We are selfish to believe in a humanoid god

Just as a declarative statement: I am an atheist. I recognize the ability for a god to exist, I just doubt that there is a god or gods in existence, nor has there ever been a higher power. Now, let's continue.

I  have many problems with the concept of a god and reasons to proving god's existence, and I am only going to address one of them today. This is the main problem that I have. Maybe it's not the best proof I have, but it is the one thing that bugs me.

My perspective on why people think there is a god is because people over time have figured that having a higher being is a good explanation and with careful thought and practice, people started to believe this.

Whether or not that is true, I think it is extremely selfish of people to assume that god is human-like in appearance, thought and action. Humans were not chosen. We are not a product of some human-like but god-like being. I think that is the most selfish thing we have ever done. Naturally most of us are at least somewhat narcissistic in our thinking. We generally put ourselves or other humans first above the humanity of nature and other animals.

But if we really think that if there is a higher-being, and they are humanoid that is the most selfish thing that we have ever believed.

I can almost more easily attest to believing in some higher being of force or molecules, atoms, something that I can't possible begin to scientifically explain. I am not saying that is my standpoint, I am just saying it as at least more plausible to me than a humanoid figure that just happened to create us and make us better than everything else.

As a culture we are obsessed with hierarchies, and have been for a few hundred years, at least. Which food is best? Which outfit is best? Which singer is best? Which type of animal is best? We have theorized pyramids and systems for the alpha to the zeta making sure everything is just perfectly ranked.

I am getting a little biased here just because I don't believe in the fact that somethings, both living and non-living have better value or worse value. I believe they have a different purpose and value, but not one being better or worse. Obviously a table is better at being a table than a porcupine is, but is one really better than the other? Tables serve a different purpose than a porcupine, but does that make porcupines or tables better than one another? I digress with my table to porcupine scale.

My point is that as a culture we are so obsessed with hierarchies and power that it make complete sense that we invented this "god" figure as human-like. If there is a higher power, they are likely equal to us and not a human. Again, some kind of force.

So then "how was everything created?" you may ask. Well I have no fucking clue but the ideas that I seem to stick to for the most part is something along the following: I don't think that time had a start. I don't think that there was nothing and then something. I think that something has just existed forever. I am not talking about earth or the human race, I think those two things have a starting point. I am just saying that "it" being existence, not of a certain thing, just existence in general is just there and there is no starting. To exist there must always be existence.

That is hard for most people to wrap their heads around, I actually drive myself a little nuts getting into that pattern of thinking sometimes. Now something like earth was probably created by something like a big bang. We know about evolution of humans and obviously at one point, something collided or occurred to make life happen on earth. I have no science background to even begin to explain how this is possible, but based on my knowledge, this is my philosophical assumption.

That's what I love about science. Originally there was no "science" it was just philosophy and speculation. Philosophy was everything at one point. It's just the ideas philosophized about science and biology eventually rightfully gained their own subjects of study. The things that can't be scientifically explained are still speculated about using philosophy and current knowledge. LOVE IT! Love philosophy. I love loving ideas. That's literally what that means Philo (love) sophy (ideas).

Anyways. Anybody else have any other theories? I am not super looking for debate about god's existence or anything, I just want to know anyone's thoughts on my ideas. I am not stating anything as truth in this blog post at all. It's mostly just speculation.

I'll be back another time. In a few weeks or so to write about some other crazy thing.

- Sarah

Why I am so sure that God doesn't exist

Why am I so sure that god doesn’t exist? 

I would say “I can just feel it!” but that wouldn’t make sense. It’s like that feeling when you are standing in the middle of nature, in awe, and a theist says “Wow! I feel god out here!”. No, you feel science. You feel plants, animals and fresh air. Yes, it is beautiful but I don’t know why you would want to feel a wrinkly old man out here. 

I can’t just say that I “feel” god doesn’t exist. There has to be a reason. There has to be logic. Ironically, it was logic that led me to believe god doesn’t exist. 

When I was 7 years old I found out the Easter Bunny wasn’t real after looking it up in the phone book and discovering there was no “Bunny, E”. My mom admitted it and I asked her if God existed since the easter bunny doesn’t exist. 

God is pretty much the same idea as the tooth fairy, easter bunny and Santa, except adults still believe in God.

What if God was just like Santa? Like “Oh you don’t have to act good! God doesn’t exist! We just die and there’s no afterlife because that doesn’t make sense! HAHAHA GOTCHA LIL’ JOHNNY!”

I digress.

