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Skeptical about gods? Join the club — literally!

The primary purpose of this website is to host our daily blog, which starts below this post. We also meet in person on the Mizzou campus every week — see our Events Page here.

There are hundreds of religious official student organizations at Mizzou. SASHA is the only expressly secular student organization at the University of Missouri – Columbia.  For Tigers who are Skeptical, Atheist, Secular Humanist, and/or Agnostic, welcome to SASHA, your home on the web for secular news, discussion, local events, original articles & videos, and lots more.

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National Day of ̶P̶r̶a̶y̶e̶r̶ Reason

Today is May 2, the year 2013 of our lor… ahem - it’s just 2013.

You may be wondering to yourself why does this banner say “National Day of Reason” instead of “Prayer.” Well, the explanation is simple. It is because today is the National Day of Prayer. Make sense yet? To clarify I’ll provide some historical background.

The National Day of prayer was officially congressionally mandated  in 1952 to be observed on the first Thursday of May. This federally supported religious day of prayer flies in a secular government. On this day religious peoples might be found gathering in churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, or outside of courthouses speaking telepathically to their particularly favorite, or most favorable, imaginary superhero. Unfortunately this isn’t a joke, and is considered a rather serious and solemn occurrence.

George Washington: Not known for his sense of humor.

Even George Washington, the first president of the US thought so when he addressed the public.

“The Honorable the Congress having recommended it to the United States to set apart Thursday the 6th of May next to be observed as a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, to acknowledge the gracious interpositions of Providence; to deprecate [to pray or entreat that a present evil may be removed] deserved punishment for our Sins and Ingratitude  to unitedly implore the Protection of Heaven; Success to our Arms and the Arms of our Ally: The Commander in Chief enjoins a religious observance of said day and directs the Chaplains to prepare discourses proper for the occasion; strictly forbidding all recreations and unnecessary labor.”

So what does reason even mean and why should we have a national day of reason? So glad you asked, self.

Reason is the capability of consciously making sense of things, applying logic, for establishing and verifying facts, and changing practices  institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information. The very concept of reasoning challenges the core of traditional practices like prayer, and religion.

So why have a day dedicated to it to reason?

“With the religious right’s influence in Congress, and with the threat to our Judiciary looming large, there has never been as important a moment in which to affirm our commitment to the Constitutional separation of religion and government, and to celebrate Reason as the guiding principle of our secular democracy.

During the past year we have witnessed the intrusion of religious ideology into all spheres of our government, with such assaults on the wall separating church and state as:

• Faith-based initiatives in federal agencies that give preferential treatment to religious organizations which proselytize and employ discriminatory hiring practices;
• Restrictions on important scientific research on the basis of religious objections;
• Attempts to introduce biblical creationism and its alter-ego “Intelligent Design” into our public school science curricula;
• The appointment of judges who willingly place their religious beliefs above our laws;
• Battles over the display of the Ten Commandments and other overtly religious icons in schools and on courthouses;
• Religiously motivated restrictions on access to reproductive services and information;”

(nationaldayofreason.org)

Now you’ve been armed with the knowledge of what organized un-reasonableness can achieve. Venture out into the world and find out what organized reason can accomplish, won’t you?

I’d like to leave readers with one of my favorite quotes highlighting the importance of the employment of reason, and the scrutiful eye.

- “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Socrates (469 BC – 399 BC)

Stay classy MU, Aaron. 

The Sam Harris Delusion.

I suppose we could agree to argue, as Sam Harris has, that Islam is more violent and more oppressive than, well, everyone else; playing the oppression olympics.To me this type of arguing seems misleading and thus I remain skeptical of Harris’ conclusions; I think you should too. Don’t take my word for it; let me explain.
Our intuitions suggest that “life is good” in the US but it’s really easy to be white, and male (like Harris), making it even easier to distance ourselves from the problems that riddle our country. Which is to say that maybe our types of “evil” (read: oppression, racism, sexism, violence) might not be as obvious as the blatant human rights violations we can see on the nightly news. So, what are the oppression olympics and are they really worth our time always arguing for a 1st place?

Oppression olympics is the attachment of a moral dimension to oppression. Which is not to say that oppression has no moral implications, but that those moral implications make those who are deemed “most oppressed” are made worthier of our savior attitudes, or criticisms. By doing this a Sam Harris has trivialized oppression effectively underplaying the importance of the experiences of oppressed people.

