by Johanna.
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One of the most effective things a religion can do is appropriate a biological imperative. We humans like to think of ourselves as a pretty diverse bunch, but there are plenty of core motivations we all have in common. You’ve probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs; it’s a basic description of how we prioritize our goals and desires. Before we can consider the more transcendent needs like love, self-actualization, or sports cars, we must first fulfill the most basic needs like food, water, sex and shelter.

In terms of evolution, it’s pretty easy to see why this is the case. Genetic combinations that encourage their own perpetuation are the most successful. Creatures that prioritize survival and reproduction will thrive. For humans, this means surviving until capable of reproducing, then protecting descendants; therefore preserving and passing on one’s own genes. We’re like a global Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Everything beyond that—success, happiness, cell phones, etc.—is a bonus. Take away one of our basic needs like clean water or a reliable source of food, and we’re no longer concerned about who has a guest appearance on 30 Rock.

By usurping any of these basic needs, religion can get in on the ground floor. Generally, a need for community is secondary and spirituality is tertiary at best. Once religion is tied in with our most fundamental drives, however, it becomes a primary concern.

The two easiest needs to usurp? Food and sex. Everybody gets hungry and horny. It’s a fact of life. Society can’t function if there are no restraints on what we eat and who we screw; measures need to be taken so food is as safe as possible and sex should always be consensual. Religion, however, makes rules about when and how it’s acceptable to satiate these needs that have nothing to do with E Coli or statutory rape.

With food, there are rules about what and when it is acceptable to eat. Many religions have annual fasts, such as Islam’s Ramadan or the Baha’I faith’s month of Ala. Adherents are expected to resist hunger for the required allotment of time—often dawn to dusk for days on end—in order to experience a deeper level of spirituality through obedience and self-deprivation. In equating starvation with salvation, food and faith are inextricably linked. Satiating hunger is only possible through faith, and faith will sustain a person in ways that food cannot. It becomes impossible to imagine filling that basic need for sustenance without the assistance of God. Giving thanks before each meal, as people do in many religions, only reinforces this link.

Many religions also dictate what can be eaten. With some, there are specific foods that are considered taboo. Others take it much further, requiring a strict adherence to a complex set of rules. Those who follow a strict kosher diet are required to keep their faith in mind any time they even think about eating. When your position in the afterlife is closely tied to something as basic as food, religion can never be far from your mind.

With sex, most religions pull out the big guns: shame. This is one of the most powerful weapons in religion’s arsenal. That’s not to say that shame doesn’t exist independently of religion, but it is yet another human tendency that religions have twisted to serve their own needs.

Children are taught from a young age that certain desires are wrong and even shameful. Of course, children aren’t terribly concerned with these desires. Sex doesn’t usually enter the equation until puberty. Religious leaders and parents have years to lay the foundations of what will later become the neurosis and obsessions that make people cling so desperately to their faith.

I’m going to come right out and say it: the way most of the major religions handle sex? It’s ingenious. Evil genius, don’t get me wrong, but the results they get are truly incredible. Lex Luthor and Dr. Horrible have nothing on these guys.

See, when you’re a kid, you’re not capable of much in the way of rationality or thoughtful consideration. That comes later in life. It’s not difficult to get kids to believe in God; as long as their parents tell them Jesus is watching or Allah will judge them or Santa double-checks that big old list, they’re going to accept it as fact. Sure, they know that there are rules to follow, especially if they want to get that eternal reward, but most of it goes over their heads. They know they’re supposed to listen to their parents, and that’s good enough for most of them. If they misbehave, they’ll get a time-out and move on with their lives.

Then puberty happens. This is the time that they start questioning authority. This new-found defiance is a legitimate threat to their religious beliefs. After all, they’re questioning everything else their parents ever told them, why not the existence of God? If it weren’t for raging hormones, the religious attrition rate of teenagers would be devastating. The reason it’s not is because of all that careful groundwork that’s been laid for over a decade. See, all that stuff about deadly sins and lusts of the flesh that didn’t seem to apply to them before? Suddenly it’s front and center. There’s boobs and boners everywhere, and for the first time in their lives, Hell seems like a real possibility. They spend years assuming that Hell is for other people, only to become one of those people themselves.