I am so sure god doesn’t exist because it doesn’t make logical sense. A man in a sky telling you what to do and what not to do? Earth created by another man? We are just animals, like cats or snakes. We just happened to figure things out faster than any other animal. We are not that special. We are quite stupid to have created a god out of our minds and said “This fictional man did it!” and have a huge population believe this is true.

I am an atheist because of logic. I am an atheist because believing in something with no proof doesn’t make sense. I am an atheist because just because religions have existed for a long period of time, doesn’t make their beliefs a fact. It does make their actions funny things for us to read in textbooks. 

How to Convince People to Agree with your Philosophies

You can't. I apologize for the misleading blog title, but you can't.

Here's why:

People are really stubborn. People hate being wrong and people would rather lie than be wrong.

Theists, you can't really convert atheists to theists and same to atheists, you can't really convert theists to atheists.

Every single atheist I have talked to has discovered through independent research and questioning that god doesn't exist. I know many atheists that openly try to get people to learn their perspective and learn that god really doesn't exist, but it doesn't work because people are not just going to up and change.

Getting into arguments about this stuff online is really pointless too, because you aren't going to change the other person's mind.

When was the last time a Jehovah's Witness actually convinced you at your door?

People change their religions when left alone. When I was a Christian I probably wouldn't have become an atheist if a group of atheists approached me and maybe if they had, I wouldn't have ever become an atheist because I would've had this prejudice against them. Maybe I would've.

Just stop telling me about your religion or beliefs because it's not going to change mine. If I am interested in them, I will ask you. Do not get proactive about this kind of stuff.

This doesn't even have to be about religion or theism/atheism. This can be about anything.

Even a kid trying to convince another kid the colour blue is better than the colour green wouldn't be very successful.

Of course there is the odd time when trying to convince another person of something does work but that is not the likely case.

Even though I realize I can't convince all my theistic friends and family to become atheist, it won't stop me from talking about atheism whenever I want to. I am just not going to try to proactively hand them brochures or lecture them.

People aren't just going to switch sides. It takes time to make these decisions. My change from Christian to Atheist was gradual. I was an Anglican Christian, Christian, Spiritual Christian, Spiritual, Agnostic, Agnostic Atheist and now I am Atheist. This all happened in maybe a 3 month time span.

People don't just wake up and think "I'll try mormonism!" or answer the door and think "Sure! I'd love to attend the Church of Latter Day Saints!".

Open-minded people might. But even they aren't going to let go of their stability of their beliefs until they are ready to leap.

It's not impossible to convince other people, but it is highly unlikely.

If you actually came here to find out how to convince people of your philosophies, here is one tip:

Get close to them, but not close enough in which you will argue with them because then they won't talk back and they aren't overly comfortable with you so they won't question you too much. I find this works well with door-to-door people because they get friendly with you but you don't know them well enough to punch them in the face when they say something you think is stupid.

AND FOR GOODNESS SAKES don't be hostile towards another person if you are trying to get them onto your side of a belief system. This happens all of the time on the internet and it doesn't fucking work out so stop wasting your time.

This was a very professional blog post. It was just in my mind for a few days and I just spewed it all out right now. Sorry, I am not editing it.

Do you have any techniques to convince people? Do you think I am wrong in thinking it is hard to convince people to agree with your philosophies?

The struggle between reality and creativity

Lately I've been thinking about how my beliefs and thoughts are quite rational, logical and real. Quite often my beliefs correlate with either/or:

A) Doubt/Having no Clarity

B) Reality

I consider myself to be a creative person. I like writing, coming up with ideas, I love comedy and art. I would never consider myself to be realistic. Recently I noticed that I actually am realistic.

I'd say this time last yearish I wasn't realistic. By the end of August last year, I decided I didn't want a job, I didn't want to ever have to work or do anything. I soon justified that with wanting to go into politics or being a teacher, because those are actual jobs I'd want, but I just didn't want to do the pointless work towards them (school, elections, studying, etc).

I understand that to get to where you want to, you have to follow society. I can't be a complete non-conformist, nevertheless, I still think I am.

I have figured out that although life itself has no meaning, that society has given life meaning, in very VERY stupid ways. But yet, I adhere to some of these stupid ways because I like them. I keep being a non-conformist and a nihilist by only adhering to the things I like... which I like because I like them, not because society told me to like them.

Back to my point. I am an atheist because I like reality. I don't believe in myths, I like history, myths in history are interesting, I just think all of the theism in these myths are bologna. I consider most religious texts to be stories, fictional, possibly myths, containing bits of truth written from that point in time. Yet, I do not know there is a god, and so I believe that.

I guess it is not necessarily a struggle between reality and creativity. It's just that since creativity is generally associated with being more flexible and go with the flowy, while I am not that. I am realistic about many things.

