You are an Atheist

OK, Call me an Atheist

Well, I am an atheist like Donald Trump is a man of faith!   The point to be made is labels are excuses for thinking and reasons for dehumanizing.  But in the common defense, people in some organized religions are told,  "Don't think we will do the thinking for you".   The discussion is stifled even before it begins. In other words, labels are officially promoted or at least tacitly approved.

Intrinsic in the label, atheist are concepts like heathen, godless, inhuman,  amoral. irreverent and even demonic.  Given that list, anyone that does not profess to a faith in a supreme being that is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient will most certainly "roast in hell for all eternity".

Letʻs look at the prejudice intrinsic in the label atheist.

According to the Vancouver Sun, University of British Columbia researchers conducted a total of six experiments on 350 Americans and 420 UBC students, of varying religions (67% of the Americans were Christian). In one experiment, they presented participants with the story of an "archetypal freerider" who cheats and steals a lot, and asked what group they thought that person might belong to. Participants were more likely to categorize the person as an atheist than as a Christian, Jew, Muslim, gay person, or feminist (some of the groups were chosen because they were "often described as threatening to majority religious values and morality"). Only rapists fared as poorly — participants were about as likely to put the "freerider" in this group. According to the study, "People did not significantly differentiate atheists from rapists."
https://jezebel.com/5864303/people-think-atheists-are-just-as-bad-as-rapists-christ

People did not differentiate atheists from rapists; that is a pretty radical view.   It implies that religious people are morally superior.   The headlines these days about sexual abuse, church fraud, the homosexual hypocrisy of a pastor,  Nazi Christians and church members profiting from pornography and prostitution in the hotels they own does not alter the belief at all.

Tom Jacobs wrote in the Pacific Standard 2014. 

It’s an important distinction, in that atheists can also form communities founded on ethical principles (humanism being a prominent example). But so long as people are convinced there is no good without God, atheists fighting for public acceptance face a struggle of Biblical proportions.

So we find ourselves trapped in a religious belief that says there is no good without God.  This is no doubt a common belief today but to which contemporary god are they referring?

Noteworthy Atheists

Hank Pellissier wrote,  Atheists have no faith, no expectation of benefit from a deity. So, atheists are probably selfish, right? Pitiless, parsimonious. Totally stingy misers, not passing a penny off to the poor…correct?

WRONG! Atheists, non-believers, secular humanists, skeptics—the whole gamut of the godless have emerged in recent years as inarguably the most generous benefactors on the globe. That’s right. Hordes of heretics are the world’s biggest damned philanthropists. Both individually and in groups, heathen infidels are topping the fundraising charts.

First, the facts. 

The current most charitable individuals in the United States, based on “Estimated Lifetime Giving,” are:

1) Warren Buffett (atheist, donated $40.785 billion to “health, education, humanitarian causes”)

2) Bill & Melinda Gates (atheists, donated $27.602 billion to “global health and development, education”)

3) George Soros (atheist, donated $6.936 billion to “open and democratic societies”)

A comprehensive list of important religious skeptics would include Thomas Paine, Clarence Darrow, Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln, W.E.B. Du Bois, Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, Kurt Vonnegut, Pete Stark, and numerous others. David Niose https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-niose/great-nonbelievers-atheists-history_b_1677760.html

My Brand of Atheism.

As a young boy sitting on a desert ridge overlooking vast vast lands of the Anza Borrego State Park,  I was struck by the grandeur and symmetry of the place. This desert ecosystem could seem barren and lifeless, yet to me, it was teaming with life, complexity, and wonder.   There just had to be a creator, it was far too beautiful to happen by chance alone, my young mind pondered.  This same feeling arose one morning as I sat quietly meditating on the magnificence of Mt. Whitney as viewed from the high desert eastern side.
In my early teen years, I found myself identifying with kids from a church camp experience and followed them to church and getting baptized. The months later the spiritual disenchantment grew and I had to leave the hypocrisy of the Sunday- Good People.

Now a college student I was a secular as they come with moments of spiritual connectedness like assisting the birth of my grandfather's horse.   And so it went for decades.   I knew there was a creative force maybe it is a creator but certainly not one in my image.  "Creative Force" seemed to fit fine but even then most would have called me an atheist.

A few more decades pass  I am now the equivalent of a full professor and deeply engaged in science and the challenges that society faces.   I am a scientist but one that did not believe like some.  A colleague scientist told me once, "If we can't measure it does not exist".   Wow, really?  How do you measure love I asked?

As a biological scientist with a minor in chemistry, that happened by accident,  I would often enjoy the musings of Dr. Carl Sagan.  He was an atheist but with an astronomic reverence.   Then one day, I got my version of a Grand Unification Theory, one Einstein labored on for years.   I saw at the moment of the Big Bang all matter was created.   All carbon, sulfur, iron, nitrogen phosphorus etc came into existence.   Each of these elements has physical and chemical properties intrinsic to their molecular size and weight.   Then over billions of years, the cosmic dust stirred, exploded, imploded spun, and settled.  The rain came to one planet and the cosmic soup went into solution and walla life began.

