An Open Letter To My Yet Unborn Child, Hattori Yuki

Welcome, child.

               

                Welcome to this planet.

                This is your home. This is where you will live, this is where you will learn, and this is where you will love.

                Everything you will ever see, everything you will ever touch, everything you will ever taste, everything you will ever smell, everything you will ever hear... You will find it on this planet.

                This planet is old. It is vast. It has been the cradle from which our species was born. It has been the nursery that helped our species to take its first steps. It has been the school that helped to teach us everything we know so far about ourselves and about reality.

                Every triumph and every defeat of our species has taken place here. Every dizzying euphoric high we have experienced has happened on this soil or because of its gifts. Even when we slipped the bonds of gravity, we did it because of the gifts of this planet.

                Every tear shed, every drop of blood spilled has been soaked up by its soil.

                This is your home.

                On it, you will meet many more of you... Many more of us.

We are not old. We have not been here for very long. The planet has barely blinked, and we are here, spreading across its plains, crossing its oceans, building monuments to ourselves, or our ingenuity, and our ability to adapt.

We come in many different guises. Some of us have dark skin. Some of us have almond shaped eyes. Some of us have hair the colour of Straw. We don’t look alike. But look into the eyes, and you see it. You see your link to them, and to their ancestors, and yours... Stretching all the way back to those of us who first came down from the trees.

We have spread. From a hot, sun baked continent we marched across the planet and colonised virtually every place it is possible for us to live on. We endure wildly varying temperatures, angry and violent seas, the wrath of the bowels of the planet itself. We face diseases, scarce food and water and still we endure.

We may not be old, but we are here, and we endure, and we are great in number.

We have potential that is almost limitless. In our short time on this rock, we have gazed further than any other creature that has lived here before. We have gazed so far that we can almost see the beginning of time itself. Maybe one day we will see how everything began.

We have touched dizzying heights with our discoveries. We have realised that we are all kin. We are all connected. We have found ways to take those scarce resources and multiplied them. We  have peered into the heart of our world. We have nearly doubled how long just one of us stays here to know, to explore.

And we have sunk to appalling lows. Our discoveries have made it easier for us to squander the gifts of this planet. Our discoveries have made it far easier for us to distance ourselves from our lowly beginnings, as if hoping to detach from them totally, and detach from nature. Our discoveries have made it far easier for us end millions of the lives of this species.

We can be a great people. We wish to be. It seems that we only lack a guiding light.

In the face of this lack of light, we turned to our fears. We turned to our superstitions. We turned to the darkest corners of our imaginations. We turned to our cruelty and our malice, and our will to dominate. We dressed up these concepts with words like omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent, even though we knew, we had to know that not only were these not true, they were not possible.

We turned to the worst of ourselves, hoping that somehow these would bring out the best of us.

You may say, child, that we could be forgiven for that. We were so much younger, we didn’t know. How could we know? How could we look at something as brilliant and enigmatic as the sun and not think that there was a bigger better version of us, pulling it across the sky, looking down on us and passing judgement? How could we not think that? If it was us up there, that’s what we’d do.

You’d be right to be so forgiving of our nature in the early morning of our species. Ignorance was a good excuse, because back then, we didn’t and couldn’t have known better.

But we have much less of an excuse when we started learning more about ourselves and reality. By that time, we’d given names to these manifestations of the worst part of us. We called them things like Odin, Zeus, and Yahweh. And we got it even more wrong. We gave up all responsibility of our actions to them.

We made these characters so powerful that not only did they create everything we saw, they also created everything we thought and felt. We gave them the power to control things like our innate capacity for good, our innate capacity towards altruism and helping our kindred. We saw tribal leaders and kings, and made them bigger and more powerful versions. They were the lawgivers, we merely followed the laws.

But these laws, like these characters were written by us. We are great, we are filled with potential, but we still get it wrong, so the last thing we should have done is given these beings, who were omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent the power to make laws, because we gifted them with one more thing.

We made them infallible.

You laugh child. You laugh at the stupidity of what we did. How could we have created things to govern over us that thought like us, but could never be wrong? Why didn’t we just destroy them as easily as we created them? They weren’t real, so how could they have dominion over us?

We gave them a way to be indestructible. We gave them a weapon.

We gave them faith.

Faith elevated them above simple questions and answers. It elevated them from ever being proven wrong. No more now for these characters to face the indignity of a mere mortal questioning if they were there at all. That didn’t need to be proven. All that was needed was for that mortal to believe. And not just that mortal, but many others. They all had to believe, and it was made into law. Believe or face the consequences... And with those consequences, we gave them the power of fear.

Thus was born religion.

And we faced heavy consequences. These beings were just like every tool we’d created. We were eventually going to use them, and all that had to happen was for the poorest in character to stumble upon the means of using these tools.

