UK Atheists putting up adds on buses

In the UK, there is a new advertising campaign for atheists. It is spearheaded by you guessed it... Richard Dawkins. He is matching penny for penny, any donation that is made. The first phase of this campaign is buying add space on buses with the following expression, "There probably is no God, so stop worrying, and enjoy your life." The plan is to get two sets of 30 buses with the slogans in the side, and have them drive around Westminster for four weeks.

As an atheist, I have mixed feelings about this. One part of me thinks its great. Its making atheist culture acceptable. It makes not believing in God seem a little more tangible. It injects atheism into pop culture. It makes atheism a little less "crazy".

On the other hand, I feel like advertising for atheism is pretty weird thing in of itself. It appears as though Dawkins is trying to centralize atheism, which I am not sure if I like. In the short term, that might be beneficial, as people begin to lose faith in God. But I feel like having a centralized atheist movement might just replace religion with another dogmatic institution. I have never had a problem with just religion, my problem has always been with dogmatic views. If you dogmatically don't believe in God, I have just as big of a problem with your beliefs as if you dogmatically do believe in God. I care more about your intentions and the method by which you arrive at your beliefs, than I do the outcome of that process.

If modern religion is to every truly die out, its not going to happen by putting up billboards on buses. Its going to happen through education in the sciences. As people learn more about their natural world, and begin to use evidence to shape their world views, they need less and less dogma to explain their world. This simply means, they simply don't need God anymore. God becomes an obsolete explanation.

I understand religion has many more uses than just to satisfy curiosity. There are thousands of social functions that religions provide in nearly every society. (Whether I want to admit it or not). And if we were to magically whisk away religion, there would be a huge void in our society of these services. And so, we can't just whisk away religion. The only responsible way to get rid of religion is to slowly erode it away through increased education in the sciences. If we slowly erode religion away, the social functions that it provides will be replaced by a different sense of community. Personally, I hope secular humanism will take its place

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism

So what do you guys think?


Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/21/religion-advertising-atheistbus

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/21/religion-advertising

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/22/religion-atheist-dawkins-god

Unintelligent Design

God is supposed to be an all knowing, and all powerful being. He is supposedly our creator, and the creator of the universe. Furthermore, the universe is supposed to be our playground. According to the bible, the universe exists for us.

If these statements are all true, then God has some explaining to do. The human body is riddled with limitations that any competent engineer would spot. Also, the universe is FAR from a friendly place for the survival of the human race.

First, lets examine how imperfect, and how limited the human body is. Keep in mind, that we are supposed to be the creation of an all knowing and all powerful being.

As humans, most of us face the following problems:

1. The way that our DNA is made, we are susceptible to cancer thats caused by ultra violet rays from the sun. These rays mutate our DNA in our cells, causing them to go haywire, and replicate like crazy until it kills us.

2. For most of us, our wisdom teeth either grow in at an awkward angle, causing the rest of our teeth to become too crowded. For some of us with larger mouths, we have the room for these extra teeth, but flaps of skin grow over them, guaranteeing the onset of cavities.

3. Inheritable diseases. Some people don't have a choice in what diseases they are born with. Some diseased are presumed to be human caused, ie Autism caused by higher levels of Mercury. However, many diseases are inherited through our genes. An example of this is Alzheimer's disease. In Alzheimer's disease, broken proteins aggregate in certain parts in the brain, preventing the synapses in your brain to work properly.

4. Because we breath, talk, and eat through the same passage, a certain percentage of us is GUARANTEED to die of choking every year.

5. People claim that the human eye is a wonderful piece of engineering, and although it is very sophisticated, it is also very limited. We can only see a tiny sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. The entire electromagnetic spectrum reaches to near infinity in both the longer and shorter wavelengths that are beyond our range of vision. Anyone who has an appreciation of the entire electromagnetic spectrum can see just how limited our vision is.

6. A certain percentage of all new born babies will be born dead. Most of the causes of still-born babies is unknown, and is not man made. This implies that by design, God wanted a certain percentage of all fetuses to be naturally aborted.

7. Our head is proportionally huge for our bodies. As a result we have S-shaped spines so that way have better balance. This leads to lower back pain later in life, because so much strain is put on our lower backs to keep our head up.

In addition to all these problems with our bodies and brains (There are many more), this supposed Garden of Eden that we live in, is far from a favorable place for us to live.

1. If you look at the volume of the universe in which we CANT survive, it becomes obvious that this universe was not designed for our existence. If you don't quite know how small the earth really is, just think that the earth orbits our sun. And in the milky way galaxy, there are hundreds of billions of stars, just like our sun. And in our universe, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one containing hundreds of billions of stars. Thats billions, with a "B".

Even in our own small corner of the universe, the Earth is in a shooting gallery of things trying to kill us. The Earth gets hit by asteroids every 100 million years or so that will terminate all life on it, we have cosmic rays that give us cancer, and eventually the sun will engulf the Earth, guaranteeing that all life on Earth will end.

2. Even our own planet is out to kill us. Between natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis, that kill hundreds of thousands of people every decade (year?), and naturally occurring bacteria and viruses that replicate, feed, and eventually destroy our bodies, we have a lot going against us.

2/3 of the Earth is covered in water, places where we cannot live. Even on land, a sizable percentage of the Earth is uninhabitable desert, tundra, or ice lands.

All these ideas don't even include the amount of death caused by the notion of free-will that God was supposed to have given us.

I think Epicurus was on the right track when he said the following in 33AD:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God.


If after reading all this, you can look me in the eye, and say both of the following things to me: #1 That God is loving, and #2 God is competent, than I would love an explanation from you, because to me, thats absolute hogwash.

Sources:



Neil deGrasse Tyson giving a presentation at the 2006 Beyond Belief conference. You should watch this video, hes a funny guy and has far more charisma than I ever will. Oh, and he was the astrophysicist that was on the Colbert Report a couple weeks ago. So kids, hes a cool guy.

The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life? If you were to ask me, I would tell you it depends on the context of the question. What is the meaning of life relative to what culture, to who's family, to what universe? There is not an absolute meaning of life, but why should there be? Why do we have this narcissistic need for centrality? The major religions have been telling us for so long that the universe is here for us. Well, I say that we are not divine beings, and are not worthy enough to have absolute knowledge. For when humans claim to have absolute power and knowledge we are capable of atrocious things; absolute knowledge opens the door for for dogma. Take for examples, the Holocaust, the Crusades, or modern Islamic terrorism, these three things have one thing in common: they are founded on dogma.

My point is that we make our own meaning to life. We define what goals we want to achieve, relative to our social and intellectual surroundings. If you just want to be happy, than by all means, find meaning in your life by creating happiness for yourself. We can have more than one meaning of life. From a biological standpoint, the goal of life is to pass on one's genes, but this particular meaning has no relevance to how to treat your family and friends.

There is no absolute meaning to life, only relative meanings. I am sure its possible to define happiness through biological interactions, but it is certainly not useful to define happiness in such a way because it is so far removed from every day practice.

We know a lot about life, and the universe, and at the same time we know so little. We are so limited by our senses and human biases. We are searching for purpose, for something larger than life. Well, I say that there is no absolute purpose to life, the only purpose we can discover is in the purposes of life that we define.

Discover what you enjoy, who you care about, what you like doing, and what you are passionate about, and make those things the meaning of your life. If you feel empty because you feel like there has to be something more, stop looking for things that are out of this world, and take a look around you. The World has a lot to offer, if you only keep your eyes open.

Find meaning in the life around you, we all have a purpose - just not a divine purpose.