A short introduction to the rather new ‘Atheist’ [antitheists] movement!
The antitheists argue from three areas of concern; the first is that of Truth, then proof and finally harm although I have not found anyone yet that speaks with intelligence that is simply attacking religion for the sake of doing so. It comes from deep concerning worry that religion is causing things to happen that would not be so justifiable without followers believing in versions of God and if the books of God has anything other than the divine to do about it then it always needs to be questioned. There are of course problems with the new atheist movement. Part of the issue has to do with the argument that I have often found myself in that people tend to look at the worst of religion and then make decisions about it, still I have found that this is as such is still a fair way of addressing the issues after all the support of religion appears to still grow. Those that support it are as much a problem as the more fundamental believers, if you believe in a certain level of religious belief then they support the irrational thinking at a certain level and this is the cause of the problems in the first place. No one is ever saying that moderate religious people are incapable of doing good things, this I suggest is because they are good people even if I disagree with the method of thinking of how to be good and this is not an admission that they don’t do harm by their belief, they do, just they don’t mean to! Humanism is the solution to our problems as I will later show, religion even as a pure force of good – is not. The four horsemen is a discussion involving some of the biggest names in the movement and you can watch it online for free. It is about two hours long but it covers all the issues that are presented by the books. Note that I use to term antitheist rather than atheist although I think it is a question of semantics rather than issue of difference in most intelligent people at least.
Respect is also another issue of semantics; I don’t think that showing respect to people is accepting what they say without question still respect does mean showing people the notion of being nice and not assuming the worst things about them. Everyone should attack irrational belief and doing so never means that you are disrespectful of the believers if that was the case then we would never be able to learn anything new. Offensive is also the cry that is often heard, let me say here that religion offends me so until religious believers deal with that I see no need to deal with the offensive offered by me. There is at the time of writing this a great debate about Women becoming Bishops in the Church of England, since I believe that women are equal to men in every way the debate offends me. Still it is not my religion so it could be argued that I should not have a say, once again if this position is accepted the situation is the reverse since the money I pay through my taxes find their way to the Church of England so I do have a say until I am released of my burden to a faith that I so strongly disagree with. In most countries in the world we pay through the lack of taxes religious organisations pay and this is as equal as my forced payment to them. This leads me to the discussions that are influenced by religious people, for example the stem cell research debate is perhaps the leading account for when religion should dismiss itself from trying to make governmental decisions. It is perfectly fair to come to the same end result but the matter must be discussed with full facts and a true understanding, Sam Harris makes this point; to say that an embryo has a soul is to ignore the fact that it might in the end become two people or two embryos may join to create one person. Either the soul is not in the embryo or some people have half a soul or two.
The consequences of religion being true is very clear and this is very different from proof, when it comes to truth that means the things written about in holy books are true representations of the things that should happen while proof circles whether these representations are honest. Sam Harris suggests that religion is harmful for a very good reason, they take choice away from people, as Pastor Ted Haggart said we don’t need to discuss homosexuality because we all know what the bible says about this. Although we can dismiss Haggart’s comments on many grounds the implications are still very true of the religious views which takes the choice away from people and this is very disempowering on every level. It is perfectly acceptable for women to come to their own decision on abortion, I still have not (mostly because I am male) but the way religion uses a blanket of guilt & suggested sin is never the right way about going about this. Religion does not cause women to be raped it does however, support the subhuman notion of women in Pakistan which leads 75% of women being in prison for being the victim of rape, this is not compassion or respect, this is an insult to every single human. If the holy books are of the divine then women, gay people, nonbelievers, other of different faiths, animals are all subhuman and freedom of choice is all but taken away. I promote and believe in human & equal rights so how can religion be anything other than an insult to me and why should anyone let these faith based terror methods continue. If nothing else religion causes so much anxiety after all if you believe something and then later are unable to do that thing or you see the world not following those things of course the end result will be anxiety and perhaps fear or anger. If you are a Christian then there are millions who have committed the unforgivable sin of denying the holy ghost and those same millions will go to hell even though most likely at least half of them are compassionate caring people. What does this say about the Christian God? He is evil? Likewise you have to be a bad person to believe such things are true as the only way to keep your faith is to promote hate. Going back to Sam Harris he states something which leads me to the next part of the conversation; Even if religion does not cause harm still the difference between knowing something and pretending to know something as religious people do, is not very honest to say the least.
Going onto proof this something I could go on for days about because it is simply not there and the burden of proof is on the ones promoting the stuff rather than my position. I do like this one though people often use bible quotes to say their religion is kind and not guilty of being wrong, this comes up in debates about compassion, evolution and morality quite a lot but when you look through it there are a lot of things that also suggest horrible acts towards other people. Even Jesus like the idea of murdering people and often when you come to point this out some sort of answer comes across that either the bible needs to be read in a different way, parts of it are more important (true) than other parts and that it is just a book of stories about the difficult aspects of the human experience to which it gives guidance or is a metaphor somehow. If reading the bible is simply a matter of interpretation then that method of understanding the words of the bible does not come from the bible, it comes from somewhere completely different; you cannot get the interpretation from the bible since you would not be able to understand what it is saying without having the interpretation first! We call this Circularity and the result of this is that the bible backs up your own feelings which you already had, of course your parents might have taught you this interpretation so it might seem more real still it is not since it had to come from somewhere. There is also the argument from the metaphysical, people often say things like I know this to be true because I feel that it is true, that does not make it true. In fact you should be much more suspect of such feelings because we are often wrong about things rather than right. The four horsemen raise this point to argue that if people get metaphysical feelings from so many different religions then maybe it is the people rather than God(s) that are creating them after all that is the only constant.
Last of all there is the harm that religion causes, you might think that I have already covered this in truth but it goes much further to suggest that religion at all levels is the promotion of something very bad for the human race. While Zakir Naik talks about his mostly Islamic view that women should be covered up in order to prevent rape, then this is a religiously based misunderstanding to which nothing good will come from and does not deal with the real issues of rape. While Mother Teresa used a private jet to fly around the world after being given millions of dollars, she at no point helped the poor & suffering to get better, get jobs and have a better future. She preferred that people died on a cramped floor even though she had money to give them the hospital treatment that every human has a right to. That is from the top down so let us look at children, why should children as young as five be burdened with guilt of the death of Jesus or abortion while they are not born into debt and they are given the ‘evil’ of abortion while they are young and unable to understand it completely. Why is it no sex before marriage is forced into some children’s minds which only puts back the first sexual activity by 18 months and then later causes more pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease, I assume because no one thought they would ever need to know how to protect themselves against such things. Faith it seems comes at a very high price and personally I don’t think that it is worth it even if so called comfort comes from it. The difference between a hate speech and the atheist movement is that a set of hate speeches is based on one group of people being better in some manner than another, whereas the atheist movement should be a concern for everyone being forced into completely unjustified courses that have damaging effects, the movement does not want to destroy religious people they want the role of religion to be looked at.
I will introduce the main arguments in the manner which I discovered them in later articles, although I only introduce the main body of information there are of course many bits missed out. Remember the method of objections to religion is of truth, proof and harm and also try to remember this as I said at the start, if there is anything other than the divine about religion then it needs to always be questioned.
Image from: RichardDawkins.net Videos: video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869630813464694890 and video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-225595257312538919
