Coming Out Godless

Do you think anyone will take note of you’re being ‘out’?

I’m not quite sure what you mean by that. But I honestly don’t care. This isn’t about people taking note that I’m out. This isn’t about me, this is about us. Large numbers of people saying, “We’re out and proud”, or something to that effect.

“This isn’t about me, this is about us. Large numbers of people saying, “We’re out and proud”, or something to that effect.”

“or something to that effect.”

Are you not sure exactly what it is you (collectively, of course) need to say?

I guess what I’m getting at is…I don’t get it. Are you (collectively, of course) suffering from some type of systematic oppression that you’ve had to hide your atheism? In southern California?

This is about normalizing humanism.

I live in SoCal… and most of my coworkers (in the entertainment industry) are theists!

This isn’t about my area, either. This is about the world. There is oppression everywhere. Atheists are the least liked group in the US…not to mention other countries. I want to try to change that.

I don’t like pundits asserting that we’re unethical because we don’t believe in their god. Or that we’re not patriotic. Or that we’re less than human because we don’t have blind faith. It’s unfair and I’m surely affected by it.

Read Why Religion Matters To Me if you want more on that.

I applaud Guitanguran on researching Atheism. That’s a great first step.

In your Blog, Uncommonsense, you write about what you have learned from researching Atheists.

*Atheists are generally mad about stuff.

* They use flying pigs, the Tooth Fairy, milk jugs, and pretty much anything else as the functional equivalent of God. That is to say, that believing in God makes no more sense than said flying pigs, or fairies. Literally, there is no difference for them.

*Humor: There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of joking around allowed with these guys. Its like, “If I laugh at this Christianist’s jokes, it’ll be tacit approval of his beliefs!”.

* We’re all innately good. We’re born that way.

* When it comes to morality, black can in fact be white

* Its pointless to study the Bible. Its obviously full of bad stuff.

* They’re an oppressed minority.

* Its high time they came out of their atheist closets.

With the exception to Humor, I am confident All Atheists would agree.

The next step is to apply what you have learned. Good Luck!

“I live in SoCal… and most of my coworkers (in the entertainment industry) are theists!”

And they don’t accept your non-theism? What happened to diversity and acceptance? What a bunch of left coast hypocrites!

Oooops! That term hypocrite is probably under fundamentalist trademark registration. I can feel a lawsuit coming on…

“With the exception to Humor, I am confident All Atheists would agree.”

I’m afraid the jury is still out on that one. Seriously, when I try to kid around, or least sound clever…crickets chirping is all I get. These atheist blogs are a pretty tough room to play there, cap’n.

As to some of the other stuff:

* We’re all innately good. We’re born that way.

Nope.

If you’ve ever raised kids or watched yours raise the grandkids, there isn’t the innate goodness Christopher Hitchens ascribes to. There is an innate understanding of, and aspiration to be good that develops more with time and good parenting, but innately good?

* When it comes to morality, black can in fact be white

The last atheist I had this discussion with said he in no way condoned cheating on a spouse but would consider adultery a moral act under certain circumstances, all in the same post. As an atheist, how can you tell if you’re coloring outside the lines if there are no lines, or if you keep moving them to suit you? Of course, if you’re innately good, who needs those stinkin’ lines, anyway?

* Its pointless to study the Bible. Its obviously full of bad stuff.

That’s the biggie.

Well, it IS full of bad stuff, but look who’s doing it.

More to the point, I’ve yet to find an atheist that has done much more than copy verses from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, or paste something in from a ‘contradictions in the bible’ website. I think the great first step (to coin a phrase) in understanding why you don’t believe something is to at least consult with the source material with more than a cursory once-over.

Sometimes, being out-of-step with the rest of the world means you’re actually out-of-step.

Speaking of atheist humour…

Well Guitanguran makes a few points. Let’s examine them.

Humor

“when I try to kid around, or least sound clever…crickets chirping is all I get. These atheist blogs are a pretty tough room to play there, cap’n.”

I agree, the atheists are a tough crowd. The key is, you have to be funny.

