I'm posting this warning, as I haven't in the past made too many "serious" posts on this blog. Well, I mean, talking about exercise and weight loss and a couple of surgeries is somewhat serious, but I kept it fairly light and didn't provide a lot of detail or talk about many negatives.

This post will be about subjects that might offend some people, and will be my first post on said subjects (in any depth anyhow). So... I'm giving you the opportunity to not even see it.

Hit the "Read more..." if you dare. ;)

...

First a little background, in case you haven't read every single post I've ever made here. For a large portion of my life, I "was"/believed in a lot of woo [click link for definition]. As a child, and for a small portion of my teenage years, I was a Christian (Lutheran, Missouri Synod to be exact). Once I got a couple years into adolescence I started to really question the whole Christianity thing as it really made nearly zero (or less than zero!) sense. I moved into more occult thinking and started looking into various occult traditions. By the time I was 18 and 19, I was into various Left Hand Path traditions, mostly Chaos magick and the like. When I met and married my wife, she was also Woo, and we moved into yet other occult thinking - mostly Americanized voudou and the like. Then, probably 6-8 years ago, we (ok, she; it was her first) started to even question that and, long story short, we realized in the light of true evidence, it was all bullshit.

So, now, we're "out" Atheists, both of us. They ask us as the hospital before surgery, "Do you have any religious preference?" and we both say "Yeah, none, I'm an Atheist." We're "out."

Eh, so, why am I making this post? Well, this blog reaches a slightly different audience than the "hardcore" Atheist/skeptic blogs, for sure. I kind of want to get this message out, even though I realize it'll end up being "preaching to the choir" as people that already are Atheist will just say "yup, you're right" and those that aren't will say "you're wrong and going to hell."

There are two big arguments against Atheism that I see over and over again on the web/on TV/in the general population. I mean, yeah, there's of course more than two, but these are two you see coming up most often.

The first,

As an Atheist, you have nothing to comfort you when bad things happen.

That's not true! I find that science gives me great comfort! Everyone is treated equally. You didn't get brain cancer because you didn't pray hard enough or because of the Devil; you got it because you lost the genetic lottery. Yes, it still sucks, of course it does, but at least it's not your fault. Your child isn't Autistic because God doesn't love them; it's again the bad dice roll of genetics. Still sucks, but it's no one's fault. And even in death, you have the comfort of knowing you're not going to hell, you don't need to worry about heaven, you just stop. That's it. Game over. And your loved one? Yeah, they're gone, and that hurts - but you needn't worry if they pleased some God enough to avoid roasting in Hades. They're just gone, and all you have are the good memories. But no worries about their afterlife.

It was Penn Jillette, I believe on his now-canceled radio show, that turned me on to that way of thinking and it instantly made total sense. Have to give credit where credit is due. You rock Penn.

The other,

If everyone was Atheist there would be widespread looting/killing/raping/anarchy/chaos.

What!? That to me is a scary thing for someone to say - and a lot of people say it! When someone says that, it sort of implies they think they would be likely to do those things if they didn't have the fear of God holding them back! Scary!

This one is just simply untrue. There are already people that commit these wrong acts, right now, every day. And I don't think widespread adoption of Atheism would increase (or decrease) the number of people that commit these crimes. Deciding to commit a crime is indicative of a personality/behavioral problem, and has nothing to do with your religion or lack thereof. Heck - look at some of the weird kidnapping/enslavement cases in the news lately. The perpetrators profess to be Christian and say they did it because God told them to! I have never heard a criminal say "I did it because I don't believe in God and science says I can do what I want." Never.

The simple fact is that morals and what's "right" are totally separate from religion. Killing a person, except in a defense situation is just wrong. Period. So is taking something that doesn't belong to you, and so is forcing someone to do something against their will, regardless of what it is.

It's a "broken record" thing that a lot of Atheists say, but I'll say it here again: a lot more people have been killed or harmed because of religion, than those that have been killed or harmed because of NO religion. Seriously. The terrorism and wars in the world right now - they boil down to "my religion is better than yours", at their core.

Yes, the human race is prone to fighting - South Park pointed this out in the infamous "Go God Go" episode. So, yes, even if religion were a thing of the past, there would still be fighting... We'd find something to fight about. But at least it wouldn't be over which fictitious Sky-bully to worship, or over an interpretation of something someone said the Sky-bully said 10,000 years ago.