Those who wished to control, to enslave, to oppress, those who wished to inflict cruelty and their will found that these Gods made it that much easier. We may obey whips, but we obey whips far more readily if we fear further punishment from beyond.

Our species lust for more manifests itself in some brilliant ways, like curiosity. Curiosity is what got us to this point now. Curiosity is why we know what we know. Curiosity is what drives us, and will continue to keep driving us forward. It will make us strive to know more, and in that process, we will grow, we will expand, and we will understand.

But one way that our species lust for more manifests itself in a negative fashion is our quest for power. Those with it always want more. Those with a God on their shoulder want nothing more than the very power that that God itself possesses.

We have warred upon each other for many other reasons; Resources, land, but no other wars of ours have ever been quite so destructive as the wars we have over our ideas, and no ideas are quite so divisive as our Gods.

We fought. We killed each other mercilessly. We cried to the heavens in the names of our Gods, making the land drunk with blood. And we did this for centuries. Every time promised ourselves “not again,” yet again, we fight in the name of our Gods even today. People still die because we gave products of our imagination almost limitless power, and then we armoured them with faith.

But there are some who resisted. And there are some who resist today.

You will hear names like Darwin, Galileo, and Hawking. You will hear names like Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Benedict Di Spinoza, Emma Goldman... These are people who fight back. And there are many more of them out there.

They fight by asking questions. They fight by asking the questions that Faith armoured Gods against in the first place. They chip away at that armour because they’ve already totally destroyed another layer of that armour. They destroyed fear.

They were not always without fear. Religions got so powerful that to question them was to be put to death, but there again... That lust for more... That curiosity...

Curiosity is the most powerful weapon you will ever wield against a system of belief. Even if the curiosity leads you to just wanting to know about another religion... That could be the path to you finding out that this other God claims to be all powerful, and maybe worse still, claims your God is false... They can’t both be right, can they?

Curiosity inevitably leads to knowledge, and knowledge destroys fear. When you understand something, you will cease to fear it. You may respect its great power, you may feel consternation at its lethality, but you will not fear it. And nor should you.

So child, welcome to this planet. Welcome to this species. I am sorry that I cannot bring you here under happier circumstances, but the light that shall lead us to becoming the great people that we wish to be was there all along inside each and every one of us, and thus, the day the dawn breaks will be soon. Maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not even in yours, but for your children, and your children’s children, we must continue to seek out that light.

It is with some regret, and some hope that I hand you Humanity’s greatest weapon. I hand you the sword of human curiosity. I hope that as you wield it, you will cut away what is unnecessary, and keep what is good and useful.

Welcome to the Planet, Child.

Of The Rise Of Atheism: An Everyman Joins the Fight

I figured that I'd post this, the first chapter of a book I'm writing about atheism... Enjoy!

As I’m writing this, one of the strongest voices and most prominent activists for atheism is losing a struggle with the spectre of Death.

                Already, there are voices calling with a hyena like glee at the demise of Christopher Hitchens, convinced that his most definitely earthly affliction caused by many years of overindulgence in the twin vices of smoking and drinking too much is in some way a divine retribution for the temerity for daring to speak out and question not only the existence their divine creators, but questioning the morality of believing in such beings, and questioning the morality of such beings and the systems of thought that go hand in hand with them. There will no doubt be conspiracy theories revolving around fallacious claims that he like Charles Darwin recanted on his death bed and accepted a deity into his life. No doubt, most of these conspiracies will come from Christian apologetics , who in a weird twist for the 21^st century, supposedly the era of science, logic and reason are enjoying an aggressive rebirth and expansion in the United States of America, which is in turn funding an aggressive rebirth and expansion in the often abused continent of Africa.

                This is as far as I am concerned, one of the biggest indicators of exactly what is wrong with religion, and the religious impulse. These systems of thought, these systems of belief give people an excuse, a layer of armour and a position that is so unassailed, so tip-toed around that human beings may revel in the suffering of a dying man. People are allowed to do this, and seemingly the public at large goes mute at criticising this action, something that can only be described as amoral. It’s about time that the public loosened its tongue. It’s about time we started speaking out more against this sort of behaviour, and when I say “we,” I mean people like you, people like me, people like the guy sitting next to you in the bus, or across the office floor at work, or in a bar, or on the street. We have to start making it acceptable to cry halt.

                I am not an intellectual with impeccable scientific credentials. I am not a prominent intellectual or journalist whose opinion may not always be respected but is listened to. I am no philosopher with a body of academic work spanning several years. I am none of these things. But what I am, and the edge that I believe that I hold to make my opinion matter, to make my opinion count in this discourse, is an everyman.

