God Loves Evil

Hypothetical situation – you and your girlfriend (or boyfriend) are walking down the road.  A bunch of thugs comes over and decides that they want to rob you.  But they look at you, or your significant other, and decide that you are female, and attractive, so they decide that they are going to rape you or them.  One of you is outright murdered, because this person isn’t hot and worthy of their time, and the other is brutally raped, left to die in a gutter.  But this person (you or them) lives.  They live on with that memory in their mind, forever.  Guess who was privvy to this information? God.  He saw it all.  He saw the whole thing happen.  And what did he do?  Nothing.

But Lucien, God gives us trials!  He never gives us more than we can handle!

Uh…yeah, that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.  First-off, can a baby who dies of some horrible illness handle that?  Can the little kid whose family is murdered by vicious thugs handle it?  Can the teen girl who is forced to have sex with all the military guys of some country fight back?  Could the family who was murdered before that teen girl was repeatedly raped of stopped them from blowing them away with assault rifles?  What about you?  Say you are the one who got murdered.  These thugs jumped you, and blew your brains out before you could even think.  Were you able to handle that?

The idea that God is just giving us ”tests” or “trials” is so ridiculous, and yet people believe that, so adamently.  I often think that most of those people (not all, but most), have never had anything really bad happen to them, so they just write off other people’s problems as something that they could handle, never having experienced it themselves.

Meanwhile, God has just witnessed and event that neither party could handle, and did nothing.  He does this all the time.  Genocide in African countries, starvation in African countries or America, disease and pestilence in places that can’t get modern medicine, all of these things are witnessed by an omni-present God every single day, and he does nothing.

But Lucien, God doesn’t interfere with free will!

What a joke.  Free will.  So, my question back to Christians is – do you believe in Fate?  The idea that the path of your life is chosen before you are even born?  If you believe in that, that everything is predestined to happen before you woke up that day, then you can’t believe in free will, because it’s not possible.  But let’s give this whole idea the benefit of the doubt for a second.  It’s still bullshit!

Look at it this way – God is in all places at all times, right?  So, he watches you or your significant other get brutally raped, and does nothing.  He cares more about the fact that people are free to murder and rape than he does for doing the right thing.  Would you sit back and watch?  Would you do nothing to stop a murderer or a rapist?  It’s free will, after all!  They have the right to do it!  Of course you wouldn’t!  You would do anything you could to stop this from happening.  You would fight to save the lives of those people or person.  That’s just basic human decency.  It’s the reality that Christians don’t want to face, because in their mind, God is perfect.  Yeah, so perfect that he allows murder and rape because it is “free will.”  Seems more like condoning evil to me.

Not to mention – what about the fucking Bible?!  In that, he performed miracle after miracle, in plain sight of everybody, openly taking away free will and changing the outcome of events before they happened!  Hell, he sent his kid/him down to Earth, and he did some REALLY big interfering, such as curing people of disease, taking away their blindness.  He even raised people from the dead!  Yeah, if that isn’t interfering, I don’t know what is.

And some will comment that it is after Jesus that God stopped interfering.  Yeah, that’s bullshit.  The public still says that miracles are happening from God all the time.  One pastor said that God helped him find his car keys.  His fucking car keys!  This god is so pathetic that he will watch the murder and rape of innocent people, but will help a pastor find his car keys?!  The same God who doesn’t ever interfere in what happens in the world, right?  Of course.  Of course it is that way.  Convenient loopholes that those who don’t want to face reality create.

But Lucien, those guys will burn forever in Hell!

So?  So what?  Does that change what happened?  Does it change the fact that you or the person you were with was raped or murdered?  Does it change the fact that this incident has scarred either party for the rest of their lives?  Not to mention – how exactly is them burning in Hell forever going to make it all better?  Eternal torture, you think that’s a good punishment?  You think that them burning forever is just fine?  For all eternity, a time-frame that you narrow-minded people can’t even begin to comprehend, they are going to suffer.  Unless, of course, they come to God and sincerely are sorry for what they did.  After that, he has an open-door policy for stuff like this.  By God’s logic, it is entirely possible that Hitler and Stalin are in Heaven.

