I had a thought today.  Human beings are born with what I call the ‘absolute essentials’ of survival.  A person automatically knows to breath to stay alive, to eat when hungry and to drink when thirsty.

Nobody has to be taught any of the above to stay alive.  However according to religion your being alive is totally insignificant compared to the eternity that awaits you afterward.  When you compare something finite to something infinite the finite something (no matter how large) is reduced to zero in comparison.

So effectively your life on earth does not matter at all in the grand scheme of things.  Yet you are born with the ‘absolute essentials’ to live.  If the afterlife is infinitely more important why must we rely on others to teach us?  Why aren’t we born with a sense of God?  I mean knowledge and belief in God are infinitely more essential than breathing right?  Yet every single person is born without religion or belief of any kind and this puts their immortal souls in potentialy infinite danger.

If God created us and belief in him is essential to our eternal lives, shouldn’t awareness of him be part of our ‘absolute essentials’?  It should be.  But it’s not.  So God gave us the most incredible handicap, in that we have to just ‘hope’ somebody tells us about him (and the correct him at that).

Either that or maybe we weren’t created.

I’m just saying…

Did you know that evolution is a lie?  Did you know that all Darwin did was put a monkey skull onto a human skeleton as ‘proof’ for his ‘theory’?  Well neither did I.  Until my sister Heather (yes another post inspired by her) let me know this tidbit of ‘information’ which was passed onto her by a Jehovah’s Witness co-worker.  This unfortunately is not a one off crazy idea.  I’ve since heard this or something similar several times from people belonging to several denominations.

It’s been several months since I last heard about the Darwin monkey skull/human skeleton theory however and I haven’t really thought about.  But it came to mind again yesterday when I learned it was the 63rd anniversary of the Scopes monkey trial. Thinking about it again I realised how little people know about Darwin and the theory of evolution.  The common belief is that Darwin created the theory of evolution which explains the origin of life on earth and that man evolved from monkeys and that there is no God.  This irks me in a bad way for one simple reason.  The theory of evolution states none of those things.

Here are the actual facts.  Darwin did create the theory of evolution which states that higher forms of life develop out of lower forms of life through random mutation and natural selection.  Essentially when an animal is born with good characteristics it is more likely to survive and have offspring thus passing on those good characteristic.  When an animal born with bad or ‘less good’ characteristics they are then less likely to survive and pass on those characteristics.  Eventually the bad or ‘less good’ characteristics are eliminated from the species.  What does that say about the origin of life on earth?  It doesn’t say anything about it.  Evolution simply explains how life developed into the way we see it today and not how life began.  The origin of life is a completely separate theory called Abiogenesis which Darwin had nothing to do with.

As for man evolving from monkeys that is false as well.  Man shares a common ancestor with monkeys and didn’t come from them.  It’s easiest if you think about it like a family tree.  You and your cousin are related (like humans and monkeys) but you did not ‘come’ from your cousin (just like man didn’t ‘come’ from monkeys).  Rather you share a common ancestor in the form of your grandparents (just like humans and monkeys back in the Miocene period more than 20 million years ago link).  Darwin didn’t state anything about human development in his theory or his book “On the Origin of Species”.  Granted he was well aware of the implications (though they weren’t proven for many years) but since he never wrote or stated anything about monkeys and man we can put the lie to the idea that Darwin put a monkey skull on a human skeleton and claimed proof of his theory.

Lastly the theory of evolution doesn’t say anything about denying God.  In fact many modern religious people now believe in what is called Theistic Evolution.  Basically God used evolution to create life as it is today as part of his divine plan.   A religious friend of mine once said “God isn’t magic.  He uses nature to perform his will”.  So Darwin and evolution does not deny the existence of God.

Darwin, in fact, doesn’t even mention God in “The Origin of Species” or his theory of evolution.  But maybe that’s the problem.

Recently my sister Heather was having a discussion about religion with some friends.  They were surprised to learn that she is an atheist.  They were completely unable to grasp how you could think there is no God.  My sister explained that she did not believe that there was any reason or evidence to believe, and the bible with it’s myriad of errors, internal and historical, gave her ample reason to believe it all poppycock.  Her friends replied “How can you say there is no god?  What if you’re wrong?”.  ”Well if I’m wrong I guess I’m fucked aren’t I” was Heather’s reply.