Why play then? I suggest that this gives a savior mentality to the arguer who, while both setting up and knocking down his own chess pieces, feels justified in doing so because he’s created a false dichotomy to do just that. Allowing ourselves to argue from a position of seemingly clear moral high-ground only aids this delusion.

Historically this type of argumentation has been used to completely ignore intersectionality AKA: the crazy idea that people experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, ability, class, and ethnicity. But to be more fair to Sam Harris, i’d like to use an example that he cites in his recent “response to controversy”, and then casually dismisses.

“They never dig for the religious motive behind apparently terrestrial concerns. The game is rigged. This is how an anthropologist like Scott Atran can interview dozens of jihadists—each of whom rattles on about God and paradise—and come out thinking that the doctrine of Islam has nothing to do with terrorism.”

I take issue with this because Anthropologists like Scott Atran can’t just “dig” for their own personal conclusions. Like any good scientists, even Anthropologists must go where the evidence leads them. Within the scientific world bias is the exact kind of thing we want to avoid in order to obtain accurate data. So if Harris really wanted to address his concerns of Atran’s findings, in good conscience, he could analyze his methodology and search for bias or conduct research to find out if he is or is not correct. That’s how a neuroscientist would react to claims they think are unscientific, right? Sam Harris is most definitely not an Anthroplogist and I believe he oversteps himself with great gusto.With that thought in mind my intuition suggests to me that Harris still wouldn’t consider this  reasonable because he would just as well assume that anyone of or related to the Islamic world is lying about all of their value based claims and so he posits that there is no sufficient socio-political context that be reasonably thought to have create ‘this level of violence’ in the middle east.

Tl;dr – Islam. Sounds like a bit of conspiracy to me. One might even go so far as to say a faith based belief, because in light of contrary evidence, Harris continues raving.

Meanwhile within the United States Sam Harris operates from atop a seemingly ‘moral superior bastion’ (though he does not claim this). Remember now, we live in a country in which we no longer have lynch mobs or public hangings. Instead we confine most of our bigotry to structural inequality. We frequently keep it behind closed doors, under whispered breaths, written as legal jargon on otherwise unrelated bills, embedded in the language of power and control, through the lens of a camera and within the commentary on a screen, etc. It’s this type of subtle irony that seems almost in denial of the current socio-political climate of our own country. Maybe Harris could, at the very least, focus on our country before we start trying to save the world.

I recognize that my argument isn’t particularly strong, or even specifically critical of what Sam Harris has said. This is due in part my unwillingness to dive into what I feel are bad claims for reasons I’ve stated above and that Harris likes to quickly dismiss all challenges with little consideration. So surely there is a better way I can convince you that Harris’s arguments really aren’t that great? Let us assume that Sam Harris is right, and  he has successfully rationalized that Islam is ’uniquely evil.’ The next question is, “what does Sam Harris suggest we do to solve this complex problem?”

He says his position is simple, “We should admit that we know what we are looking for (suicidal terrorists) and that certain people obviously require less scrutiny than others. We should scan everyone’s luggage, of course, because bombs can be placed there without a person’s knowledge. But given scarce resources, we can’t afford to waste our time and attention pretending to think that every traveller is equally likely to be affiliated with al Qaeda.”

While Harris operates under the pretense of ‘just being rational guyz’ he ends in a conclusion that we should start profiling people most visibly likely to be jihadists. At the very least his only success for arguing for profiling is that it would be the “most secure.” This is an important claim to criticize, especially if you consider yourself a Secular Humanist. But why? It’s rather easy to highlight the problem by simply defining one of the several values of Secular Humanism via the Counsel for Secular Humanism.

“Secular humanists hold that ethics is consequential, to be judged by results. This is in contrast to so-called command ethics, in which right and wrong are defined in advance and attributed to divine authority. “No god will save us,” declared Humanist Manifesto II (1973), “we must save ourselves.” Secular humanists seek to develop and improve their ethical principles by examining the results they yield in the lives of real men and women.”

Sam Harris: So goddamn rational it hurts, literally. 