The simple reality is that if God exists, he stands in solidarity of evil.  He lets evil work, while going against his own policy to not interfere in order to help people with the most menial things on Earth.  While, everyday, there is suffering, disease, death, rape, you name it, going on all over the planet, and not one time does he step in and stop it.  Not one time.  That is NOT a character who is good.  That is a character who is evil.  That’s the real reality of Christianity.  The reality is that God is a monster, who either doesn’t care, or openly acknowledge what an evil piece of shit he actually is.

Until next time, a quote,

“In order to believe the Christian message, you have to believe this – that those 100,000 years, people were born, died.  Usually, many of them, in child-birth.  Either the mother or the child.  Had a life expectancy of about 28 years, 25.  Died of mircoorganisms they didn’t know existed.  Genesis doesn’t mention them, because the people who write Genesis don’t know about microorganism.  Earthquakes would have been terrifying.  Tsunamis, volcanoes, mysterious events.  War, famine, super-imposed on us.  You can all fill out this picture for yourselves, I’m sure.  That was our life for tens of thousands of years, on and on it went.  Maybe a gradual upward curve, of a sort.  We seem to have made some progress.  Very painfully and with infinite suffering and labor.  And with our solidarity still intact.  Now here’s what you have to believe – You have to believe heaven watched over all that, for 98,000 years.  And after 98,000 years, they decided 2,000 years, it may be time to intervene.  And the best way of doing that would be to have a filthy human sacrifice in a very remote part of Palestine.  And the news of this still has no penetrated to the rest of the world, and I don’t think will be believed when it does, and isn’t believed by me, and can’t be believed by any thinking person.”  -Christopher Hitchens

Peace out,

Maverick

Is There Morality Without God?

That is kind of the key question that a lot of theists come at atheists like myself with.  Is there a form of morality that exists without a supreme being to back it up.  One of the big thing that Christians seem to like is the fact that goodness is rewarded, while evil is punished.  They applaud this system as being so wise, while the rest of us secular people have absolutely no system by which we can claim we get our morality from.  This is a debate which has had many great minds weigh in on.  Here is my position -

I told my best friend Emily that I believe that I have no moral code.  I do not follow any particular code, because I don’t believe in having a code to follow.  I told her that my ability to empathize, and gut-feelings tend to guide my decision-making processes.  With this in mind, I believe that I do not have a moral code.  She contends that I do, because, while I don’t actively accept my system of deciding what is right and what is wrong as a moral code, it is all the same.

I respectfully disagree.  I get where she is coming from, but I think that a moral code must be something perceived, understood, written down.  For people like me, who generally don’t think too much about the moral implications, just operating on my ability to empathize, it falls a little flat.  What I understand about morals are that they are units of measurement, usually with two settings – right and wrong.  I totally discard that off-hand, because morally gray is such a vast area, as I have come to understand.

My views on morals is that they are guidelines.  Morality is a system of guidelines.  These guidelines are usually cultural, though there may be some slight differences for each person.  They can also be faith-based.  But the fact is that these guidelines tell you how to act.

Think about this – do morals stop you from doing bad things?  How many times have people done horrible things in the name of God?  How many massacres have been done in God’s name?  A lot of people look at Islam and talk about how violent their culture is, and there is a cogent argument to be made there, but think about this – what about all the horrible things that have been done by Christians?  Hitler did all of his killings in the name of God.  The Spanish Inquisition was a Christian undertaking.  Charlemagne killed 2,500 people for refusing to convert to Christianity.  This was all done in the name of their God.  A lot of people will say that their actions were justified.  Many will also say that they were horribly immoral.  The line that draws what is right and what is wrong is where?

The fact is that having moral precepts has never stopped anybody from doing anything.  Murder has gone on in the name of God.  Bigotry has gone on in the name of God.  Moral codes often validate these forms of activities that many would find unacceptable.  In the Hindu cultures, it is considered wrong to console somebody who is suffering, because they earned that suffering for their actions in a previous life.  According to Mormon morals, if somebody leaves the church, you are supposed to shun them, and disown them.  The same can be said for a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  These are moral values that guide the actions of somebody.