                One of the biggest criticisms laid at the feet of anyone who publicly chastises or castigates religion, the religious impulse and religious belief is that our side consistently goes after the “easy” target; That we spend too much time debunking the demonstrably false doctrines of  creationism, or intelligent design, or whatever hastily thought up moniker designed to deflect attention away from the fact that it is an understanding of the world based on a book written thousands of years ago written by people who by virtue of being ignorant of the world could not possibly know what they were talking about is being used today; That we spend too much time tearing down the beliefs of people who in quite a lot of cases don’t know very much about their own beliefs or have not read their books, their doctrines of faith in great detail... We spend too much time going after the most ridiculous beliefs, too much time going after the everyman.

                For a while, I grudgingly accepted this criticism; It is true after all. I’d much rather argue with a street preacher in the middle of Cardiff than spend time locking horns with someone like William Lane Craig, a man whose sole purpose appears to be debate. I don’t know the formal tricks of debate. My level of knowledge when it comes to the arguments for and against are slightly above average, and probably not enough to help me stand my ground were I to find myself in a structured format, so it makes sense that I would leave this thankless task to better educated people, better skilled people, more experienced people, people with a specialisation entirely germane to the discussion, and it did seem somewhat disappointing when these people, so fantastically skilled, witty, erudite and possessed of heads stuffed to the brim with brains debated people who you knew were going to lose, and were going to lose badly. A simple search on the internet can call up clips of nine or so minutes at a time of such debates, and one of the finest and simultaneously cringe worthy clips has Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens annihilating Conservative MP Anne Widdecombe, a woman whose credentials as a Christian apologist are slightly less laughable than a five year old child, and a Bishop John Onayakin of Nigeria. Annihilating is in fact too kind a word to describe the verbal Hiroshima that Fry and Hitchens visited on the desperately outgunned opposition.

                However, I was never very happy fully accepting that criticism. I could certainly see the merits of the very best and brightest people, the most skilled and capable pitting their wits in the heat of debate against the cream of religious apologism, the most intellectual and magnificent examples of those speaking for religion and the religious impulse. It is a demonstration of the strength of a position if you can take on and defeat the very best using nothing more than words, but that only seemed to me to be the tip of the iceberg. Finally, I figured out what it was about this criticism I had such a problem with.

                Those magnificent examples of religious apologism, those theological scholars, and those professional debaters have a highly developed and highly evolved sense of theology, and a highly developed and highly evolved interpretation of their religion of choice. It’s actually a strength in debate. Say for example that the question of the afterlife is bought up in conversation around the dinner table, and at this dinner table you had the pleasure of entertaining a top Christian theologian; You would find very quickly that mocking the idea of heaven as a place where people would wander around the fluffy clouds meeting with their loved ones and living a life of bliss surrounded with all of the material comforts you may not have had in life won’t get you far; The conversation would very quickly turn to a much more philosophical bent, and you would probably look very foolish indeed for postulating heaven in such crass, limited human ways.

                Here’s my problem; That Christian theologian is not representative of the majority belief of Christian people.

                It is actually difficult to quantify what the majority belief of any religious denomination is, but you can certainly make educated guesses at what those are. Religions are helpful in that way in that they tell you what you are supposed to belief. There are tenets of faith. There are doctrines to follow. There are certain conditions one must meet if one is to be considered a Catholic, or a Muslim, or a Hindu; With certain religions the conditions begin to get a little more vague and nebulous, such as Shinto, which seems to be a mixture of Ancestor and Nature worship, but scratch the surface enough and you will get to those conditions, those unique beliefs that one has to hold to be a member of that club.

                To put it very succinctly, the more sophisticated the religious apologism, the less representative of that religious belief it is.

                Going back to the example of the afterlife and our Christian theologian friend, imagine if you will adding another dinner guest. Let’s call him Michael. MIchael is an American. Michael is a Christian and believes in an afterlife. Michael is one of the 45% of Christian Americans that believe that his dog will be there in heaven to spend eternity with him, because as an American, MIchael is one of the 65% of people in the states that lives in a household that has at least one pet. The question of pets in heaven is actually such a pressing one that it has led to a book about the subject called I will see you in heaven by a Franciscan monk called Jack Wintz.

                The two theologies at this table are very different, and these lead to two completely different interpretations of the afterlife. It could be argued that because the Theologian has spent more time studying the source texts, and has spent more time engaged in complex philosophical discussion about the nature of faith and God, his is the opinion that should be listened to. After all, he’s the one that has really taken the time to study it in depth, right?

                But the obvious problem with this scenario is that how often are you likely to run into such a Christian Theologian? Or an equivalent Muslim, Sikh, or Jewish theologian? Quickly run through your daily routine and think about those situations where you might run into religious people... Granted, not every situation where you run into religious people is going to result in a discussion of the finer points of heaven, but the possibility is there. How often is it that you will run into a person with such a highly developed sense of theology? I’d argue the closest you’ll get is the Parish Priest.

