Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Generic Season's Greetings
I figured the Atheist's Log would be the best place to vent about the Christmas season. While I do like that Christmas seems to be getting more and more secular, it's also getting more and more materialist and consumerist, which isn't a good thing. Additionally, the Christian right always seems to go bonkers all over Christmas, as if they don't even realize that Christmas is a syncretic holiday, just like many aspects of Christianity exhibit syncretism. It really bothers me that the Christian right isn't interested in scholarship, science, or facts; it is more interested in maintaining power, placing guilt trips, and manipulating its way in the government. I feel that a true Christian scholar would study the origin of the religious texts and traditions and recognize that paganism has had vast influences on the religion. Yet modern-day fundamentalists want to ignore this simple fact, as well as the separation of church and state. The way I see it, there is no way to represent every single religion equally and fairly, so the government should represent none. There should be no presidential recognition of the national Christmas tree in Washington DC. It is merely a disgusting display of discrimination. And the fact that the biggest religious diversity we've had in a president was Catholicism instead of Protestantism is just a gross demonstration of the US of A's intolerance. People seem to think that they can remain politically correct by representing a variety of religions, but the fact remains that there are so many religions and so many interpretations of those religions (and then there are the atheists with no religion! what do we get??) that it is better to refrain from political public displays of this sort. Even at the College of William and Mary where there is a traditional Yule Log Ceremony (an obvious shout out to the pagans, right?) the students tried to represent every religion. The Christians spoke first, of course, quoting the Jesus birth story from the Bible (but wait, wasn't Jesus born in the spring?), then students representing the faiths of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and the holiday of Kwanzaa spoke. But I, as an atheist, felt left out. And what about an acknowledgment to the pagan tradition of Yule Log? Oh, that tradition was read later, but only as a reminder of the rules of the event, like where to rub the sprig of holly. Is no one willing to recognize the lies and hate mongering that is Christianity? Before realizing other religions were represented at this Yule Log Ceremony, I yelled something like "Fuck this Christian shit! This is a pagan holiday!" causing the woman in front of me to turn around and give me a look.
I am willing to exchange gifts around Christmas; it is a nice gesture and, to be honest, with so many people celebrating the Christmas holiday, there is no escaping it. But I am not willing to believe "little baby Jesus" was born in a manger on December 25 to a virginal Mary. Because it isn't true. And any quick look on the Internet would show that Christianity borrowed greatly from existing traditions.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
My Belief System: Waste
I hate waste. That sentence basically sums up this part of my philosophy, but I'll go on so I can explain some of the repercussions and practical principles that come from it.
When I talk about waste, I'm not just talking about the obvious physical waste that everyone can see. Of course we should recycle, reuse, compost, and reduce the stuff we use. At the same time, there are many kinds of waste besides the physical: wasted time, wasted potential, wasted mind power, wasted space.
I see all sorts of waste all around me all the time. For example, there's school. At every level, assignments are used mostly to further the students themselves. Many of these assignments, with a few modifications, could be exported to the "real world" and actually affect it. For example, rather than make students write a report on, say, National Parks in the US, you could get them to make a Wikipedia article on protected areas in Western Australia, most of which don't have articles yet. This way, rather than the report rotting on a desk, it can become part of the growing body of knowledge being built in this amazing resource.
One principle that I try to live by based on this whole hating waste thing is "Use what others might not." For example, if I see napkins that someone left on a table at a restaurant, I'll use those rather than get new ones from the dispenser, because those napkins will probably be thrown out. I don't know for sure that other people won't use them, but they might not, so I might as well use them.
Another principle is to use what you've got until its unusable (in terms of stuff, not nature of course). This is the reason I still carry the wallet I got when I was 14, even though the zippers are broken and the window for my ID is gone. As long as I can stuff a bill into it, I'm gonna keep on using it.
Its extremely easy to get carried away if you take any principle to far, and I'll talk about how I keep myself from doing that in my next post.
Peace and Plants
When I talk about waste, I'm not just talking about the obvious physical waste that everyone can see. Of course we should recycle, reuse, compost, and reduce the stuff we use. At the same time, there are many kinds of waste besides the physical: wasted time, wasted potential, wasted mind power, wasted space.
I see all sorts of waste all around me all the time. For example, there's school. At every level, assignments are used mostly to further the students themselves. Many of these assignments, with a few modifications, could be exported to the "real world" and actually affect it. For example, rather than make students write a report on, say, National Parks in the US, you could get them to make a Wikipedia article on protected areas in Western Australia, most of which don't have articles yet. This way, rather than the report rotting on a desk, it can become part of the growing body of knowledge being built in this amazing resource.