“Oooops! That term hypocrite is probably under fundamentalist trademark registration. I can feel a lawsuit coming on…”

That may play on Fox news, but not here. You have to know your audience.

For example:

http://theradguy.blogspot.com/2007/08/catholic-church-exposed.html

This video would kill on an Atheist site, but Bomb on a site dedicated to how wonderful catholic priests are.

Secondly, We’re all innately good. We’re born that way.
Seems very similar to:
“There is an innate understanding of, and aspiration to be good.”

Perhaps a bit of splitting hairs here. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

You ask:

As an atheist, how can you tell if you’re coloring outside the lines if there are no lines, or if you keep moving them to suit you? Of course, if you’re innately good, who needs those stinkin’ lines, anyway?

There are lines, we call them laws.
Need a new law? Make one. Old law outdated? Repeal it.

How do you pick and choose what to follow in the bible? Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not acceptable?

I was raised to determine my own path and have examined the evidence and determined there is no support for the bible at all. What keeps you believing? The great plot and character development?

Hate taking up space here, cap’n but it is the comment section, after all.

Obviously not doing the atheist comedy club circuit anytime soon. I’ll blame on my writers.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but being innately good is something altogether different from the knowledge of or aspiring to.

‘Being good’ is what, exactly? Is it not doing the standard bad stuff such as lying, stealing, assaulting, murdering, and so on? I’m sure we’d all come up with the same basic list of “Not Dos”, “golden rule”, “love thy neighbor”, etc.

But then, is the probitive evidence of being good adhering to all of them most of the time, most of them all of the time, or what? If so, to what degree? Who gets to decide? Do evil thoughts of anger or jealosy count?

Ultimately, when it comes to being good, there has to be a standard. If there is to be a standard from which we could measure, it would have to an absolute. Otherwise, ‘good’ is merely a subjective term open to interpretation, and of no benefit to us. If we have an absolute benchmark of good so there’s no fudging, there’s no one on this planet that make the claim of being innately good.

“How do you pick and choose what to follow in the bible? Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not acceptable?”

As my late father once, said, “You can’t cull your work”. You can’t cull Leviticus and Deuteronomy out, either. If there ever was an appropriate indictment of Christians generally, its that they only want the touchy-feely “God is Love” and leave out the hard stuff. “Its boring”, “I don’t understand it” or “I’m not comfortable with all the stoning people stuff, so I’ll just ignore it”, and so on. So, with that said…

One of the first things one has to understand in any serious study of Scripture is understanding the difference between ‘to us’ and ‘for us’. There’s quite a bit in the Bible that is actually ‘to’ us. The message clearly addresses us, our current situation, and circumstances. On the other hand, as in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, I’d classify most of that as ‘for us’.

Looking at those books in context, the Israelites were on their way to taking over the Promised Land from other groups that practiced horrid pagan practices such as sacrificing infants on bronze altars heated to literally burn those children alive. Just like falling in with the wrong crowd in junior high, there would’ve been a tendency for the Israelites to follow those same kinds of practices…unless the penalties for falling in with the wrong crowd was extrordinarily severe. Let’s also consider the time and place, etc. God had a pretty good handle on how lousy Israelites were at avoiding idolatry, because they did alot of it anyway.

Now, that kind of thing is for our edification, and we can draw from it. And, if taken as part a study of the whole Bible, it actually starts making sense. BTW, the whole stoning of adulterers and the like? A ‘capital’ offense required two reliable eye witnesses. Hard to make a case stick, and for good reason. A person’s life was a stake.

“I was raised to determine my own path and have examined the evidence and determined there is no support for the bible at all. What keeps you believing? The great plot and character development?”

Now that was worth a chuckle, at least.

If I were to go at it from evidence, I’d say prophecy is the big one. We find that
there were many local situations that were fulfilled even in the day of the prophet. For example,
Micaiah was the prophet who told Ahab that if he went out to battle as he planned, he would lose
the battle and would be killed. However, Ahab’s false prophets had told him he’d have a victory
and would return as a victorious king. Because he didn’t like what Micaiah said, Ahab ordered
him locked up and fed bread and water, and he would take care of him when he got back. But
Micaiah shot back the last word, “If you come back at all, the Lord hasn’t spoken by me.” Well, evidently the Lord had spoken by him because Ahab didn’t come back. He was killed in the
battle, and his army was defeated. Ahab actually was in disguise to get away and got hit by a stray arrow. Just bad luck, huh?