                But my greatest misgiving with this criticism is that there is seemingly no problem at least demonstrably for the Catholic world in doing the exact reverse, of picking on the easy target. The Vatican opened up a forum for debate and dialogue in April of 2011, and its inaugural event took place in Paris. This “Courtyard of the gentiles” seemed like a great idea when it was being discussed as early as May 2010, but it was ever so slightly tinged with a bitter disappointment when it was announced by Archbishop Ravasi, the man in charge of the initiative that such forums would not be open to what he called “polemical atheists,” and named people like Professor Richard Dawkins as examples of those who were unwelcome, and was quoted as saying that these people view the ‘truth,’ with “...irony and sarcasm,” seemingly missing the irony of calling his viewpoint the ‘truth.’ Apparently, Archbishop Ravasi is only interested in “Noble atheism,” whatever such a phrase means.

                This level of double standard would be sickening were it not so laughable and if it did not appear exactly as it is, which is rather pathetic; A forum for debate and dialogue, atheists conversing with top catholic theologians, but only the sort of atheists approved by the Catholic church. So before any debate even starts, the deck is stacked in favour of the religious, so they may bring the best they have to the table, but we may not... But when any prominent public atheist debates a religious apologist, they must watch for the criticisms that will surely fly thick and fast if they are not debating someone at the very top of their theological game. I cannot be the only person who snarls inwardly at this level of hypocrisy.

                The problem is actually more complex than that... Arguing the merits of the atheist position is made more difficult because atheism is the lack of a position. It is simply the lack of belief in God, and doesn’t actually say anything about what beliefs you do actually hold. It isn’t enough to say “I don’t believe in God,” we then have to justify why we have come to this conclusion. We don’t have the same luxury that the religious do, of being religious, having a vague understanding of that religion and a vague understanding of the tenets and doctrines of that religion without ever reading much further into it. Atheists don’t have the luxury of being “culturally religious.” There is no such thing as a “lapsed atheist.” To be an atheist in any sort of public domain in today’s world means becoming literate in quite a few fields; I have a slightly better than layman’s understanding of the Big Bang model of the universe, Abiogenesis, Evolution through Natural Selection, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Planetary formation theory, Plate Tectonics to name but a few... These are all scientific fields, any one of which on their own would require years of academic and scientific training to be fully proficient in them; While it’s possible for someone to specialise in more than one scientific field, no one can be fully academically and scientifically qualified in all of them, and if you are an atheist in the public field arguing for atheism, you will need to be able to competently answer questions pertaining to these fields if not more, so diverse now is the bag of tricks that the professional theological debater will employ... Equally galling is the fact that you will also have to have a reasonably good understanding of the faiths you argue against. At the very least, it certainly doesn’t hurt, at the most, it’s a very convincing and credible of way of winning a theological argument, turning your opponents source text against them.  Strictly speaking, all your opponent has to do is know their holy book very well, and while a top theologian is usually well versed in other fields of study and may have a reasonable understanding of certain scientific fields and concepts, there is no need for them to leave the religious forum to argue the case for religion. At all.

                But I digress... My point behind all of this is that I find it facile to argue that there is no point in only taking on the easy targets when it comes to religion and the religious. Yes, it might be easy to pick apart the unsophisticated theology of the everyman. It might be the easy target to pick apart creationism (easy in that it is demonstrably false, but certainly a struggle considering how much public support it appears to get from the higher echelons of US government and State legislature; Texas comes to mind... As does the terrifying statistic that as of 17^th of December 2010, 40% of Americans believe that humans were created by God in the last 10,000 years), and it might have been something that has been done endlessly, but obviously these are necessary points that bear repeating. It’s necessary to debate the theology of the everyman because the theology of the everyman is what you’re going to meet day in and day out almost every day.

                The strength of religion does not lie in the sophisticated theology of magnificent religious scholars and apologetics. It lies in the commonly held beliefs of the everyman, so attacking the beliefs of the everyman is far from taking the easy option or attacking the easy target. Attacking the beliefs of the everyman is attacking religion at the core of its battering strength, because its strength lies in its numbers, not its knowledge.

In levelling the criticism that we only go after the easy targets, the religious have shown us where they are simultaneously strongest and weakest. They have shown us how big the task is of taking on something as intimidating as religious faith, a viewpoint that a majority of the world holds, but they have also shown us how to attack and where. If we seek to curb the worst excesses of religion, to put religion in its proper place in the 21^st century, this is where the sword should fall the hardest; The everyman.

