Baylor Whiffs: The Definition Of An Atheist

In September of 2006, Baylor University published a survey on religious beliefs, entitled American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the US. It is an interesting read and I encourage you to follow the link and “thumb” through it. However, I feel compelled to address the University’s fallacious definition, as presented in the survey, of atheists, for in this they have erred (perhaps intentionally). According to the survey, “Atheists are certain that God or gods do not exist” [emphasis mine]. Certain, you say? As I have already addressed the topic of atheism at length in chapter one of my book, Why I Reject the Faith of My Father, I shall respond below with several short excerpts from said chapter.

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Atheism is the absence of a belief in god(s). That’s it! Show’s over! Nothing more to see here! And yet there are so many who would seek to set atheism up as akin to a faith-based viewpoint. I’m sorry, but that just won’t wash. It takes faith to believe in something without evidence, in fact, this is the very definition of the word. Without evidence, there is simply no logically sound reason to believe that extraordinary claims are true. Surely this concept is not so very difficult to comprehend as some make it out to be.

Atheism is not a “phase” brought on by the rebelliousness of an angered individual against the authority of his parents, or religious upbringing; it is not an arrogant, science-based conspiracy rooted in an egotistical conception of intellectual superiority; and it is most certainly not an excuse for a non-believer to commit a crime sans the guilt or to trip the life immoral. To say that you are an atheist does not even begin to imply that you have made, or are making, the claim that no god exists. Atheism is naught but an honest answer to a rather specific question – Do you believe in a god? – by an individual who has come to discover that there is simply not enough evidence to merit the fostering of a belief in a deity. A non-believer cannot entirely disprove the notion of a god, as it is impossible to prove a negative, but the onus to produce evidence burdens not the skeptic; the onus to produce evidence, and this is something the faithful quite often forget, or, rather, ignore, must fall to the believer (i.e. the claimant).

It is impossible to prove that a god – Yahweh, Thor, Zeus, etc. – does not exist, just as it is impossible to prove that fairies, and spaghetti monsters, and an invisible, intangible, and inaudible clan of unicorns, do not exist. These examples should strike the reader as obvious inventions of the human mind, yet each is hardly disprovable in its turn, at least to any degree of certainty, and especially when the defining attributes are kept vague or are frequently altered. It is, perhaps, the greatest con to ever have been perpetrated upon a thinking person, that he should be shamed into silence for calling the ludicrous into question, or shut up by social pressures from asking that detailed explanations be given, let alone tested.

And not only have believers burdened themselves with the unnecessary weight of having to prove the existence of their god(s), but they would that we share with them in this self-abuse. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve never been the sort to tenaciously, or rather, faithfully, defend a falsehood: that being the highly improper assertion that we can know, with absolute certainty, that which is unknowable. By this line of reasoning one could profess their belief in a herd of invisible pink elephants to exist just beneath the swirling clouds of Jupiter as uncontestable due entirely to the fact that we have yet to find any evidence to the contrary, nor shall we. However, though we cannot rule out the existence of an invisible herd of pink elephants with one hundred percent certainty, its members are so unlikely to exist that we really ought not waste what little time we have in concerning ourselves with them.

Atheism is no more than the realization that our imaginary friends from childhood never actually existed, and that a world devoid of magical happenings truly is the one in which we live. As Richard Dawkins reminds us in The God Delusion, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” I am quite certain that you know precisely what it means to not believe in the god of another, and, in this way, I would argue that you must also know what it is to be an atheist.

(Follow the link above if you wish to purchase my book,or you can go here if you’d prefer to buy through Amazon.com.)

An Update On The Bullshit Blasphemy Case In Pakistan

As you may have noticed, the blasphemy charges being brought against a Ms. Rimsha Masih in Pakistan have pissed me right the fuck off. But now it seems that the case has taken a turn away from the absurd and may now be careering towards some semblance of justice. A Mr. Chisti, the Muslim cleric who’d led the campaign for the prosecution of Ms. Masih, now finds himself at risk of facing those very same charges. Mr Chisti, lead cleric of the mosque in Mehr Jaffer, was arrested by police late Saturday and presented, blindfolded, before a judicial magistrate the next morning (see picture). As Salman Masood reports in The New York Times:

“Mr. Chisti had cast himself as a holy man who was incensed at a desecration and had passionately exhorted local residents to protest and demand the harshest of punishments for the accused girl, who family members and police officials say is a developmentally disabled minor.”

Perhaps you can understand my outrage over this issue. Mr. Chisti’s arrest followed a rather surprising accusation made by one of his colleagues, a Hafiz Mohammad Zubair, who said that he had “falsifi[ed] evidence of burned holy papers.” According to Mr. Zubair, Mr. Chisti had added two pages of the Koran to a heap of burned pages from the Noorani Qaida that had been seized from Ms. Masih. “I tried to stop him,” said Mr. Zubair, “but he said that this would strengthen our case.” What a bastard.

Better Off Godless? A conversation series continued…

The second episode in my new JQ Corner presents conversation series. Have a watch and share!

Are You Kidding Me With This Shit, Pakistan?