One principle that I try to live by based on this whole hating waste thing is "Use what others might not." For example, if I see napkins that someone left on a table at a restaurant, I'll use those rather than get new ones from the dispenser, because those napkins will probably be thrown out. I don't know for sure that other people won't use them, but they might not, so I might as well use them.
Another principle is to use what you've got until its unusable (in terms of stuff, not nature of course). This is the reason I still carry the wallet I got when I was 14, even though the zippers are broken and the window for my ID is gone. As long as I can stuff a bill into it, I'm gonna keep on using it.
Its extremely easy to get carried away if you take any principle to far, and I'll talk about how I keep myself from doing that in my next post.
Peace and Plants
Thursday, October 16, 2008
My Belief System: Life
Lets see if I can get this into one post. I've spent a large part of my short life trying to figure out what I believe in, and it looks like I have finally been able to collect enough thoughts to put together a relatively coherent version of that.
Most of my core beliefs are based on five principles: a love for Life, a abhorrence for waste, an obsession with questions, a distaste for radicalism, and an extremely long timescale. Lets go through these one by one. And no, there's no way this is going to fit in one post.
The love of Life is a love of all life - plants, animals, fungi, microbes, and people. As the product of 4 billion years of biological evolution, its only fitting that Life itself is at the core of my belief system. I believe there is a fundamental choice behind almost every decision we make: we can either respect, love, and further the systems that produced us, or we can destroy them. The most obvious product of a life - centered philosophy is of course, environmentalism.
I've basically always been an environmentalist. I've seen everything from enormous roadside dumps in Mexico to rivers of sewage in India to enormous rivers of concrete in California, and all of these things disturbed me greatly as I was growing up. There's plenty of writing about the environment out there, so I won't get into it too much, but I will say this: environmentalists have been pessimistic to the point of hopelessness. As a movement, we need to start focusing on solutions rather than problems, to start playing offense rather than defense.* No, we can't get that old-growth forest back in our lifetimes, but we can plant something that will someday resemble it.
If environmentalism is obvious, there are other results of this focus on life that might not be. The first of these is my very non-supernatural version of an afterlife. We live on through our children and through the ideas we pass on to others. In the ancient past, of course, it was only through our children that we could live on by passing our genes to the next generation. For a long time, however, probably since right before the first mammals, we've been passing on memes; ideas and behaviours that complement our genes and allow us to essentially skip thousands of generations with a single step. In fact, if you're reading this right now, I believe that a part of me is now in you! Scary thought huh?
The second, non-obvious result of basing a whole set of life principles on life itself is the desire to replicate it. I'm not just talking about having kids, or even restoring life on disturbed ecosystems... I'm talking about replicating the entire biosphere on other planets. You may be thinking this is a ways off, but the fact is that we are the only species on this planet capable of bringing life to lifeless worlds. We're less than half a century away from putting people on Mars, and I hope that we can bring more than people with us to that new world. This is where life-centered environmentalism parts with landscape or wilderness-centered environmentalism. Whereas many traditional environmentalists might say that we should leave other planets in their natural state, life-centered environmentalism essentially requires that we adapt life to live on these worlds and adapt these worlds to life. If you want a three-novel exploration of these ideas, check out The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
Anyway, thats about as much as I can get out right now. Look forward (or beware) of at least four more posts on this as I try and get my belief system down on paper. And down on paper I mean out on the internets...
*For more information about ecological restoration and my personal journey through it, see my other blog at http://restoringtheamericas.blogspot.com/
Most of my core beliefs are based on five principles: a love for Life, a abhorrence for waste, an obsession with questions, a distaste for radicalism, and an extremely long timescale. Lets go through these one by one. And no, there's no way this is going to fit in one post.
The love of Life is a love of all life - plants, animals, fungi, microbes, and people. As the product of 4 billion years of biological evolution, its only fitting that Life itself is at the core of my belief system. I believe there is a fundamental choice behind almost every decision we make: we can either respect, love, and further the systems that produced us, or we can destroy them. The most obvious product of a life - centered philosophy is of course, environmentalism.
I've basically always been an environmentalist. I've seen everything from enormous roadside dumps in Mexico to rivers of sewage in India to enormous rivers of concrete in California, and all of these things disturbed me greatly as I was growing up. There's plenty of writing about the environment out there, so I won't get into it too much, but I will say this: environmentalists have been pessimistic to the point of hopelessness. As a movement, we need to start focusing on solutions rather than problems, to start playing offense rather than defense.* No, we can't get that old-growth forest back in our lifetimes, but we can plant something that will someday resemble it.