I live a life where I have no moral compass guiding my actions.  I follow my ability to empathize when it comes to internal debates about what is right and what is wrong.  I genuinely believe that it is better to be empathetic than to be moral, because it is clear that morality can be subversive to society, degrading, destructive, and oppressive.

That brings me to my next point – morality is ALWAYS a system of control, always.  Think about this – in wolf packs, there is an Alpha male and female.  They control the actions of the pack.  They are very quick to crack down upon behaviors that they don’t like.  Take a look at a moral system.  These systems are dictated and led by figures of authority.  The secular system that this country has is led by figures of authority.  The religious systems like Catholicism are lead by figures of authority.  Every single system of morality comes from a place of power, and is given to those without power, to get them to behave in a way that they see as correct.

Examining that critically, the fact is that morality has absolutely nothing to do with how you treat others.  It is a system that is given to mankind by those who want to have power over them.  Richard Dawkins believes that morality came from the natural urge to group together.  His idea has no basis in reality because his theory only pertains to altruistic behaviors.  But it is very clear that what humanity does goes well-beyond altruism.

The fact is that the true concept of morality is nothing more than a way for those with power to control those without it.  So I disagree with Emily.  I get where she is coming from, but the way I perceive what morality actually is inspires me to disagree.

So, can there be morality without God?  Well, that’s pretty easy – yes.  There already is.  Morals that came from God are just systems of control.  The systems that gave morals to the cultures that arose before Christianity were just as prevalent, and just as real.  Morality existed long before the Christian God, and it will continue long after.  It will continue as long as there are those in power who want to control other people.

That’s the ultimate truth – belief in God is nothing more than a system of control.  All the decent things that people do are the result of our ability to empathize, what I do every single day.  God doesn’t add any morals to the mix that don’t or haven’t already existed.  His system is no better than any other system.  But empathy, and trying to be empathetic, that is really doing good for the human race.  That is really the ultimate truth – if we want to really progress as a culture, ALL forms of morality need to go.  We have to embrace empathy.

Morality, Christian and otherwise, has exploited the best and the worst of all of us, and this is what I believe we need to do to be free of it.  Freedom, true freedom, comes from not following a system that tells you exactly how you should feel, and instead follow your ability to empathize.  For those who can’t, like sociopaths or those with Asperger’s Syndrome, well, that’s too bad.

Get rid of morality, ged rid of religion.  Embrace empathy.  Religion does nothing good for society, and morality is nothing more than a means to control people.  That’s my opinion, anyway.

Until next time, a quote,

“Morality, which has convinced even brilliant men like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris that it is here to help, when it is only here to strengthen our chains of bondage.”  -TJ Kincaid, The End of Morality and The Anarchy Of The Soul

Peace out,

Maverick

Humanity Never Had Any Hope, and it breaks my heart

This is going to be another very personal rant from my perspective, and to give a little insight onto my world views, even though I fully realize that in ten years, nobody’s going to give a shit what I think.  I say this as a bisexual atheist who is openly misanthropic.  I am openly hating the human race, but not for the reasons you all are going to think.  Or maybe some of you will.  We’ll see when we get there.

A couple things you should know about me before we get on this – I was raised in a home by two very good people who both have a problem with expressing their feelings.  It has led me to be much the same way.  Sorry, but it’s true.  Another thing you all should know is that I haven’t really enjoyed life all that much since I was 14.  A horrible head injury and all the medical disaster after that kind of took away the happiness I got from things.  Those are the things that you need to know.

I wish I could do what the late and great George Carlin was able to do.  To be able to look on what the slow decomposition of society from a distanced perspective and get a laugh out of it.  He was a master in a world where too many people just don’t examine things closely.  He was a person who saw the world for what it was but instead of giving up and throwing in the towel, he chose to make a joke out of it and maybe, just maybe, get other people to think.  The world is going to sorely miss this man.