In this case Sam Harris could not likely be a consequentialist as it seems he would rather rationalize away the rights of his fellow citizens for his own sake of mind; his very fear of imminent suicide bombing remains questionable. For that matter, Harris could not be considered a Secular Humanist either. If Harris’ primary concern is really a most secure system, why stop at infringing the rights of anyone profiled as ‘Muslim’? Why even bother allowing people “suspect” of being Muslim to board airplanes; why even allow Muslims to enter the country? Why bother giving rights to Muslims in the first place? Clearly Harris is willing to dole out preemptive justice to even innocent parties by graciously allowing the limitations of their rights, of which we all so greatly enjoy. It is really easy to simply rationalize away all of our human rights if we employ this type of gross rationalism. If Harris is really arguing for a ‘most safe’ system why not replace freedoms with forced predictability by limiting outcomes (behaviors) of agents legally and giving only predetermined sets of allowances? Truly this type of guilty (of suicide bombing) until proven innocent approach is absolutely ridiculous and a “most secure” system like this ensures that the people’s rights are being encroached upon.

Personally, I’m not willing to agree with Harris because he’s reached a “rational” conclusion that involves breaching human rights for his own sake of mind. I cannot consent to that and also call myself a humanist or reasonable. Perhaps rational, but not reasonable at all.

 

 

Dave’s Mailbag: Who is a true follower of Jesus Christ?

tl;dr: Below is a 1,500-word No True Scotsman fallacy I received. I replied with nothing but a simple link to a YouTube video explaining what the No True Scotsman fallacy is.

–

Received this today; below is my response.

i dont wish to write alot.  but i have watched some of your videos.  i just wanted you to know that i heard you were a worship leader for yeras before walking away. First of all i wish to note, that i dont know what this means.  Were you a protestant Holy Spirit filled Christian who had HOly Spirit and sat under a church that preached against sin?  Or were you a part of a church that believed we are all Gods children and that God doesnt wish for sin to be preached against?  I just wanted to note that it depends on where your start was because anyone can call themselves a minister. Even atheists can call themselves a  minister because the christian term for minister has been taken out of context so much that even atheists, gay advocates all call selves minister.

-

Question is who is a true follower of Jesus Christ, following way disciples did in book of Acts where they were led by Spirit, preaching at all times.  I dont know where your beginning came as a minister, but if your christian upbringing was in Universal Church, here lies beginning of issues.  Number 1, people have to be under solid teaching, people tend to fall away because narrow road get very hard, they dont like to hear truth about what in bible about homosexuality being a sin so then people fall away because of that or well they choose to walk away because things get very difficult in there life, or they have really dont know real character of Lord, a God who is Love and Just, a God who loves all mankind, hates sin but loves sinner.  This does not exclude Gods nature though that He is Just.  God never made hell for people, he made it for the demons, but because man chose to rebel and themselves make satan there god, well they send them selves into hell now.  Gods purpose for hell was never meant for humans and he does not take delight in humans going to hell.  He weeps for souls that choose to go to hell. For God wishes no man to perish.  He wishes no man to perish.  But if they choose to make satan there god, they are choosing for themselves to go to hell because there is a choice, choose whom this day we must follow Jesus or satan.  Either one or other.

-

Now if you truely know you received Holy Spirit in your life and didnt grow up in under a church where they taught you things that contradict bible and you were truely told how to come to Christ and what true christian life consists of, such as perseuction, open air preaching, etc etc etc, and you fell away cuz the walk got very hard, then i would say dear one come back.  Go forth confess all known sins (james 5:16). then go forth and preach gospel openly NONSTOP.  be willing to be arrested for sake of Christ and let your whole being and energy be given into preaching message of salvation to the lost.

-

Now if your scenario is that you were raised under a church that preached surface stuff and never told you truth and alot of time people just are raised under religiousness and never told how to be saved, then you only can go to God and make sure you were truely saved, that you understand you are a sinner, that there is a parallel, in order for truth to be truth it can only be one thing, it can not be a thousand thing or else it ceases to exist as truth.  Cuz truth is not a thousand things.  Christianity is parallel, ther is a God and satan, heaven and hell, good and evil.  its orderly cuz God is order.