I think they are sort of two different things. Creativity is fine as long as it is art or ideas. As soon as you put creativity into things like math and history, you run into trouble. You need reality to balance out the creativity. Reality and creativity need to collaborate. Sure, draw a picture of a dog with a horse head, but don't write a non-fiction book about it. Go ahead, write a history book, but don't get creative, history is done, history is known. That is called historical fiction.

I don't know. I just think being realistic can be also very depressing, which is why people like to be creative. I want to run for city counsellor at a young age, and it is highly unlikely that I will get the position. Many people will say "Don't think that way, because then you won't achieve anything!". I am being realistic. There is a chance, certainly there is. Anything is possible. Literally anything can happen. It is just unlikely. I don't think anything is impossible or certain. That's why I am a skeptic.

Skepticism is also associated with being more depressive and negative. But you know what? That is the reality. Question things. You must question things or else change doesn't happen. Some strong societal influences need to stop being positive and ignorant and need to get skeptical and question all good things and look for the good in bad things. That's the only time when being positive is okay. Looking for the upside in every bad thing, and the bad in the right.

This is why I am an (agnostic) atheist. I question everything. Well, not everything, just within realistic proportions. But I questioned the existence of god, rather than adhering to society's generalized belief there is a god, and I arrived at the answer that god probably doesn't exist, although since I am skeptic, I believe anything is possible, so I have to stick that little agnostic before atheist, even though I really want to be a complete atheist, I couldn't be a skeptic and an atheist, that just doesn't make sense.


Nice run-on sentence up there, eh?

I just realized how all of my beliefs sort of connect.
I am an agnostic atheist because I am a skeptic and I am a nihilist because I am a skeptic and non-conformist and I am a non-conformist because I am a skeptic and nihilist. Sort of. There are lots of reasons, it's just my beliefs instead of being scattered and unjustified are sorting themselves out without me even realizing it until now.

Weird.

I guess my point, since I have digressed so much in this single blog post, is reality and creativity should work together and support each other. Reality is important and creativity is important, and although they should "work together" they shouldn't be combined in the wrong context because that brings us to lies and things like the idea of god, which for this reason, society believes exists even though it doesn't.

Views on Atheism + Reflection on "The Trouble With Atheism" documentary

A continuing post on my views on atheism and theism.

I watched a documentary called The Trouble With Atheism (watch here), which essentially criticizes atheism. I was reluctant to watch it when I first came across it, because of my strong views on atheism. I decided to suck it up and watch it anyways.

I like documentaries because you can easily follow a storyline, with a distinct voice. You follow a person's real perspective. It is so hard to be a un-biased watcher of any documentary because of the power of the voice, and how convincing it can get. But this is also why I hate documentaries.

This documentary, in my mind, was horrible. It didn't come up with too many arguments actually against atheism. First, it talks about how atheists criticize other religions for being hateful, when atheists are hateful themselves.

Let me point out for the first time; atheism doesn't mean "I hate religion" it means "I don't believe in god" therefore the voice of the documentary, Liddle's, argument is invalid.

It goes on to look at scientific reasons as to why we are here, and then Liddle will say "What happened before the big bang theory?" and what happened before all of these scientific things.

The end truth is; we don't know. It is like Schrodinger's cat, you don't know whether the cat is dead or not until you open the box. You don't know if god is real or not... but there is no box to open, you just can't tell. This is why agnosticism is more supported in this documentary than theism. We don't know how earth was created. We just don't.

At least twice in the documentary, Liddle asks/tells atheists that they are being "rather arrogant" about their views. Some atheists call the belief in religion "stupid". I agree, but that is not my point here. My point here is why the hell is Liddle calling atheists arrogant when he himself is being arrogant, even if simply by asking the atheists why they are arrogant?

What?

The one scientist responded something like (paraphrasing) "I don't care if I am being arrogant, because I am right". Way to go.

The funny thing about the atheism vs theism debate is it doesn't matter what side has more solid evidence than the other because in the end, even if atheism has 1,000,000 pieces of evidence that supports there is no god, and theism has 500,000, that evidence doesn't actually make it more real... we still don't know for 100% CERTAIN. The amount of evidence either side has, doesn't matter.

I am an agnostic atheist, and I think that god doesn't exist. Logic makes more sense to me than a human creator.

Actually, the documentary did put one thing in my head, into words. It went something like: "Religion hasn't been passed on because it is logical or because people believe in it, but because it gives a sense of comfort and structure to society". 