How to be a theist in the 21st Century

I am willing to bet five English pounds that every person reading this article will be able to point to at least one, if not many examples of those with a personal belief in a supernatural deity acting in a manner that is... shall we say, not exactly conducive to harmonious living with their fellow human beings. Whether or not it's a Jehovah's witness jamming his or her foot into your front door to spread the good news, or a an obnoxious street preacher telling you and anyone who'll listen that you're going to hell or some such equivalent, depending on the proselytising faith, we will all be able to think of an example that resonates with us personally, because of the level of irritation it has caused us, personally.
Now to those of you who are reading this who DO have a belief in a personal God or some equivalent system of supernatural belief, I am not necessarily lumping you in with these over zealous exponents of religious faith. A belief in a supernatural creator seems to be the majority position of most of the worlds population, a fact that is hardly suprising when we hear such figures as Christianity claiming nearly two billion adherents, and Islam claiming over one and a half billion... Numbers these large would tend to suggest one thing; Faith appears to be a majority position, and even a cursory glance at the faithful ought to tell us that for the large part of that majority population, faith is just another aspect of who they are, rather than a defining characteristic. The fringe elements of faith, whatever the faith may be are not representative of those faith systems. The Westboro Baptist Church is not, for example representative of Christianity.
But you may well be a religious person who is sick and tired of your far more fundamentalist compatriots in faith giving you a bad name. You may for example, be a Catholic, sick of the image of the Priest as child molester, or sick of the Family with too many children... You may be a Muslim who hates the fact that no one is able to see you as anything other than a jabbering incipient Jihadi terrorist with dynamite attached to your torso in a symmetrical bandolier; Whatever the stereotype you're fighting against, you're sick of it.
How do you prove to the rest of the world that you're simply not like them?

1:) Your faith is exactly that; Yours.

It may be written in your holy books and other written traditions of the faith that you are a member of that your faith is the one true faith, the one true path to salvation, and that your God is the one and only true God. If you believe that, you are more than welcome to, and there is nothing that I or anyone else can do to stop you believing that. More to the point, we should not be attempting to do so in the first place.
I am not your deity, and it is therefore not my job to police your thoughts. Think and believe what you like. You are however going to have to accept that there are some very stubborn people out there who just aren't going to see the light like you have.
This is more for your interaction with other people of faith; It's the height of bad manners to turn around and tell someone that they believe in the wrong God, no matter how much you think that's true. Calling Allah a servant of Satan and an enemy of Christ isn't likely to convert any Muslims. It's just likely to make Muslims hearing you say that not like you very much, and consider you somewhat close minded and intolerant.

2:) Your holy books are not inerrant.

This sounds like a damnation of your faith, and an easy way of attacking it to point score as an atheist, but it really isn't. Your holy books were not written by your Gods.They're too inconsistent, too scientifically inaccurate, too full of glaring contradictions, too confusing in parts, too convenient in parts, sometimes historically inaccurate, too context sensitive to the times in which they were written... The list of what's wrong with the idea of holy books being inerrant tomes that are the infallible word of God is a long and Laundry one.
This however does not mean that you cannot use them as a guideline for the way you follow your faith, and in fact many theists do exactly this on a daily basis, so it obviously can be done, and this is my suggestion to you if you're a believer; Your holy book should be used as a yardstick, and a way to interpret your faith, and should not be taken either literally, or as the inerrant word of a supreme creator of the universe.
Trying to do this is going to lead you to quite a few problems; If we just stick to the christian faith system alone, it means that you should have absolutely no patience and tolerance for homosexuals, adulterers should be stoned, as well as people that eat shellfish and crustaceans, and people who wear garments made from two different types of cloth... It also means you'd have to believe that the world is less than six thousand years old despite the literally reams of evidence that say it most certainly isn't. Can anyone reasonably do any of these in the 21st century? I'd argue no...

3:) Give the proselytising a rest.

Whenever I see a street preacher proclaiming at the top of his or her lungs that everyone milling past trying to either get to work or to the shops is a sinner and is going to spend eternity being spanked by demons, it doesn't make me examine my life and go "well gee, I'm such a terrible sinner, I'd better convert straight away!"
In fact, all it makes me do is shake my head in pity. And strong as that sounds, pity is the only thing I can feel for the street preacher, because the street preacher making such a public spectacle of him or herself and their faith doesn't look like a fire and brimstone warrior for our souls, they just look insecure about their own faith.
It's written in most holy books that the relationship one should have with their God is a personal one... And if that's what you're doing, then great! It's even written specifically in the bible in Matthew 6:6 "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into a tiny closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy father which is in secret..."
I know that it's also written in the Bible that you should spread the good news, and I'm not necessarily against someone trying to spread the good news. You could try and spread the word to me, and I will politely decline... However, Just realise when "no" means "no." I know it's my immortal soul and everything, but hey, remember that whole free will thing?
Everytime you try to push your faith onto someone who has either declined, is not interested or is of a completely different denomination or faith, you're impinging on that right to free will. And seeing as that's a God given gift, I don't think the man upstairs would be too happy with you doing that.

4:) Please don't be a hypocrite.