If environmentalism is obvious, there are other results of this focus on life that might not be. The first of these is my very non-supernatural version of an afterlife. We live on through our children and through the ideas we pass on to others. In the ancient past, of course, it was only through our children that we could live on by passing our genes to the next generation. For a long time, however, probably since right before the first mammals, we've been passing on memes; ideas and behaviours that complement our genes and allow us to essentially skip thousands of generations with a single step. In fact, if you're reading this right now, I believe that a part of me is now in you! Scary thought huh?
The second, non-obvious result of basing a whole set of life principles on life itself is the desire to replicate it. I'm not just talking about having kids, or even restoring life on disturbed ecosystems... I'm talking about replicating the entire biosphere on other planets. You may be thinking this is a ways off, but the fact is that we are the only species on this planet capable of bringing life to lifeless worlds. We're less than half a century away from putting people on Mars, and I hope that we can bring more than people with us to that new world. This is where life-centered environmentalism parts with landscape or wilderness-centered environmentalism. Whereas many traditional environmentalists might say that we should leave other planets in their natural state, life-centered environmentalism essentially requires that we adapt life to live on these worlds and adapt these worlds to life. If you want a three-novel exploration of these ideas, check out The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
Anyway, thats about as much as I can get out right now. Look forward (or beware) of at least four more posts on this as I try and get my belief system down on paper. And down on paper I mean out on the internets...
*For more information about ecological restoration and my personal journey through it, see my other blog at http://restoringtheamericas.blogspot.com/
Saturday, October 11, 2008
We are not alone!
Hey 'yall,
Our little blog has just joined the wider Atheist community by being added to the Atheist Blogroll! Its a growing collection of like-minded blogs from around the world. Check it out on the sidebar towards the bottom. Also, if you have another blog you would like added to the blogroll, let Mojoey of Deep Thoughts know and he'll hook you up!
While we're on the subject, lets talk about some of the other features of the blog. For starters, there's the Atheist Google search. Its like a normal search, but biased toward our beliefs (or lack thereof). I just typed in Spore and got this hilarious video from the creature creator. I also typed in Jesus (after seeing the video) and found atheists for jesus as the first result. The second result is an interesting article by Richard Dawkins.
Below the archive and subscription links, which are pretty self explanatory, is the slideshow. It basically displays anything on flickr tagged with the word "Atheism." So, if you want to throw something in the mix, just go on flickr and tag it. Because its unfiltered, some of the pictures are bound to be from religious folks trying to piss us off, but thats all part of the fun!
You may have noticed the ads on the blog. As full disclosure, I do earn revenue from those ads. I've made $1.30 so far!!!! The ads are based on the content of the site, which is rather Atheism heavy, so just like the pictures, many of the ads are meant to try and convert us... because I know so many folks that have "found Jesus" on the internet. He's probably lurking around here somewhere.
Anyway, this post has gone on longer than I wanted, so play around with the blog and I'll put up a real post later.
-
Our little blog has just joined the wider Atheist community by being added to the Atheist Blogroll! Its a growing collection of like-minded blogs from around the world. Check it out on the sidebar towards the bottom. Also, if you have another blog you would like added to the blogroll, let Mojoey of Deep Thoughts know and he'll hook you up!
While we're on the subject, lets talk about some of the other features of the blog. For starters, there's the Atheist Google search. Its like a normal search, but biased toward our beliefs (or lack thereof). I just typed in Spore and got this hilarious video from the creature creator. I also typed in Jesus (after seeing the video) and found atheists for jesus as the first result. The second result is an interesting article by Richard Dawkins.
Below the archive and subscription links, which are pretty self explanatory, is the slideshow. It basically displays anything on flickr tagged with the word "Atheism." So, if you want to throw something in the mix, just go on flickr and tag it. Because its unfiltered, some of the pictures are bound to be from religious folks trying to piss us off, but thats all part of the fun!
You may have noticed the ads on the blog. As full disclosure, I do earn revenue from those ads. I've made $1.30 so far!!!! The ads are based on the content of the site, which is rather Atheism heavy, so just like the pictures, many of the ads are meant to try and convert us... because I know so many folks that have "found Jesus" on the internet. He's probably lurking around here somewhere.
Anyway, this post has gone on longer than I wanted, so play around with the blog and I'll put up a real post later.
-
Thursday, September 18, 2008
A Real Christian?
I've taken a new job registering voters on the streets of Richmond, and this means that I have a lot of interesting conversations with people every day. Yesterday, I registered a woman who had never registered to vote before because of "religious reasons." We had earlier established that she was a vegetarian, so I put two and two together and asked her "Oh, are you a Seventh-day Adventist?"