Now when Heather told me about this conversation I was immediately reminded of Pascal’s Wager.  Now I’m sure most of you know about Pascal’s Wager already but I’ll explain it for those who might not.

If you believe in God and God IS real then you go to heaven.  If you believe in God and God is NOT real then nothing happens.

If you don’t believe in God and God is NOT real then again nothing happens.  But if you don’t believe in God and God IS real then you go to Hell.

Essentially you should believe in God just in case.  If you do believe in God the worst that can happen is nothing, whereas if you don’t believe the worst that can happen is eternal torment.  So as you can see the stakes are as high as they can get and in a game like this it only make sense to play where the odds are in your favour right?  Wrong, and I’ll tell you why.

God is supposedly omnipotent and omniscient.  That is all powerful and all knowing.  If God does exist isn’t it likely that he knows you don’t really believe?  That you only ‘believe’ because you feel it’s in your best interest.  If God exists doesn’t he have the power to know that you only ‘chose’ to believe for selfish reasons.  Let’s be honest you can’t choose what you believe.  You either believe it or you don’t.  I believe that the sky is up and the ground is down; I didn’t read about it, doubt it but choose to believe it anyway just to be safe.  I simply believe it.

Realising this is what allowed me to let go of the last clinging bits of religion and embrace atheism.  Growing up I was given a very fire and brimstone view of God and as I slowly stopped believing I was understandably scared.  What if I was wrong?  It was when I realized that if God were real he would know deep down that I didn’t really believe and was only paying lip service out of fear.  I felt that it would be an insult to both of us and I would be better off living my life truthfully.

So next time someone asks you “what if you’re wrong?” when discussing your atheism simply tell them “You can’t choose what you believe is true deep down.  You believe it or you don’t and I don’t”.

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{Unrelated atheism quote from my sister Heather after watching a documentary about prehistoric animals}

“Holy fuck!  Elephant birds existed!  Elephant birds existed and Jesus Christ did not.”

Well a bombshell has just been dropped on the youth of Australia. Prosperity is… er…bad. At least that’s what the Pope says. In a recent speech for World Youth Day in Sydney the Pontif let 400,000 young people know that material prosperity leads to spiritual poverty.  ”In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair”.  Now I agree that rampant materialism or being obsessed only with money or worldly possessions is a not a good thing. But at the fundamental level the Pope is saying prospering is a bad thing. Now the bible would seem to agree with him as Jesus himself says “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24). But if we dig a little in the less popular parts of the bible we find this “Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. ” (Proverbs 3:9-10). So we are told on the one hand that prosperity prevents you from going to heaven. On the other hand we are told that prosperity is our reward from god for our good deeds. 

So we can’t rely on the bible for a final word on this issue. That’s fine. What bothers me more is the sheer hypocrisy of the statement.  The leader of the one of the worlds richest organizations and the biggest landowner on earth is telling youth that prosperity leads to a spiritual desert, all the while wearing silk robes and carrying a staff of gold.

What upsets me most of all however is that the Pope is saying that prosperity is a bad thing. That doing well for yourself leads to emptiness and fear. Why would prosperity lead to emptiness? Short of obsessive materialism prosperity is almost always a good thing. There is the old adage “Money can’t buy you happiness” but according to a 2006 study, rich people are considerably happier than poor people.  So maybe prosperity isn’t so bad…

Mantred here with a shiny new post for my shiny new blog.  My intent is to deal with the ideas of atheism and religion and the conflicts and similarities theirin.  How they are different, how they are similar and most importantly I hope to show they can coexist and both bring us a little wisdom and insite.

I plan on discussing specific examples of errancy in  both the holy scriptures of different religions as well as the widely available and oft quoted material used by many atheists.

Lastly I will touch on the philosophical roots behind different religious and atheistic ideas including; secular morals, the origin of ethics, the nature of goodness, the nature of thought and of existence.

New post coming soon!

-Mantred