There are several examples I could point to of religious hypocrisy, and I could be pithy and amusing with them, but there are certain hypocritical actions of certain religious folk that unfortunately tar the religious in a poor light, and that make my blood boil.
You don't get to call yourself pro-life, picket abortion clinics making a tough decision for frightened, distraught and possibly desperate women even tougher and be in favour of the death penalty. You certainly don't get to be pro-life and murder abortion doctors or support their murder.
You also don't get to preach vile and hateful things about homosexuality (and we've already sort of covered this in point two) and then be found engaging in LGBT terrific activities. That's especially galling hypocrisy, because it rather makes it look like one rule for you, quite another for everyone else.
In short, they're your rules. If you're going to try and make everyone else follow them please demonstrate that you yourself can follow them.

5:) Please stop telling lies about atheists.

Everyone knows that atheists are all hideously amoral, evil, satan worshipping baby killers who all actually really hate God and are on a mission to spread communism throughout the world so that they can erect a new Third Reich... Right?
These may sound like strawmen of what has been said about atheists, but I can assure you that they are not. I have heard every one of these at some point when it becomes plain that I am not a believer. The amorality accusation in particular offends me. It posits that without God, there'd be no reason to behave oneself... I rather have a higher opinion of humanity than that, and I find it insulting to insinuate that we didn't know how to be moral before Moses got handed the Ten Commandments. Does anyone seriously think that we as a species could have gotten to that point if it was true? I think the claim that we behave because we're frightened of what will happen to us after we die is fairly bogus.
The accusation that we hate God or in fact worship Satan is amusing rather than offensive... Amusing in a tragic sort of way. If we don't believe in God, why would we believe in Satan, much less worship him? And how are we supposed to hate a being we don't believe exists?
And trying to attach some semblance of political ideology to atheism is equally pointless... If you're an atheist, you don't believe in God. That's it. You can have right wing atheists, left wing atheists, anarchic atheists, statist atheists... Your atheism does not confer upon you a political platform.
In short, don't tell lies about atheists. It's not very nice. And the last time I checked, there was no exemption clause to the ninth commandment.

So there we have it. It's a few simple steps, but simple steps that will have you getting along famously with your fellow human beings, regardless of your religious stripings. Who knows, maybe presenting your beliefs in this framework could even win you some converts?
You never know...

Who Is Christopher Hitchens To Me?

Greetings to all of the fellow denizens of Youtube, and greetings to all uniting through common dreads.

I've started this blog as a way of continuing the discussion outside of the confine of Youtube's 500 character comment limitations, something that I have at times found to be exceptionally stifling to conversation and discussion. I'm sure that we have all felt this at times; Make a video, then the comment section starts to go into overdrive, and just as you're in full flow... BAM... the red letters come up "you have exceeded the 500 character limit"... So you continue by attaching about five or six comments to each other... Do that often enough, and suddenly a radomized computer program is asking you to type in a case sensitive handful of gibberish characters to prove that you're human.... Irritating is not a strong enough word, let's face it.

So... One of the most common criticisms of my latest video, my little essay about Christopher Hitchens is that you cannot hear what I'm saying in some parts because of the music that I've used. (I say common... at the time of writing this, two youtubers have made this criticism... so never let it be said that I don't listen). Just on the off chance that there are more people who share this sentiment, I figured that I'd post the whole essay here for everyone to peruse at their own leisure...

"Dear Youtube,

                I would be lying to you if I said that the story of how I came to reject the claims of the supernatural was one that was full of woe, full of hardship, full of misery, full of long nights of the soul where I saw everything that I had previously believed in rising into nothingness, like the smoke from the too numerous cigarettes that I smoke, or disappear to some oblivion like the too copious amounts of bourbon that I claim as one of my many vices.

                I would like to say that my rejection of the supernatural was a torturous and protracted affair that resulted in the very real effects of losing friends, losing family, losing a significant other, or losing a job. It almost seems that there would be more dignity in my rejection of the fantastical were there some achingly poignant story behind the struggle for what I see as my intellectual freedom.

                In truth, it was no real struggle. Raised in an Anglican country where religion didn’t really mean anything more than the occasional visit to a church to be bored for a few hours on a Sunday, educated in two institutions nominally backed by a faith, I did not feel many ill effects of religion and the religious impulse.

                Yes, there are some stories from my youth which may raise some irritated heckles from fellow non believers; Such as the time I was sent to the headmaster of my Primary school to explain why at the age of ten years old I did not believe in God... And it wasn’t that I didn’t believe at the time; I did. But I was ten years old, and wished to stir the waters, as one frequently does at that age. Others may feel distinctly aggrieved at the fact that I was confirmed in the catholic faith at no older than twelve years of age, hardly the age where one may reasonably decide what they do and don’t believe to be the truth of life, the universe and everything. They may be further irritated by the fact that for five years attending a school supposedly founded by Edward the Confessor, I attended Chapel every Thursday, because it was a compulsory requirement of the school.