I immediately regretted this question, because I thought it would cause her to go into her conversion speech, but was pleasantly surprised that she just started talking about her beliefs in a reasonable manner. She told me about her journey, how she spoke to god on a blanket in her living room, how she stopped going to church because people there were too "prescriptive." Then she started talking about how the religious right has twisted Christianity into a hateful, literalist, unreasonable faith. She had earlier told me about how she was really excited to see Sarah Palin speak until she actually started talking and spitting hate. She even spoke against religious intolerance, saying that everyone has a different path to follow.
As she spoke, I realized I had come across a real rare gem: a Christian that actually follows the spirit of what jesus did. As far I can tell, Jesus was a pacifist, a political activist, and one of the most tolerant people that ever lived. Its only been through centuries of dogma, power struggles and mistranslations that his teachings have been turned into what we see today. As we ended our conversation, I left her with this comment: "I think you're the closest thing to a real Christian that I've ever met."
I immediately regretted this question, because I thought it would cause her to go into her conversion speech, but was pleasantly surprised that she just started talking about her beliefs in a reasonable manner. She told me about her journey, how she spoke to god on a blanket in her living room, how she stopped going to church because people there were too "prescriptive." Then she started talking about how the religious right has twisted Christianity into a hateful, literalist, unreasonable faith. She had earlier told me about how she was really excited to see Sarah Palin speak until she actually started talking and spitting hate. She even spoke against religious intolerance, saying that everyone has a different path to follow.
As she spoke, I realized I had come across a real rare gem: a Christian that actually follows the spirit of what jesus did. As far I can tell, Jesus was a pacifist, a political activist, and one of the most tolerant people that ever lived. Its only been through centuries of dogma, power struggles and mistranslations that his teachings have been turned into what we see today. As we ended our conversation, I left her with this comment: "I think you're the closest thing to a real Christian that I've ever met."
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Thoughts Part II
So I'm sitting in class (let me specify: a science class) and I feel the need to blog. I was just thinking about what a terrible atheist I am. Even though I am a Biology major, and I believe all the stuff that goes with it (AKA stuff "proven" (as much as something can become fact) by the scientific method), I must say that I am not an atheist because of science but because of faith. Even though I know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the vast majority of my belief, or lack thereof, comes from faith. To be honest, I am no better than the religious folks. After a while I just felt in my gut (like Stephen Colbert!) that nothing like god or souls or spirits or afterlives exist. In fact, I don't believe anything exists, but that's another story. Maybe all of this comes from some sort of self-association with the philosophy of nihilism, but who knows? I blindly walk, led only by feeling, through much of my life, and this is no different. People can cite logical arguments against god at me all they want, and I will believe them. But they don't move me to really feel strongly about an issue like, well, gut feeling does.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Thoughts
This isn't really related to a specific story, but is composed of some thoughts about my atheism.
I've realized more and more that I don't necessarily object to other people's ideas of god (unless it's like the man with a beard/more physical stuff). But I have heard some people's interpretations as more of a spirituality that holds us together, or maybe just some abstract form of energy. Now, I am not one to be spiritual, but I would object to this view a lot less, I have discovered, than I would object to the idea of souls and an afterlife. My feelings on this are: as a society we are so afraid of death (we are constantly trying to extend our life expectancies with medicine and make ourselves look younger with plastic surgery) and yet the great majority (85%) of this country believes in heaven. This makes no sense to me. If people truly believed they would live forever in heaven, why would they be so scared to die? I call BS on the part of the American people. I, for one, will admit I am scared of death because I know this life is it. So what I'm really trying to say is, I don't necessarily object to people's ideas of abstract deities if that is what they choose to believe. I do, however, get riled up about the idea of eternal life. This finite life is all we have. And we should make the most of it.
I've realized more and more that I don't necessarily object to other people's ideas of god (unless it's like the man with a beard/more physical stuff). But I have heard some people's interpretations as more of a spirituality that holds us together, or maybe just some abstract form of energy. Now, I am not one to be spiritual, but I would object to this view a lot less, I have discovered, than I would object to the idea of souls and an afterlife. My feelings on this are: as a society we are so afraid of death (we are constantly trying to extend our life expectancies with medicine and make ourselves look younger with plastic surgery) and yet the great majority (85%) of this country believes in heaven. This makes no sense to me. If people truly believed they would live forever in heaven, why would they be so scared to die? I call BS on the part of the American people. I, for one, will admit I am scared of death because I know this life is it. So what I'm really trying to say is, I don't necessarily object to people's ideas of abstract deities if that is what they choose to believe. I do, however, get riled up about the idea of eternal life. This finite life is all we have. And we should make the most of it.
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