-

that is why true christians i guess in many nonbeleiver eyes is that we are “narrow minded” well, if we beleived in a thousand beliefs then it would cease to exist as truth and have order, you cant be open minded and it still be truth cuz open mindedness allow a thousand thing to be considered as truth and a person then is not stable or orderly in there belief system they are ike house on a rock that has no foundation.  our foundation is not knowledge itself.  it is HOly Spirit who is real God inside of us when we chose to surrender our heart to Jesus Christ, beleiving that He is only way truth and life.  He became ultimate Lamb on cross.  Jesus is God for only God can save man, not just any “man” could die for sins of world.  He rose on third day defeating sin on cross.

-

When aperson comes to Jesus Christ and they truely recognize there sin, the evil deep evil deeeds of there heart they have done, the deepest depravity of there heart, i mean the kind of guilt in your heart that you let no one see but if exposed youd go running behind a curtain, you cannot wash away that guilt, the deepest deeds of the heart, the deepest addiction a person cannot be delivered of those deep embed demons on the heart, in the heart, and growth in the heart.  Only one who has power to save a person from this is Christ.  He is one whose blood has power to save.  So if you once truely received HIm then He still is in your heart.  If you have not received HIm then it is pretty hard for a person to know what it like to have Holy Spirit when you are tryin from the outside to always figure out GOd when He wants you to come as you are, in al your sin and dirtyness and see all evil deeds of the heart and how you cant redee your heart and you cant wash away the guilt or shame, and He can do it for you and come in your heart and then you go forth and live out truth faith by Preaching his name openly all the time, confessing sins and nonstop to preach his name.  our warfare is against demons.

-

So if you are a true christian who fell away you can return to Lord.  if you never truely received him then it is hard for you to know God cuz you stand outside of HIm instead of humbling self like a child, surrender head knowledege, and come as you are in all depravityand receiving what He did for you on cross and receivng HIs love into yoru heart and go forth and living out Christian walk.  And many that fall away is not cuz God has left them it is cuz tey have chosen to leave God which bible said many would fall away cuz they are ashamed of HIm.  God weeps cuz He cares but God will still always be Lord no matter what man does or thinks of HIm.  What right do we have to raise our fist to a God who didnt deserve to die on a cross for our sins, we deserve to die for sins WE COMMIT.  God never forces us to sin.  we are ones that choose it.  yet in his Love hE said i will go down and save them, wow what a Savior to wanna do that so we could have him in our heart.  we can have a new victorious life in Christ if we receive what He has done and then actually live it out.  reason why a person isnt victorious is cuz  a person has to live it out also, confess sins all known sins, and then be filled with HOly Spirit, and go forth in power to preach repentance and salvation to others ALL THE TIME.

-

Anyways, i dont wish to do alot of email bak and forth.  i only wish to do one.  Im not here to fight against al bible knowledge you have stored up i just only wish to share a little bit because i cared. Reason why sometime peopel dont always get into debate with those who are filled with all bible knowledge trying to persecute Christ is because you have already made up in you mind.  You have knowledge set before you how to receive HIm, and what do to to live out a victorious life, now you just have to live out vicoriously.  if you have in your heart then begin to turn back to HIm and preach openly HIs wonderful name and repetanc and dont stop.  Wish you best Sir

Shortly afterward I received a second email:

by the way i do want you to know that some of us do truely care.  we really do.  i would hae never written to you cuz it hought maybe he is just a christian who cried out ot GOd and was really try to find his way back to Lord.  it could be thator only you know if you were truely received him.  but if you did receive him and fell away it cuz your battle is demon inside of you and on heart and you have to go forth and produce fruit with repentance and preach salvation openly all the time.  Why not try preaching salvation openly and be serious about it and trying to read bible openly in seriusness With care if you wish to be a true christian.

My email back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HJrAaGJudw

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

A Major Chord of Critical Discord

Hello there MU SASHA blog readers! This is my first blog post and it will be a direct quote of my recent persuasive speech given in speakers circle in support of dissident Bangladeshi bloggers.

“What is dissent?

Dissent is the disagreement through the criticisms of prevailing ideas, politics, government, or social movements. Dissent is the counter analysis of existent systems, laws and Ideas. But….

Is the freedom of dissent important?

If we are not allowed the freedom to voice our objections we are forced to, as a society, accept the belief systems in place. We are forced to abide to complacency of  inequality and the illegalization of our very thoughts.