                But these are not struggles. They are minor irritations. The confirmation has had zero impact on my life, neither has five years of chapel, and many other things distressed me to a far greater extent at ten years of age than a simple visit to the Headmaster’s office. There were other visits to that headmasters office that distressed me to a far greater extent. If I’m truthful, the only reason I remember it is because I was asked if there were any memories from my childhood of religion that were unfavourable. It was such a non event that I had almost forgotten it until asked.

                And leaving religion was no struggle either. For a few fanciful teenage years, I toyed with Buddhism, proclaimed myself a Buddhist, even though it took me a while to actually learn the eightfold path, and I remember surprise if finding out that there was more to this faith than the idea of reincarnation... Ironically, I found this out in Religious Education lessons at my secondary school, lessons run almost exclusively by The School Chaplain.

                As I was leaving Sixth Form, I had heard about the religion of Shinto, and drew to it. For a while, I was very devout. I saw Kami in everything, but only really worshipped one... The Japanese God of Thunder and Lightning. If I am honest, I held affinity with this God because I am awed by Lightning and its elemental power... Even to this day, watching lightning in the sky, I have to remind myself that that power is a static charge built up in clouds by the ceaseless friction of water molecules. Cold and dispassionate though those words may seem, it’s a reminder that Nature and the natural world is far more impressive than the idea that some being with a frightening countenance surrounded by floating wardrums is hurling lightning at the ground in its wrath.

                It was not until reaching early adulthood that the realisation came to me that I could not square away these things I believed, or wanted to believe with the contradictory knowledge gleaned from scientific enterprise. I wanted there to be beings in the clouds, but Science said that there weren’t, and more to the point, it showed me why there weren’t.

                Much like when presented with the logical impossibility of Santa Claus being able to visit every single child in a single night, or the logical impossibility of such a small sleigh containing over six billion presents, I had to discard the beliefs that led to too many logical impossibilities.

It wasn’t painful. It just made sense. 

                It further wasn’t painful because I was free to do this. I was free to explore different faiths, and I did. I was free to reject faith, and I did. I faced no discrimination, no ostracism, no hardship, and no loss of self at the idea of things that I had previously believed in just slipping away.

                But I still gave religion a wide berth. There was no reason not to. It didn’t impact my life much as a believer, and it didn’t impact my life much as a non believer. My aposticism to every system of faith this world has to offer was just another dull fact about me, something you could add to a list of fluff knowledge... He plays guitar, he smokes a lot, doesn’t believe in God, drinks too much, listens to metal and lives in Cardiff.

                Of course religion wasn’t impacting my life... Or was it?

                It started slowly at first... I seemed to notice more the Hare Krishna’s dancing down Queen’s Street. I suddenly noticed that The Jehovah’s witnesses seemed to have a regular pattern for knocking on the doors of the various houses I have lived in. My father laughing with disdain through stories of my parents latest holiday in America, scoffing at be-perfumed, overly slick snake oil salesmen that called themselves preachers. “People actually send them money!” He’d say, laughing.

                It continued in this vein for some time. Religion was an amusing delusion held by others that they were more than welcome to hold, because it didn’t impact my life. Then slowly, I started noticing that those Hare Krishna’s turned into Street Preachers with Microphones and placards, nervously and insecurely decrying at the top of their lungs that we were all going to hell because we’re sinners, and because we didn’t believe the way he believed. The Jehovah’s witnesses didn’t just visit like clockwork, but left breadcrumbs of their influence everywhere in the form of several hundred copies of the Watchtower scattered like confetti on the Cardiff streets.

                Then, as if sensing my disbelief as I stood and watched, amused by the hysterical preaching, the street preachers started directing their sermons to me, asking me direct questions, challenging me, questioning my moral fibre because I had rejected their God. Even then, I didn’t get angry. I’d argue my corner and then have a story to tell at the pub to my exasperated friends, who’d tell me that I should just leave the preachers alone, seemingly forgetting that childish as an assertion it may be, I didn’t start it.

                Stories began appearing in the UK media of the great big terror of Islam, and while I was smart enough to dismiss the daily mail fueled hatred as nothing more than fear of something we didn’t fully understand, I felt it creep up on me. I wasn’t blind, I’d seen what happened in New York.

                Then it happened to us in London. And that frightened me, because even though I hate that sprawling architectural mongrel that’s too big, too noisy, and too clogged with traffic and rude people, I had friends in London. I had family in London. It was affecting me now. Religion was encroaching on my life.

                Not long after that, the Danish cartoon scandal really hit home, and it hit Cardiff and my personal sphere in a big way. I was not long graduated, not long moved to Cardiff permenantly, and not long out of writing for the Student Newspaper, the Gair Ryhdd, Welsh for free word. The paper published the cartoons. It was the only one in the UK to do so, I am given to understand.