I've been trying to say that the reason why religion has survived this long is because of a psychological way of making someone feel better about them self or more "moral". The word "comfort" is what I was looking for! Aha! Thank-you documentary.


My final points always seem to come to two things, every time.
1. Our fear of chaos
2. Us not wanting to be wrong

1. Towards the end of the documentary, it made the point I hate the most: that atheists are not always moral beings. It was said that by taking god out of the equation, that a magical utopia won't just happen, because of human nature. We still do bad, even without god, and even with god, within our belief system in society. Maybe some theists just believe in god in fear of chaos, and want these religious moral values instilled in society, still just so we don't have chaos everywhere. To many people, without a god, we don't have morals. Without an afterlife, we have nothing to act good for. I am not a moral person, well I am, but not always. I just think that we should act upon our natural instincts. Sure, I don't want to be killed, but technically within nature, killing is natural. I don't fear chaos. Maybe this is why I don't fear labelling myself as an atheist.

2. People naturally hate being wrong. We may bring up a point, argue it with another, halfway believe we are wrong, and continue arguing it anyways because we don't want to lose our pride. We don't want to lose our pride.  Losing our pride and losing an argument means we are wrong. So if a person believes for decades in their life that god exists, and suddenly believe god doesn't exist, that would mean admitting they are wrong. It is a much easier choice to make to keep on believing in god. This is one of the reasons why I value Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote from Self-Reliance so much "Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though in contradict every thing you said today".

Have you watched the documentary? What did you think?

The difference between theism and religion

Theism is the belief in a god/gods.

Religion is a collection of beliefs, understandings, and thoughts about the universe, and usually has a belief in god or gods.

You cannot prove theism, yet. There is no solid proof that a god or gods exist.

But religion, can be proved. Religion has existed. There have been thousands of religions, meaning groups that practice their collective beliefs.

Just because religion is true, doesn't make theism true. But, that is not what I am talking about in this blog post.

I do not generally like religion. I dislike the modern church. I believe scriptures, bibles, etc., to be fictional stories created a long time ago. Religion has been deeply flawed, historically.  When catholics from Europe came over to Canada during the great migration, and even before then when the UK (Britain) was trying to populate Canada with Catholics, to convince the people the be Catholic. Tjhey were hesitant to leave their native beliefs, but they eventually switched. Why? I believe the main reason to be that the natives and the europeans wanted to trade, and the europeans wouldn't trade with them unless they joined their religion. They send missionaries, built churches, and people slowly converted, so they could trade their furs with the european's silver goods, like needles and knives.

My point here is that the religion just came over and took over. This was one of the more peaceful missions.

Many missions ended in violence, because other areas of the world weren't as tolerant to new religions coming and telling them what to believe, and the new religions coming were insistent on them converting.

All of the blood shed, and immoral behaviour provided throughout history, by assorted religions, leads me to dislike religion.

I'm not hating on a specific religion. All religions are historically flawed.

I would say now, these churches aren't violent, like they used to be. There still are some violent churches, practices and religions. But arguably, less.

I still refuse to commit to a religion.

Now, theism. You do not have to be religious to believe in a god or gods. Religions tend to give out a guideline about what their god is like, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., which makes it easy for the theist to believe, if something seems more realistic.

Believing is weird to me. Like you believe a certain religion's interpretation of who god is, what he is like, what he looks like, etc.

I was just trying to imagine if I believed in god, what he would be like.

This is how religions have split throughout time, I guess. Thinking about what god is actually like, or more specifically, Jesus.

But theism itself, is not really a religion. It is a belief. One can be a theist, and not be religious.

I suppose one could be atheist and have a religion too. For example, lets say an atheist begins attending an anglican church. Sure, the anglican churches' belief is in god, but perhaps this person just enjoys going to church, reading the scriptures, educating them self about the moral aspects of the religion, and not the theistic. This person would then be religious, but atheistic.

But I am not a theist. I am an agnostic atheist. Essentially I am really just an atheistic skeptic. I am almost resolutely atheist. But there is always that little bit of doubt in there, because as I said previously, there is technically no proof there is, or isn't a god. So that's why it's "agnostic atheist".

My point here is just that religion and theism are two different things. Quite often they go hand-in-hand. But not always. I just felt this needed to be distinguished. I've never read anything before about a distinguishment, and I just kind of realized it a few weeks ago, that the two are completely different things.

Just as a final point, I really don't know much about religions, individually. I find them interesting. But generally, when I research and look at religion, I look at it with sociological, historical philosophical and psychological eyes, not really religious eyes, therefore I don't really know much about the actual rituals by religions, I just know more about their philosophies, past histories, effects on society and the individual. Even that I know very slim on.