When the freedom of dissent is illegal; when thoughts are no longer considered within the free market of ideas; when criticisms of any social, cultural, or political rhetoric are deemed untouchable; when we are punished for simply questioning, not challenging, but questioning authority; we have lost our ability to attempt to foster a better society.

Dissent can foster a better society by allowing the development, and implementation of complex ideas. When Martin Luther King Jr. set foot behind a podium, he did so with the intent to change the world as he and countless others saw fit to do. Dr. King criticized the social systems and laws in place that accepted and facilitated racial inequalities. What would the United States look like if iconic figures like Dr. King were not allowed to voice their concerns without knowledge of imminent, government-facilitated retribution?

Opponents of concepts of free speech in Bangladesh have been beheading, beating, maiming, and jailing those who are dissident. Some of the dissidents bloggers have criticized leaders for crimes committed during the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan. During that liberation leaders have been found guilty of, and not limited to, 344 counts of murder, rape, and torture. Surely these leaders deserve to be tried for their crimes and surely no citizen of any country deserves to be killed or imprisoned for calling for the justice of murderers, torturers, and rapists.

We, MU SASHA and Columbia Atheists, are the defenders of dissidence. Our weapons are our minds. Our ammunition is our words. Today we stand in solidarity and fight on behalf of the Bangladeshi bloggers. Today we stand against human rights violations of the government of Bangladesh.”

We pray together

During the Boston Marathon, everyone in our city cheers for each other. We help each other across the finish line. When terror struck, we acted as a family. Throughout the chaos, courageous people ran toward danger to help strangers in need.

Now we cry together. We pray together. We help each other.

No one can replace what we’ve lost here in Boston. But today, and in the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get through it together — through sorrow and anger, rehabilitation and recovery. That’s what families do.

Where do you think this excerpt came from? It sounds like part of an editorial, or maybe a church-sponsored ad, right? Not quite. This is part of a message I received this evening from the barackobama.com email server, promoting the rather honorable cause of donating to The One Fund Boston.

Now that’s all well and good, but it got me thinking.

We pray together.

Do we? Is this phrase really appropriate to include in an email to people who signed up to be part of a political campaign? But this kind of attitude toward our *wink wink nudge nudge* “secular” government is quite prevalent. A speech from a politician without “God bless America” at the end is often criticized for being unpatriotic.

At this point it may sound like I’ve just got my atheist panties in a twist over something so small, but hear me out. These examples are part of the overall American mindset toward religion, and it’s overwhelming; from the general assumption that someone is Christian until you find out otherwise, to the defense of churches’ tax-exempt status despite activities that disqualify them, the bias toward religion can be found in just about every corner of the country.

To truly have our separation of church and state, and even to simply be a place of equality, we have to stop looking at everything with Jesus-tinted glasses. Take God out of the schools, the government, the politics, and especially my damn emails. Put him back in the churches where he belongs, and let’s work on ways to actually make progress without falling into the rut of religion.

Dave’s Mailbag: BB wants to save my soul

This is from a comment thread on a YouTube video of mine. This fellow, BB, posted 14 comments back-to-back due to character limits. I told him I’d respond in a blog post rather than leave a huge string of comments in return. Here are his posts reconstructed into one block, and my response:

BB:

have you accepted God into your life and turned away from sins and shared the gospel with everyone you care about and know?

Dave:

Um, I’m the Public Relations Director for American Atheists.

BB:

Well, you probably make a living selling books on the philosophy of Atheism. Which is a motivation for thinking you might be intellectually dishonest as your living relies on selling this philosophy, which makes it hard to ever convince you otherwise.

If not then we can have an honest and open discussion based on just logic without any agenda behind it from both our parts.

Dave:

No, I don’t sell books for a living. I’m not a bookstore. I do public relations.

BB:

You seem like a cool intelligent guy. I can convince you that no religion, no church can ever cleanse you of sin, only sincere repentance, and trusting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.

If it’s true we just go in to the ground when we die then you can’t say ‘See, I told you I was right’ and I can’t tell you ‘I’m sorry I was totally wrong’. But if it’s true there is a heaven and you can go there, wouldn’t it be logical to find out how to get there?

Dave:

There’s no such thing as sin. It’s an imaginary concept. Sin (i.e. “transgression against divine law”) doesn’t really exist, because “divine law” is imaginary.

