in invisible monsters and moved a few steps closer to accepting the universe for what it is and not what we wish it to be. The kid in the video is throwing the Bible into the fire, implicitly telling his parents that what they believe is wrong. The dad seems unpurturbed. The mom goes bug nutty.
I never really came out to my parents as an atheist, though I have been one since my first year of high school. They know I'm an atheist, and probably knew back then, too, and we can talk about it without anger or disappointment, but I wasn't very strident about it as a kid. I openly questioned religion on a regular basis, and expressed my preference for science over faith, but I tried not to be a dick about it. I was lucky to have the parents I had - while neither of them are atheist or even agnostic, my father is very pragmatic and keeps most of his religion and his faith to himself, valuing it as he sees fit. My mother was raised by a physician and amateur scientist who was known on at least one occasion to bring his kids into the garage while he dropped rocks into cement-filled pie plates to show how moon craters are made; they used to take road trips specifically to look at old battlefields or particularly interesting rock formations. She understands my point when we have our sedate debates about the nature of faith, but respectfully disagrees.
The overriding cultural belief is that atheists are inherently immoral. We don't believe in god, which means we don't believe in heaven, which means we don't have any reason to be moral. Richard Dawkins, among many others, say that the moral atheist is even more moral than the moral Christian. We don't do good works because we're afraid of the punishment for not doing good works. We don't avoid immorality because we think we'll go to hell. We are good people because we believe in responsibility. We know that doing good things benefits everybody. We understand the value of the social contract - if you act with ethics and benevolence, then you're holding up your part of the contract. Being good is its own reward, but good people also have good things happen to them.
Personally, I'm not sure I agree with Dawkins. I'm not going to get into the game of My Belief System is Superior in Every Way To Yours, even if I believe it to be true. After all, faith and religion are causing an awful lot of bad things these days. If you ask me, doing good things is fine by itself - I don't need to know why you're doing them.
I'm very glad I have parents who were understanding, if not
wholeheartedly supportive of my decision. My mother probably wishes
that I would believe in
>something, but I never hear that from her. And
I
still get presents on Christmas.
In this video, he says that somebody has to have faith in order to run the country.
He says this as a response to a Christian in the audience who tells Mitt that he doesn't "know Jesus," because Mitt is a Mormon.
Mitt Romney's response to intolerance is more intolerance.
When is the rampant distrust and demonization of atheism going to end in this country?
Yeah. Probably never.
I've never even heard of half of these goddamn people.
Jim Caviezel is not Jesus. He's a stupid, stupid actor. Actors are mostly idiots. There are a few exceptions, but it's mostly true. Their bankable skill is that they can pretend.
Oh, I guess the other people I don't recognize are athletes. Yeah. I'm going to get advice on intellectual subjects from fucking sports stars. They can run fast, or make a ball go into a little hole, or lift heavy things, or punch somebody else in the face really hard, or jump high, or catch things, or maybe hit things with a stick. Great. Experts.
Genetics will save our species. Medical science is poised for a revolution that we haven't seen since sanitation.
But there's one stumbling block: a group of ill-informed, incurious believers who think that vacuuming out the interior of a woman's uterus is an act on par with murdering their next door neighbor.
Life does not begin with conception. If you think it does, you're wrong.
Let me be clear: you're wrong.
Your dark age, outdated, misanthropic death cult, with your worship of a man stapled to a piece of wood is holding back progress.
It's not just Christians, either - it's all the goddamn religions.
Do you have an invisible friend? One that you talk to, but that never talks back? One that heals you when you're sick, but miraculously isn't responsible for making you sick in the first place?
One that has a book written about him? One that has people in white collars who think they know what he wants?
You know Santa Claus? Yeah, that guy. Compare him to the ideas you have about God, and then think about why you stopped believing in Santa. It's the same goddamn thing, folks.
I'm not saying this because I think I'm smarter. I've known many believers who were way smarter than me. I've also known my share of atheists who were verifiable morons.
It's not about intelligence. It's about faith.
You put your faith in a being you've never seen, never heard and never met.
I put my faith in people, and the essential goodness of other human beings. I see that shit every day. You would too, if you would just open your eyes to the world happening around you, and not the one you imagine is waiting for you when you die.
It's just us. We're in this alone. We have to rely on each other, and trust each other, and realize that the only ones who are going to save us are each other.
It's time we grew up, shed these ancient, misbegotten belief systems and get busy trying to save our own goddamn skins.
A human embryo is a glob of cells. It's a sperm and an egg. It's not a fucking life, any more than a woman's period is a life, or a man's sperm is a life. We can make lots of them. There's more than enough unwanted eggs and unwanted sperm for us to use.
So let's fucking use them.