Everyone deals with this new reality differently. Some throw themselves into religion immediately, praying for the strength and guidance they never really needed before. Others give into temptation before the guilt and shame overwhelm them; for these people, religion is even more necessary because they have actual, physical sin to repent. Still others rebel for years, only to be reborn again with a fervor that defies all logic and expectation. Some people do manage to break away entirely, but it’s nearly impossible to overcome all those years of conditioning and brainwashing. The shame associated with sex is deeply ingrained long before the desire itself is present.

Interestingly enough, lust is pretty much the only sin where inspiring it is considered just as evil as experiencing it. Inspiring jealousy isn’t sinful. The biblical commandment says not to covet your neighbor’s ass; it doesn’t say anything about the neighbor’s responsibility to hide his ass under a bushel. Nobody stones rich people to death for having nice things—well, at least not for religious reasons.

Because religious societies are so hung up on sex and lust, women get harassed for breast feeding their babies in public. Rape victims get blamed for wearing short skirts. Earthquakes get blamed on cleavage. Women who have spent their entire lives swathed in fabric are beaten for accidentally showing an inch of skin. Fanatical fathers murder their daughters to keep her shame from besmirching the family’s honor.

Equating religion with basic survival needs makes people as desperate to protect it as they would water or air. Strangle a man, and he’ll kill you if that’s what it takes get his oxygen back. Starve him, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get food. What religion does is present itself as the only viable access to certain needs. Hunger seems impossible to assuage without having access to God as well as food. Sex is shameful and wrong unless achieved through the proper bonds of marriage. This means that getting between a man and his religion is, in his mind, tantamount to getting between him and his most basic needs, and that’s a dangerous place to be. It also means that most people would no sooner abandon their beliefs than they would go skydiving without a parachute.

Look, faith can’t feed you and lust isn’t evil. If you’re reading this on your own computer, chances are pretty good that the only thing between you and a full stomach is a trip to the grocery store. As for sex? It’s natural. It makes us feel good. It’s healthy. Yes, it spreads disease if we’re not careful, but so does riding the subway, and I don’t see God bitching about that. So eat, drink, and be merry however the hell you please, and if God doesn’t like it—well, too bad.

Johanna is a member of CVA. The views expressed in this post are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.

by mr dan.
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People sometimes ask me why I don’t believe in God, but more often than not, they tell me why I don’t believe.  Everything from boredom to anger to my desire to sleep in on Sundays, to not liking all the restrictions on sex and masturbation.  While it’s true that religion makes me bored, angry and tired, and would seriously impair my sex life, those are good reasons to be frustrated with religion, but not reasons to not believe in it.  The people who tell me this have a fundamental misunderstanding that disbelief is the same as denial.

Disbelief is holding the position, rightly or wrongly, that a given premise is not true.  It is based on contradictory evidence, or a lack of supporting evidence.  Denial is the insistence that something isn’t true, regardless of the facts.  Disbelief is intellectual; denial is emotional.  I have a disbelief in God, not a denial of him (or her).  The fictitiousness of religion has nothing to do with what I want or approve of.

When people accuse me of being mad at God, I tell them that I’m not, but even if I were, no matter how mad at him (or her) a person might be, that doesn’t change whether he (or she) exists.  You can be furious with your spouse, but that doesn’t mean they cease to be.  They’re just sleeping on the couch.

But there are those who say “I just can’t believe in a God who would give kids cancer, or cause devastating tsunamis, or give George Bush a second term.”  Any God who would do that is certainly horrible, ruthless and immoral.  But even religion itself doesn’t claim that God has to be nice all the time.  God might just be a total dick, and that wouldn’t prove that he doesn’t exist.