Yes, IF it were true that there is a heaven and you can go there, it would be logical to look into it. But there isn’t, and you can’t. If you want to claim otherwise, you have the burden of proof. Good luck.

BB:

ok well the burden of proof is actually on you as you claim to have proof that God doesn’t exist. If you’re not saying that you have proof then I respect your intellectual consistency and honesty. This is because the best we can do is follow the evidence, because nothing can be proved.

You can’t prove that you walked the earth yesterday. We have to go by evidence such as eye witness testimony.

So we’ve recognized that proving anything is impossible. So the next step is to trust Evidence. We can only trust Evidence if it is shown to be reliable.

So the only thing stopping you from investigating heaven and grabbing the only ticket that will get you there is because you are unsure if there is such a thing as sin.

Well I can tell you that there is such a thing as sin.

There is such a thing as sin because sin is defined outside of culture. Everyone refers to a moral code outside culture because if we lived in a culture where gassing jews or slavery was ok, it still wouldn’t make it right.

That’s why Ghandi and Martin Luther king and others like them existed. They went against their culture because they put objective moral law on top of cultural laws.

No one can live atheism out in real life consistently. For example if you found your wife in the arms of another man you wouldn’t say hey it’s your right to believe unfaithfulness is wrong so I’m not gonna judge you for it.

Loyalty is right not because anyone defines it, it’s right because that’s what we know in our hearts to be true.

God says he has written these moral codes in our hearts. These objective moral laws are intelligently and lovingly created by an intelligent and loving being.

God respects our free will to choose to do right or to do wrong, that’s why people choose to be unfaithful and others choose to be faithful.

So if there is no God then morality is subjective, it’s all relative so Hitler was right in his opinion and I am right in my opinion. Then chaos erupts.

No God, no harmony, no justice. Just chaos and destruction.

Which speaks allot to the condition and the reason for the condition of some parts of the world today.

So once we’ve deduced rationally that there is a God who gives us objective moral values and we can choose or not choose to follow these, then we can go on to find out what happens if we choose to follow these or not.

If we don’t then God grants us our desire. Eternity away from him. If we do then God grants us our desire. Eternity with him.

I’d say I wouldn’t want to find out what eternity is like without him, why? because Satan is without God by his own choosing and he rules hell. Would you want to meet Satan and find out what kind of gastly things he would do to you?

I’d prefer heaven where everything is awesome.

Also I want to take as many people with me to heaven cuz I love my fellow human being. 100 years is nothing vs eternity.

If someone gave me a billion dollars to be without God I’d rather be a homeless person with God because this life is so short anyways.

Okay, so we’ve defined how God exists, what’s good and evil, free will and what sin is.

Now we have to find out what God wants from us. 1. Put your trust in him to guide your life. 2. To show loyalty, love and trust, then turn from sin, otherwise you become a hypocrite.

No sin is worth going to hell over. Remember Jesus spoke more about hell then he did about heaven. He described it as a lake of fire. I would assume that it’s a place of total destruction and chaos. Maybe the equivalent of a dentist poking your nerve for eternity.

Not paradise. lol

In the end, not sinning and praying sincerely from forgiveness isn’t hard.

I don’t think if someone offered you 100 women to pleasure you sexually outside the blessing of God, but you had to site in a dentists chair and take him touching your nerve for 8 hours, you would absolutely deny it. Why? Because it ain’t worth it.

That’s just 8 hours. lol imagine forever. So in perspective it’s good news.God offers you a free ticket to heaven, just take it man and share it with as many people as possible, especially those you wanna see in heaven with you such as your loved ones.

Dude, I’m pleading with you just do it. Any reputation or wealth in this life is not worth it. Now why would I sit here and write a 13 comment reply to you, not asking for money, not to join a religion or to even go to a church, spending my own time?

I don’t believe in silly things. Please for the love of God, do it.

Thanks for listening. Any other questions you might wanna ask?

Dave:

You’ve got to be kidding me. First of all, just, wow, 14 comments back to back. I’m strongly considering banning you, except that skimming them, it appears you are sincere. I’m going to respond to this, but not here; I have a blog and I’m going to do it there. The blog is at muSASHA . o r g. I can’t do it tonight but I’ll get to it when I can.

And here’s my full response:

If you are making the positive claim that a god exists, you have the burden of proof. Same goes for sin.