As for me, I am much of the same mind.  Here is what is so depressing about our society today.  I have met some really amazing people in this world.  I have a very small circle of people that are genuinely close.  Most people I keep at a fairly moderate distance because I may be a tad bit overly critical and asking a lot of people, but I do have high standards.  A person has to really intrigue or wow me, or basically just stick in my head and seem important before I make the effort to get to know them in any significant way.  But I have met and gotten close to some amazing people.  There are people like my friend Heather.  She is a good person, fighting for all the right things and for all the right reasons.  Then there are people like my friend Emily.  She is an artist who is desperate to make the world work out and to take care of the people who matter to her.

So, I see all of these people, and I look at their struggles and I look at how hard they are working to improve life on this world, and then I turn around and I see the other side of the equation – the greedy, the distracted, the stupid, the machines of society that are working to destroy everything that matters to anybody.  Because the fact is that good is really so powerless in this world.  This is one of the reasons that I genuinely refuse to believe in a God or gods.  This universe is a shit-hole.  Starvation, greed, evil are infinitely more powerful than good.  Good really always was the underdog in society and the fact is that the underdog is losing.  This isn’t going to be one of those stories where the underdog suddenly comes back and wins the game.  This is going to be one of those stories where society slowly crumbles away and by the time they are able to see and understand it, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Now, I am not one of those people who says that it is pointless, so don’t even bother trying.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I admire the fuck out of my friend Heather for working as hard as she does.  And the fact that all her efforts are going to go to shit fucking pisses me off!  This world should be better for people like her!  This world should be great for people like her!  For people like my friend Emily too!  This world should be better for this tiny percentage of people who fight the good fight and who will lose because society doesn’t care.

Society has never cared.  The bulk of people are content to just go to the mall and get fat on food-court sludge and to go to the store and buy every stupid bullshit thing that they want to buy.  Society has been content to be distracted by what I call the “Weapons of Mass Distraction.”  The TV sells it, day after day.  And what’s more, society is buying.  Stupid shit like The Hills, The Jersey Shore, all of that, it is all a weapon made to keep people stupid and to make them much more susceptible to a weapon that is everywhere, all the time, and has won the battle for the human race.

Part of me wonders how the rich are able to do it.  How they can abandon their conscience and their decency for dollar bills.  How does that work, exactly?  Is it a gradual process, or does it happen all at once?  I fully realize that since I am going into journalism, I am probably going to be making very little to nothing for my trouble.  I am going to be scraping away at the loans I will have amassed by the time I am out of college.  I will be just another working stiff barely getting by.  Or if those in politics don’t learn that tax increases and decreases in spending have to go hand in hand, I won’t be even that because America will have no economy.

But the fact is that humanity doesn’t give a shit about the people who matter, the people who are fighting the good fight.  And I sometimes enjoy it because I have to.  There is nothing left to do.  Sometimes I immerse myself in that culture for a while and forget that people like Heather and Emily are out there and are trying to make the world a better place in their own way and are destined to fail.  But then I come home, and I turn on the news, and I realize the truth – good never had a fighting chance in this world, because it is simply too easy to be evil.

This is the worst part about all of this and the reason that I am writing this down now and I will share it with as many people as I can because good people never really had a chance in this world.  Peace is too easily destroyed by war.  Life is so easily taken by death.  Being greedy is so much easier than personal sacrifice.  And the reason that I am able to live here is because I am able to detach myself from it because if I took it too seriously all the time, I couldn’t exist here.  This world wasn’t made for people like me.  I try and fight the good fight too, but like most of my friends, I know that in the end, it was over before it began.  Humanity hasn’t had hope really ever.  Society will come apart, and in the end, people like my friends Heather, Emily, Mark, John, Rachel, and I could go on but it is pointless, will be the last who will understand it, before society doesn’t give a shit completely.

I want this world to change.  It breaks my heart that it never had a chance from the start.

Until next time, a quote,

“It’s too easy, in nature, for evil to conquer good.  For force to conquer peace.  Because, the tranquility of twenty people having a picnic can be destroyed by one maniac wielding an automatic weapon.”  -TJ Kincaid, Atheist Answers: Fate Of The World

Peace out,

Maverick