Lawyers Seek the Release of a Christian Girl Charged With Blasphemy in Pakistan read an article in today’s The New York Times (Aug. 29, 2012). The girl in question is Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old accused of having burned pages from the Noorani Qaida, a religious text used to teach the Koran to children, who may, according to a medical board, have some mental deficiencies (“…Her mental condition does not match her age and physical condition,” said Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, Masih’s lawyer), though in this case I wonder whether those prosecuting this poor girl may not themselves be somewhat cerebrally challenged. Does this not seem a little ridiculous to anyone else? It’s bullshit like this that makes me say, “Thank god (just a figure of speech, don’t get excited) that I live in a secular country!” Ms. Masih was reportedly seen holding a burned copy of the Noorani Qaida, but who’s to say that she actually set it ablaze? Maybe she found it that way? Maybe it was given her by some other little bastard in order to get her into trouble? Who knows? What I do know is that, even if she did burn the book, incarcerating her on charges of blaspheming is just fucking stupid!

According to Tahir Ashrafi, chairman of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, “In Pakistan, we have one law for both Muslims and Christians. The government should apply it.” Here’s an idea for any in Pakistan who would wish to prosecute Ms. Masih, or do harm to any “blasphemer”: How about you take your heads out of your asses and move forward into the next century rather than cling to an absolutist worldview based upon the outdated scribblings of a painfully obviously man-made religion! The fact that this girl is more than likely going to have to be relocated for her own safety should she be released should be seen by the inhabitants of Pakistan as a national disgrace. Personally, I would never burn a book because it’s just that…a book…but I would have to consider myself an utter idiot were I to harm another human being for having destroyed a copy of a book, whether or not I agreed with its content.

JQ Chats

This will be a newer, shorter version of the JQ Corner presents, only it will be a one-on-one chat rather than a group discussion. I like to talk to people and to hear their opinions on different topics, even those that are less than serious. Below are the first videos in this new series (with Justin Flannery as my guest). Enjoy!

‘Til Death Do Us Part

“I hear screaming out there. I don’t know what’s going on,” said a breathless nurse to the operator in a 911 call.

Moments earlier, a 66 year old man by the name of John Wise had alit from a taxi out front of Akron General hospital. “I told him, ‘I hope everything goes as well as possible for you,‘” said the cab’s driver, Dale Doyle. How could the driver have known what was about to transpire? Mr. Wise entered the building and made his way to Room 3201 of the intensive care unit, the room where his wife, Barbara, lay unconscious. Once inside, Mr. Wise pressed the barrel of the gun he’d been concealing to his wife’s left temple and pulled the trigger.

Barbara Wise had been hospitalized since the 28th of July after having suffered a stroke, according to a friend (though hospital records appear not yet to have been released concerning her condition prior to the shooting). Her husband had brought her in after having discovered her collapsed on their bathroom floor, vomiting and choking. According to Mr. Wise’s lawyer, Paul Adamson, “I guess the most succinct way I could put it is she could die at any time or she could linger for an unspecified period of time. But it was not likely that she was ever going to recover to the point where she could care for herself.” Mr. Adamson also said that the couple had signed living wills some few years ago and that in these they “both made it clear they did not want to be maintained on life support.“

But Mr. Wise had waited only one week, until August 4th, before pulling the trigger on his wife. Is that not suspicious? According to Mr. Adamson, his client only vaguely recalled the shooting, though he clearly remembered having visited his wife with his son earlier that day. Mr. Wise told Adamson that he saw a tear roll down his wife’s cheek as he and his son stood beside her hospital bed. Is this why he felt he had to kill his wife? Did he believe her to be suffering so terribly? Could he not wait? I have not seen the medical reports, but I would think that “pulling the plug,” as they say, would be a last resort were my wife laid up in a hospital bed. Am I too hopeful? Too optimistic? Perhaps, but that’s a human life and it has value. I shouldn’t wish to give that person up so easily.

Terry Henderson, a 30 odd year friend of Mr. Wise, believes that he intended to kill himself immediately after having killed his wife, that is, had the gun not jammed following the first shot. Sadly, Mrs. Wise did not die after being shot in the head. Dr. Michael Passero Jr., the first to arrive on the scene after having heard the “pop” of the gunshot, recalls Mr. Wise saying, “Oh, she’s alive. How could she still be alive?” Mrs. Wise died the next day, August 5th.

Was this truly a “mercy killing,” as some are calling it? Had Mr. Wise gone over the edge or was he really pushed to “protect” his wife from suffering by going to such extremes? I cannot imagine ever pulling this stunt after only a single week of hospitalization. I would turn to experimental medical procedures before I would ever pull that trigger. I fully support a person’s right to undergo an assisted suicide (allowing someone to make the decision to die rather than to go on suffering terribly), but in this instance I feel that Mr. Wise “jumped the gun.”

Jesus Gets A Makeover?

Cecilia Giménez, an elderly Spanish woman now in her 80s, has come forward to take responsibility for what Raphael Minder of the New York Times has referred to as “probably the worst art restoration project of all time.” The century-old ecce homo (meaning “behold the man”) fresco of Jesus, depicted bound and with a crown of thorns, located in the Santuario de la Misericordia (a Roman Catholic church in Borja), was Ms. Giménez’s favorite local representation of Jesus. She said on Spanish national television that she was upset at parts of the fresco flaking off due to moisture upon the church’s walls and thus took it upon herself to salvage her favorite image of her beloved lord and savior. Two things come of this: one good and one bad.

The good thing is humor. I mean, just look at that bang up salvage job. It’s fucking hilarious. So bad, in fact, that authorities first suspected vandalism ere Ms. Giménez stepped forward.

The bad thing is that, though Ms. Giménez claims to have worked in broad daylight and with the full approval of the local clergy, the authorities are now considering taking legal action against the elderly woman for her efforts.