Atheism - because it's logical!
3/10/2010
Posted by Chuq
Warning: If you are religious and thin-skinned then stop reading now!
Imagine there’s no religion. (No, I’m not channelling John Lennon.) Imagine that someone comes up to you and tells you that there was a man who turned water into wine, who walked on water, who rose from the dead. Imagine that he told you that the earth was less than 10000 years old despite scientific evidence that it is over 4 billion years old. You would think he was crazy.
So why is it that when a billion people believe it, it becomes acceptable?
Evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins was on ABC1 program Q&A this week and as expected he ruffled a few feathers. I’ve known who he was for a long time, but have never read any of his books or heard him speak until tonight. He has quite a knack for phrasing his arguments in such a way that it is difficult to logically refute them. But I guess that is the point – his arguments are that the rules of our society should be based on logic and reason.
He was seated next to Family First Senator Steve Fielding. Family First is well known as a Christian fundamentalist party, although for some reason they don’t promote this fact very strongly! Dawkins asked Fielding straight out, and directly "Do you believe that the earth is 10000 years old?" a.k.a. asking if he believed in creationism. This clearly made him very uncomfortable and cagey. "Look, different people have different views, and I think it’s up to each person to decide what they choose to believe." Of course, it turns out he did (being an evangelical Christian), but the question is, why didn’t he want to answer? Is he ashamed of his beliefs? Did he have a sudden realisation that saying "Yes, I believe in creationism" sounds as ridiculous as "Yes, I believe in the Easter Bunny"?
Another point that Dawkins brought up was the brainwashing of children. Kids of strongly religious parents are told “you are
I remember at chapel at school, halfway through a hymn, looking up and thinking "What the hell (no pun intended)? There are a bunch of teenagers and grown adults here singing to a big invisible man in the sky, who no-one has ever seen, telling him how wonderful he is and that we are insignificant to him. A room full of people doing this and no-one is questioning it? Is everyone here completely mad?"
As for the link between religion and morality – why do some people need to base their behaviour on (using Christianity as an example) the promise of going to heaven or the threat of going to hell? Wouldn’t a truly moral person not need to be bribed in this way?
Religion might have been useful in the dark ages when humans didn’t understand a lot about the world, and the leaders at the time needed a way to control the underlings… I'm sure at the time it worked well on the less educated. Since then, however, we have developed this wonderful thing called "scientific method" – it lets you discover things about the world using observation, empirical evidence and reasoning!
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March 10, 2010
love your work chuq....
with you all the way
March 11, 2010
I am fortunate to have had parents that did exactly what you speak of Chuq, we were left to make up our own minds. Both sides of our family are Anglican. When we were little we were taken to church, however our parents didn't christen or baptire us, and always encouraged us to explore and decide for ourselves. As it turns out, all 3 of us haven't affiliated with any religion. Sometimes when religous people hear of our upbringing, they condem us to hell along with our parents for this, but I appreciate the freedom of choice and am now taking the same attitude with my own children
March 11, 2010
Awesome post!
Glad I'm not the only one who was thinking that at school. same with PD or religious studies (or what ever they call it now.
Shame I missed the show - sounds like it would have been a good one.