That majestic desert landscape like all landscapes and oceans are a product of that soup.  The creative force I felt so many times played its hand at the big bang and the elements set on a path that created life and my ability to sit here and write this.
I sit in awe of that force.    So why pray tell are we quibbling about my belief in God.  I simply spell it differently.   No label fits this timeless majesty.

Gervais, Will M., et al. "Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists." Nature Human Behaviour1.8 (2017): s41562-017.

What PEW Research Reveals

Scientists and Religion

PEW is a world leader in surveying people about religion.   Here are a few clips about scientists and their religious views and affiliations.

Scientists and Belief

http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

When President Barack Obama announced on July 8, 2009, that he would nominate renowned geneticist Francis Collins to be the new director of the National Institutes of Health, a number of scientists and pundits publicly questioned whether the nominee’s devout religious faith should disqualify him from the position. In particular, some worried that an outspoken evangelical Christian who believes in miracles might not be the right person to fill what many consider to be the nation’s most visible job in science. Collins was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Aug. 7, 2009, but the controversy over his nomination reflects a broader debate within the scientific community between those who believe religion and science each examine legitimate but different realms of knowledge and those who see science as the only true way of understanding the universe.

A survey of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, finds that members of this group are, on the whole, much less religious than the general public.1 Indeed, the survey shows that scientists are roughly half as likely as the general public to believe in God or a higher power. According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. By contrast, 95% of Americans believe in some form of deity or higher power, according to a survey of the general public conducted by the Pew Research Center in July 2006. Specifically, more than eight-in-ten Americans (83%) say they believe in God and 12% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. Finally, the poll of scientists finds that four-in-ten scientists (41%) say they do not believe in God or a higher power, while the poll of the public finds that only 4% of Americans share this view.

There is a lot more data, but the point is made.  While a large number of scientists are agnostic or atheists a larger number are of faith.   Many will argue why non stop.  Rather the issue, as Raza Aslan eloquently reveals in his recent book  God, A Human Experience,  faith, and religion is first about identity and for most people, it is just that and not a complex set of principals.

Science is no religion and religion is no science

RH Bennett PhD


It has always frustrated me no end when religionists try to use science to "prove" a religion or set of beliefs.  Letʻs be clear science is a set of methods that are very useful to systematically reveal the workings of the universe.  It is NOT a set of beliefs.  The laws of nature exist independent of anyone's beliefs.  Try not respecting the Law of Gravity for a belief we can walk on air or water for that matter.

Having a set of beliefs and then use what we know of science and twist it to fit those preformed beliefs is not science, it is fraud.

Many Churches today invoke celestial beings from far away heavens or galaxies to explain beliefs in a way that sounds like science when in reality it is science fiction.

There is no conflict intrinsic to science and religion.  Just as there is no conflict between an apple or an orange.  The apple called religion is a set of beliefs predicated on faith.  Faith is not and cannot be based on science, because faith is NOT scientifically testable.    Belief based on Faith is an internal and personal decision.  To be scientific is to embrace the unknown, especially the unknown, unknown and try via controlled experiments to make something known.

Make no mistake we must and should respect the faith of a person, but just as soon as the faithful decided that reality is about secret planets, evil deities or guardian angles and attempt to make their reality, the reality, faith displaces science.  More dangerous is when faith becomes a public edict and attempts to subvert others freedom of belief and become gods law. It shows up all the time when some says,  It is a Godʻs will or God acts in mysterious ways to explain the unexplainable when logic cannot.

So lets us agree there are two ways to view reality.  The view of faith is a personal belief and identity to which anyone is free to ascribe.   The view that universe has a common set of characteristics that are discoverable using the systematic rules of the scientific method as another way of being.

The frightening aspect of faith is that it is very malleable. Witness the thousands of faith-based beliefs that exist on the planet today.   It is this malleability that allowed humans to wage mass murder in the name of god. Witness how a man who defiles "faith-based family values" is a cult-like saint among evangelicals.

In contrast, scientific principals resist malleability,  save the monied interests that use less than ethical scientists like paid escorts to service their agenda.  The scientific method is not immune to actions of unscrupulous persons and corporations acting on their beliefs.    This abuse has become so great that trust in science as a method declines nowadays and mythical beliefs rise among the science illiterate.

To get back into balance and create a livable world for all we must learn how to honor the process called science conducted by ethical scientists.  At the same time, we must respect a personʻs faith, as long as the faith remain personal.  When the tenants of faith become social edicts or worse yet public policy, the push back must remain a question of ethics and morals and not arguments from scientific data. Such a conflict is not reconcilable and we should tread not on the false dichotomy of religion versus science.