                I never saw that issue. I never will. There is not one surving copy. They were all destroyed, because it was felt that an editorial piece, commenting on the controversy and discussing it in depth as the paper was known to do could have done so without the accompanying context of the cartoons themselves. The paper and its staff were heavily criticised, the Gair Ryhdd did not put out an issue the following week, and for two weeks, security surrounded a Students Union, where the paper was based, closed for fear of reprisals.

                From this point onwards, I really started to notice. I started to notice the ill effects of religion in the world. I noticed for the first time the hypocrisy of Christian Aid to Africa, hypocritical for its exacerbation of an AIDs epidemic by condemning condoms, coming from the highest offices of these churches. I started to notice America’s backwards slide to religious fundamentalism spreading beyond the often ridiculed bible belt. I started to notice troubling signs that Oil is not the only thing being deliberately exported throughout the world by certain Islamic nations, but a twisted ultra orthodox and ultra fundamentalist version of Islam, and more troubling was the knowledge that it was winning converts, and it was impossible not to notice the sordid news of just how big the child sex abuse scandal as perpetrated by supposed godly men.

                I started digging further, and in doing so re read the bible, and read the Koran... And discovered that in both books, there are some awful, unsavoury pronouncements about how to treat your fellow human beings, based on arbitrary lines of gender, skin colour, and sexual orientation. During the course of this digging, I knew I wanted to speak out, I knew I wanted to say something, because I realised that religion had been affecting my life. Just because it did not as a child was irrelevant. And not only that, but religion was affecting the lives of others, sometimes in the most savage, brutal and pitiless ways. You and I both know, Youtube, that the list of crimes as committed directly by, and inspired directly by religion, are long, laundry, sordid, and embarrassing.

                In this digging, I found other voices that succinctly collated all of my fears, arguments, misgivings and in some cases, rage at what religion was attempting to, and had wrought on this world.

                One of those voices is Christopher Hitchens.

               

I did not discover him first. I discovered Dawkins first. I read the God Delusion, found it to be a worthy read. This was what I was looking for! Something that made no apologies for the distaste and revulsion it felt at what religion was doing to this world and its inhabitants. The famous quote, which runs thus : “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Was music to my ears. It didn’t grant religion an exaggerated level of respect that it did not deserve and only held in societies around the world because of the blind luck advantage it had of coming first.

                I had heard Christopher Hitchens name before. My father had probably mentioned him in passing, some muttered reference about a Brit masquerading as an American, and I had heard that he tended to be contentious to put it mildly. I noted with some surprise that he’d gone after Mother Teresa, a person I would have previously thought of as an example of religion motivating someone to act in a decent and selfless manner. So I looked up Christopher Hitchens... And I did it right here on Youtube.

                To say that he was an eye opener is an abhorrent understatement. Christopher Hitchens in his ‘A’ game is mesmerising to behold, both in sight and sound. I watched as he steamrollered opponents into quiet submission or stammering incoherent ramblings. He provided oratorical fireworks that would take you on a journey from laughter, deep contemplation, disgust, indignation, and hope. This was a crystalisation of what I wanted to say about religion, and Christopher Hitchens gave me an example... It helped to reinforce the idea in my head that religion is just like any other belief or position held; As such, it is not immune to criticism, even when the miserable excuse of “you might offend someone” is trotted out in a last ditch effort to stop people shining a light on as the man himself says “the mind forged manacles”, the lies and inconsistencies and flat out incompatibility of religion, the modern world, science, and in my opinion, humble as it is, morality.

                I had not long finished reading this book when I started seeing stickers appearing in the area I lived in at the time. They were were everywhere. If I turned a corner, I saw one. If I looked on a lamppost, I saw one. If I saw a signpost declaring a street name, I saw. This sticker proudly proclaimed that “Real Muslims Do Not Vote For Democracy.”

                This was in the run up to the May 2010 General Election. And this was around the time I started making videos on Youtube.

                And now here I am, telling you all how I came to be here.

                I’m telling you this because I have not long finished watching a video by Concordance in which he reads out Christopher Hitchens address to the American Atheists conference 2011. The reason it is the voice of Concordance and not Hitchens himself is because that faculty, the ability to talk is one that that he currently no longer possesses. This is one of the things that has suffered in the staredown that Hitchens is having with death, and it is a poignant reminder that it is a staredown that Christopher Hitchens, even as unflinching and unassailable at his best is probably going to lose.

                I tell you all of this because while I am not an atheist because of Christopher Hitchens, I am the sort of atheist I am now because of him. Maybe I always was, and merely lacked the confidence or lacked an example like his to give me enough bravery to start speaking out the way I do.  I don’t know how large the debt to Christopher Hitchens is that I owe. Only that I owe one.

And I felt like it was important to say that."

'Til the next time I clock a thousand heads, 'til the next time we unite through common dreads.