Now, that’s just one. There are over 300 prophecies about the coming of Christ, and what would happen. Time, place, circumstances, all correct.

If you look at modern cities of Sidon and Tyre, you’ll see the prophecies there were spot on. In the case of Tyre, Alexander the Great essentially scraped the city down to rubble and threw it all into the sea to create a jetty, to get to the Tyre-ites that had gone out to the island for protection, just as the prophet had said would happen.

There’s the fact Scripture has come to us well preserved and essentially intact, pretty much word-for-word, rather unique for that ancient a document, written over 1500 year timeframe by over 40 different people.

Archeology has yet to prove anything historically incorrect about the Bible. If anything it has consistently confirmed what is written.

Now, that’s all well and good and worthy of a dialogue and counter-arguments, and yes, there’s stuff I still struggle with, but what keeps me believing most is lives that have changed before my eyes. Mine is one of them. Had someone 20 years ago said I’d stop playing music in clubs and start playing in church instead, I would have called them crazy. If someone 20 years ago said I’d buy into God as anything more than an object of philosophical discussion, same thing. Original Sin? Hah! That someone needed to save me? Rediculous! God should’ve made us all better to begin with if it was such a big deal to Him. Virgin Birth? Oh, come on! This is all a scam for my money to some televangelist out there.

But, here. I. am.

Unashamedly sold out.

Just found you and I am very impressed. Good writing. I would like to lift this article about coming out godless if I may. I will but it on the Secular Earth home page for the next week or so and have added you to our links directory. Keep up the good work.
-Skeptic
http://www.secularearth.com

Great..Thanks!

Guitanguran, did it ever occur to you that these so-called prophecies were written years after the fact?

These stories were supposed to serve as moral teachings to the Jewish people. “See, this is what happened when we did not follow God’s laws.” It is not as though Prophet X spoke of a particular thing happening, someone wrote it down, and then 50 years later someone noticed “Hey, Prophet X was right!”

Tommy, the question(for you)might more appropriately be, “Have you ever made any independent inquiry as to archeological and historical evidence that confirms or denies authorship of prophecy, prior to the actual event?”

Offhand, I’d say probably not.

Now, I’d be the first to tell you that not everything that is prophesied in the Bible has come to pass as of yet. However, there has yet to be any historical or archeological evidence that has seriously (that’s the operative term here, not just agenda-driven, unscholarly hack jobs)contradicted fulfillment of prophetic statements, or times and places those statements were originally made. If anything, subsequent discoveries have served to validate Scripture as written.

Hey, I’m open to proof otherwise…

Perhaps Guitanguran should answer Tommy’s question instead of spouting this dribble and trying to deflect.

Thought I had made my point about that tired argument of “…did it ever occur to you that these so-called prophecies were written years after the fact?”

But, while I’m here…

“These stories were supposed to serve as moral teachings to the Jewish people.’See, this is what happened when we did not follow God’s laws.’ “

If that were the only purpose of those stories, why not make them historical accounts rather than current to that day or prophetic to some day in the future?

The whole point of prophecy as in the case with Macaiah, was to make it plain to the Israelites (and us, for that matter) it was God talking, not some yay-hoo.

But there was no God talking to them Guitanguran.

All that stuff about being the chosen people of a one true god, the kosher laws and all the other laws regulating even the most minute aspects of their lives was a way to maintain identity and cohesion in a violent world where their country was repeatedly invaded and they were carried off to foreign lands.

“All that stuff about being the chosen people of a one true god, the kosher laws and all the other laws regulating even the most minute aspects of their lives was a way to maintain identity and cohesion in a violent world where their country was repeatedly invaded and they were carried off to foreign lands.”

Was there something you were going to add to that? Sounds like you were going somewhere with it, but I don’t know what.