The Switcheroo

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

Mark Twain

Most people of faith either lack a mechanism for validating and invalidating claims, or they simply suppress that mechanism in favor of a certain belief, a process known as compartmentalization. The compartmentalized belief is impervious to any statement that could be made, any evidence that could be shown, and any proof that could be given which in any way might damage that belief. Therefore, as an attempt to work from the inside out, I present the following:

The Switcheroo

A long time ago God created the universe. He did it in such a way that a very specific process would play out. This process would lead to a beautiful cosmos to look at, and an amazing diversity of life which would yield one of God's eventual favorite species, the human. These carbon-based bipedal primates would have a capacity for intelligence unmatched by their contemporaries (on the same planet at least), and would therefore have a remarkable capacity for good, for evil, for love, for hate, for learning, and for credulity. A rival god named Lucifer swung by once to see what God had created and he coveted it. He was jealous beyond belief at the beauty of this universe and of the creatures that would be in it. So he devised a plan to steal it. Sharing the space was easy enough because both gods are omnipresent.

But that wasn't enough. He wanted the humans. He wanted their minds. The creator god, interestingly enough, didn't care to have the minds of the humans, he just wanted them to use them. Knowing this, Lucifer decided to interfere in human affairs in just such a way, that the humans would create a book which was two-fold in purpose. First, to cripple the minds of the humans and second, to get them to worship him. Lucifer figured this was enough to get the creator god to be jealous of him, purchasing Lucifer the eternal bragging rights which would, in his mind, assuage his insatiable jealousy.

But it didn't work. The creator god had a strong intuition that the humans might overcome the deception. He had read the book that had been written about Lucifer and wagered that the humans would be able to see through the attempt at deception and once again be the creatures they evolved to be. He even noted that some of Lucifer's outrageous jealousy had spilled over into the verses. (There were even some that commanded the humans not to have any other gods before him.) He wasn't going to give Lucifer the satisfaction of caring that billions of humans were going to be worshipping him. So he just folded his arms and observed. He didn't try to stop Lucifer, because he knew it was what Lucifer wanted.

As the millennia passed, it played out exactly as Lucifer wanted. He even had it put in the book that the creator god was not actually the creator god, but the devil, subservient to him in every way. He had set it up such that once the belief took hold, it was virtually impossible for the humans to change their minds.

Will the humans ever emancipate themselves from Lucifer's deception? Will the creator god end up intervening to save the minds of billions? Will any believer be able to freely contemplate this story?

For the conclusion of this dramatic tale... stay tuned.

Here's the question: How can a religious person know that this story isn't absolutely, 100% true, without doubting their own beliefs on the same bases?

Why I Ridicule People's Faith

"I find your evangelism to be a bit abrasive. Why pursue your former kinsman with derision? What is the point?"

-John Clawson (in response to my facebook ridicules of the beliefs of christianity)

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816

Every time someone says, "Praise god I got the job, He's so great!", "Pray for me that god would see me through this difficult time," or even, "god bless you," or, "I feel blessed," that person, whether they mean to or not, is making a truth claim about the nature of the universe. Much like the participants in the feminist movement would react strongly to even the slightest implication that women were unequal to men (i.e. "one man, one vote," the word "man" to indicate human, and even the exclusion of the female pronoun from texts and speech), a process that helped raise awareness about equal rights, I react strongly to even the slightest implication that there is a god. This is not because I'm dogmatically against the prospect, but because I require people to be able to articulate what it is they believe and why in the public marketplace of ideas, and because I'm deeply interested in what's true. If they're claiming that there is a god then I want to know why they believe that. Because, if their beliefs are more in line with what's true than mine are, then I covet their knowledge. But, if they're spouting corrosive untruths, I take it upon myself to defend the knowledge which has allowed our human civilization to survive the cold and unfeeling world around us thus far, the knowledge that is our best hope for progress and survival through the ages.

When someone even says something as innocuous as, "I feel blessed," the implication is that there's a magic being upstairs blessing and cursing people as it sees fit. All one has to do is open their eyes to the needless suffering that takes place on our imperfect sphere to see the repugnance of this idea, even more so the idea that such a being should be worshipped.

The forum in which I ridicule the faithful is typically facebook but is always a public forum for a few reasons. When I first started becoming outspoken about my atheism, I'd do it in private at the expense of my close friends. This caused some hard feelings and a lot of drama. When I gave it a little more thought it became apparent to me that I was being no better than those faith-heads who show up to your door and ask if you have a few minutes. I was imposing my beliefs and thought processes on them and I had no right. The reason that a public forum cannot constitute an imposition is because anyone is free to ignore what I say without appearing rude. Facebook is particularly good about this because the status updates on which I frequently comment have a mechanism that makes it easy to exclude me from being able to comment or even see them. If someone doesn't like what I have to say, it is just too easy for them to ignore me for me to be imposing anything upon them.

Relatively unchallenged beliefs are corrupting our society. The belief that because someone is homosexual that they should have less rights than "normal" people, the attempts to teach non-science in science classes, the major impediments to scientific research that could save the lives and better the quality of life of countless people, and the attempts of religion to control our secular government should be combatted with passion and reason. I look forward to a day when science, education, and human rights can charge forward unimpeded by iron-age superstition. So much so that I fight for it.