I agree with you about your stance on evidence and our inability to prove things with 100% certainty. It’s called the problem of induction and I’m totally with you there.

I’m not “unsure” about the existence of sin. I mean, in a very technical sense, I’m agnostic about it, but for all practical purposes, I don’t believe sin exists, because I don’t believe in divine law, because I don’t believe in anything supernatural. If you want to convince me sin exists, you first have to show me that divine law exists. In order to do that, you have to convince me that a divine lawgiver exists. So really, being “unsure” about sin is NOT the “only thing” holding me back. I don’ t believe in your god, either.

You speak of objective morality. Objective from what? You mean, outside of culture? It seems like that’s what you’re saying. If all life in the universe were to be wiped out at the same instant, would slavery still be unethical? I don’t know if we can really answer that. It wouldn’t matter at that point. Ethics, the subfield of philosophy that prescriptively tells us how we ought to act, is a human invention—and we are the only species that has them, that we’re aware of—but morals (a subfield of ethology, that descriptively tells us how animals interact) evolve in cooperative species all by themselves. There’s a lot of game theory involved but this is not a mystery to science. If you’re interested in how morality evolved, I recommend Matt Ridley’s wonderful book, “The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.” Other good books are Robert Axelrod’s “The Evolution of Cooperation” and Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis’ “A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution.“ The last two are pretty math-heavy but they do an excellent job of explaining how this works, and Richard Dawkins wrote the forward of the former.

Slavery is wrong because we decided that people have rights and shouldn’t be owned by other people. That’s not objectively provable, and it wasn’t always the case. Our society has progressed ethically from the time when slavery was the norm (although by raw numbers, not per capita, there are more slaves in the world today than at any point in history). I disagree with your conclusion that sin exists and we can know this because everyone “refers” to a moral code outside of culture. I don’t, for one. Moral codes are inextricable from culture from an ethology perspective.

On to your next point: You say “no one can live out atheism consistently” because, for example, if I found my wife in bed with someone else, I wouldn’t be okay with it. What?…

First of all, that’s a non sequitur. Atheism is the simply the lack of belief in the existence of all gods. This has absolutely nothing to do with sexual ethics?… You seem to be missing about a dozen premises between your first premise and your conclusion there. Second of all, you don’t know me. I would be fine with that; I’m polyamorous. I would hope that she’s being safe about it, but I wouldn’t begrudge someone for having consensual sex. My wife is not my property and as an adult, she can make her own decisions about who she has sex with. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s none of my business, but I would not be mad or jealous. Please note: I’m speaking hypothetically because I’ve never been married, although I was engaged for awhile once.

Then you go on to say that loyalty is right not by definition but because “we know in our hearts” that it is. Yeah, that’s the evolved morality thing we were talking about earlier. See 3 paragraphs up. By the way, loyalty is not always right; it depends on your system of ethics. Hitler’s troops were following orders when they gassed Jews. I think we’d both agree that what they were doing wasn’t ethical, even though they were being loyal when they did it.

Next you claim that God has written these moral codes in our hearts. A couple of major problems here: You jumped right into “God has…” without first showing that a god exists in the first place. What is your argument for god’s existence? Secondly, what do you mean he has “written in our hearts” blah blah blah? I assume you don’t mean that literally; a heart is a muscle and I’m pretty certain there’s no classical Hebrew etched in there, although I haven’t physically checked because that could prove rather tricky If you mean that God has imprinted a gut feeling of these moral codes, then we can work with this. First of all, I try not to think with my gut; I try to think with my brain. The reason I try not to think with my gut is that my gut and your gut can disagree and there’s really no good way to resolve that as far as knowing who’s right and who’s wrong. Only with evidence and logic can we systematically rule out wrong answers and settle on right ones. Second, again, we have this problem that you haven’t shown your god exists at all, let alone that he has done any such thing as imprint moral codes into us. Citation needed!

You wrote:

These objective moral laws are intelligently and lovingly created by an intelligent and loving being.

Bare assertion. Citation needed.

You wrote:

God respects our free will…

I’m not even remotely convinced that humans have free will. Free from what, anyway? The laws of physics? First define “free will,” then convince me that we have it, and we can go down this road. And you still haven’t explained how you know a god exists at all, nor how you claim to know that he respects our free will, even if we have it.

