Religion, at its worst, causes death and destruction. At its best, it advocates for lazy, uncritical thinking. In either case, religion is the enemy of progress.
“The United States is not and will never be at war with Islam.”
—
President Barack Obama
May 1st, 2011
Thank you, President Obama, for making religious affiliation a non-issue. There are a lot of Americans who needed to hear these words.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
— Carl Sagan
Someone posted a link to this video on Rational Skepticism and I had to share. :]
“Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
— Isaac Asimov
A Letter to the AA Conference from Christopher Hitchens
Dear fellow-unbelievers,
Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstitition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency.
That essential sense of decency is outraged every day. Our theocratic enemy is in plain view. Protean in form, it extends from the overt menace of nuclear-armed mullahs to the insidious campaigns to have stultifying pseudo-science taught in American schools. But in the past few years, there have been heartening signs of a genuine and spontaneous resistance to this sinister nonsense: a resistance which repudiates the right of bullies and tyrants to make the absurd claim that they have god on their side. To have had a small part in this resistance has been the greatest honor of my lifetime: the pattern and original of all dictatorship is the surrender of reason to absolutism and the abandonment of critical, objective inquiry. The cheap name for this lethal delusion is religion, and we must learn new ways of combating it in the public sphere, just as we have learned to free ourselves of it in private.
Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.
As the heirs of a secular revolution, American atheists have a special responsibility to defend and uphold the Constitution that patrols the boundary between Church and State. This, too, is an honor and a privilege. Believe me when I say that I am present with you, even if not corporeally (and only metaphorically in spirit…) Resolve to build up Mr Jefferson’s wall of separation. And don’t keep the faith.
Sincerely
Christopher Hitchens
my deconversion
It seems like I share this story a lot on forums and in online discussions so I’m beginning to feel like it’s all word vomit. I’m going to try my best to keep this short, sweet, and to-the-point. :]
I was born and raised Christian—I’ve attended Methodist, Assembly of God, Southern Baptist, and nondenominational churches. I was never too serious about religion until college, after a devastating (soul-crushing, at the time) break-up with my then boyfriend. It was my freshman year in college and I had spent so much time swallowed up in “love” that I hadn’t really made any friends. The first people to reach out to me after the break-up were Christians who, of course, invited me to their church.
The service I attended the night I “rededicated” my life to Christ was in the small wedding chapel on the MASSIVE megachurch campus near my university, and the lights were dim and the music was emotional. People were sharing their personal testimonies about their walks with faith… looking back on it, the setting was perfect for emotional manipulation. I felt alone, distraught, guilty because I wasn’t a virgin… I was ripe for the pickin’, pretty much.
For the next year and a half I lost myself in my enthusiastic faith. I was baptized in the Gulf of Mexico, went on a mission trip to East Asia, convinced myself that foreign missions were my future, and turned away from everything that wasn’t Jesus-related. I quit listening to secular music, I quit reading secular books, etc, etc. I literally lost myself.
But once I got a taste of reason back in November of 2010, the snowball effect was quick and devastating. Within about three weeks of accidentally stumbling across an atheist blog online, I considered myself a nonbeliever.
AND IT’S FUCKING AWESOME. I’m happy, I don’t feel needlessly guilty all the time, I’m myself again, and I’m waaaay more motivated now that I know that this is the ONLY chance I get at life. :]
the history of chūtǔ
About a year ago, I started a blog named chūtǔ (Mandarin for “unearthed”) to chronicle my life as a believer in Jesus Christ and a foreign missionary to East Asia… well, over the past year I have renounced my former faith and I now identify as an atheist… but the word “chūtǔ” still applies, because my atheism has led me to science, reason, skepticism, and a whole world of amazing things that religion tries its best to keep in the dark.
So I’ve created a new blog with the same title, this time to share my thoughts and Internet finds related to atheism, humanism, and science. Hopefully you’ll find something here that tickles your fancy or engages your mind. :]
S.B.