Next you go off on a spiel basically saying that if there were no god, then there would be ”no harmony, no justice. Just chaos and destruction.”

Well, that pretty much seems to be the case. The universe doesn’t know or care that we exist. Nature just does what it does, following simple patterns, or as we call them, laws. Complexity can come out of this, e.g. life on Earth as we recognize it. We have perfectly adequate, natural explanations for all of this. What makes you think there IS justice? Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good things happen to bad people. Lots of people in the world are dying of starvation and elsewhere in the world, someone is tying $4,000 to some helium-filled balloons and letting it float away just because he can afford it and he’s bored. Look around, man. There’s no justice. The world is what we make of it.

Reading through the rest of your post, I don’t even really see the point of continuing from here. Your argument is a mess and since your later premises depend on your earlier ones, I think you need to go back and revisit them before we can move forward.

Feel free to try again! Thanks for your message(s).

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

The Right of Marriage

Inspired by The Rite of Marriage, on Columbia Faith and Values

So much talk about gay marriage lately with the SCOTUS hearings and this being Pride Month at MU, it is really a blast for someone like myself that loves talking politics, religion, and philosophy, as this can encompass all three. It can, however, be frustrating at times when one comes across opinions like those linked above. For those unwilling to stomach another bigoted editorial, the argument can be summarized to:

1. Marriage is only important in the religious sense.
2. My religion says homosexuality and gay marriage are wrong.
3. Gay marriage should not be allowed because it is wrong in the only important aspect of marriage.

Clearly, I don’t care what anyone’s religion says about homosexuality, there is nothing wrong with it, but I’ll set that aside for now, as I can deconstruct the argument without having to show why it is not wrong. It hinges on the idea that marriage is a solely, or at least foremost, a religious institution. Such a stance was decided upon by first consulting Merriam-Webster’s definition:

“a (1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2) : the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage <same-sex marriage>”

But, that included same sex marriage, so it was not good enough (although, the cited reason that it was disregarded was because it also said marriage was consensual and “that is not the case in all cultures, so there must be a better definition”). From there we naturally turn to anthropologists to see how they define marriage….Wait. What’s that? We went to Catholic doctrine afterward? But the MW definition didn’t say anything about religion or spirituality. It talked about contracts and legal recognition. Okay, well what did the Catholic version say:

“Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through centuries in different cultures, social structures and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics”

I’m sorry but I fail to see how marriage is anything but a purely human institution. Currently only humans are capable of getting married or recognizing a marriage. This quote also does not explain what the “common and permanent characteristics” of marriage are. Luckily, the author agrees that this is also an inadequate explanation, although they accept everything stated. From here I’m sure we go on to the anthropologists or sociologist to figure out these common and permanent characteristics, right? NOPE! We turn to the Quran , The Torah (conveniently also considered canon in Catholicism), and the New Testament, where it largely details that marriage is between a man and a woman.

At this point, the argument is incapable of effectively being used to to explain why marriage should not be a right that is extended to homosexual couples. Marriage has existed long before these religions which makes them poor standards for deciding what is common and permanent about marriage. Additionally, this idea of “common and permanent” characteristics reeks of appeal to tradition, especially since no reason is given as to why such characteristics should be adhered to or even a good explanation of what they are. Finally, and most importantly marriage is not solely a religious institution in our culture. In fact, it need not require any religion whatsoever. A couple could simply have a marriage license signed by a government official and get the legal benefits. This is still referred to as a marriage, not some other term. If you want to use this argument to say that the Catholic church should not allow gay marriages, fine. By all means push the church further into irrelevancy. But with what has been provided here, there is no reason not to allow legal marriages for same sex couples recognized by the government. It does not hurt you, your church, or your marriage. You may think it is sinful, but you also think not being a christian is sinful, and you would not advocate for making it illegal to not be christian, would you? If not, then “because my religion says it is wrong” is not a good enough reason to make something illegal.

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Tony Lakey is the President of MU SASHA. He interned with the Center for Inquiry On Campus in Amherst, NY and was a volunteer Teacher/Counselor at Camp Inquiry. He is an activist for atheism, secularism, feminism, and LGBT issues.  He is in his fourth year at the University of Missouri – Columbia majoring in Philosophy and Sociology.
Twitter: @TonyLakey