I’ve studied a lot of religions and they all make contradictory claims about the niceness or meanness of their respective deities.  The Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is described as benevolent, loving, just and fair, but then exiles his children from paradise when they employ the curiosity he gave them, drowns most of the world’s inhabitants because he regrets how wicked and corrupt he made them, kills all of Job’s family and animals as a test of loyalty, establishes arbitrary rules over what you can and can’t eat and wear and how to farm, and where you can and can’t ejaculate, sends his own son to Earth with the express purpose of saying things that he knows will piss everyone off until they ultimately kill him for it, immediately followed by two millennia of crusades, holy wars, inquisitions and holocausts against the people who killed him, and repeatedly orders them to stone, kill, rape, enslave, degrade, attack, beat, and circumcise each other in his name.  Did you know that in the Book of Malachi he actually says that if you don’t believe in him he will smear feces on your face?  And these are the people who claim we didn’t evolve from monkeys.

It’s clear that any God who would do those things is a complete tool.  But that’s not why I don’t believe.

I don’t believe because the facts aren’t there, the claims are contradictory, the story is illogical, and more-than-sufficient answers have been found for most of the things religion once explained.

But just for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that you were to present me with irrefutable evidence that God does in fact that exist.  The evidence is sound and holds up to every scientific test that man can devise.  Will I accept the evidence?  Absolutely.  Will I admit that I was wrong? Of course I will.  Will I drop to my knees and worship the Lord?

Absolutely not.

The God you want me to believe in is a colossal douche bag and is thoroughly unworthy of reverence.  I wouldn’t worship a deity who gives kids cancer or smears crap in people’s faces.  That’s the difference.  You can choose not to worship a god even if he (or she) exists, in the same way the believers also believe in Satan, but don’t worship him (or her).  You can not support the president or your most proximal sports team, or think that your boss is a jerk, without insisting that they are fictitious.

When I say I don’t believe in any gods, just accept that my position is intellectual, not volitional.  I never decided not to believe. I just never really did believe.  So go on worshipping the giant dick in the sky if you wish.  Just don’t expect me to get on my knees beside you.

mr dan is vice president of CVA. The views expressed in this post are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.

by Johanna.
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We live in a complicated world that’s difficult to understand and often very frightening. There are two ways we can deal with this. We can make shit up, or we can figure shit out. Science is about understanding the world through reason and evidence. Faith is about understanding the world through belief, in spite of evidence. So when I hear people claiming that science and religion are compatible, I find myself incredulous, to say the least.

Faith and rationality aren’t just two different ways of looking at the world, they are two opposite ways of looking at the world. For religion, belief is the starting point, and everything follows from there, evidence be damned. For science, evidence is the starting point, and everything follows from there, beliefs be damned. Science begins with a question; religion begins with an answer. When considering the world from a scientific perspective, preconceived notions have no merit. It doesn’t matter what you want or how you think things should be; what matters is the way things are. Rationality is about basing conclusions on demonstrable facts. Conclusions are the goal; whereas with religion, the conclusions are foregone.

Of course, neither of these strategies helps any one person to fully understand the universe. It’s just too big. One person can’t have knowledge of everything, or even most things, or even a tiny fraction of all the things that there are to know. If we collectively pool our knowledge, we can do a little better, but there’s still a lot we don’t know and there probably always will be. Even within the scope of religion, where everything a person is supposed to believe is was allegedly outlined thousands of years ago, there’s too much information for any one person to completely understand all of it. On top of all that, there’s a lot about the world that just isn’t explained. Whichever method you subscribe to, our puny human brains just can’t hold enough information for us to understand the world we live in. We have to prioritize. We have to decide what’s important or interesting or relevant to our own lives and focus on the answers that are significant to us in some way. For rationalists, that means learning what you can about whatever subject you choose and accepting that, while their knowledge is by no means perfect, experts have more knowledge than you in their given fields. For the religious, this means following the tenets of your faith you find most significant or appealing and discarding the rest.

You can’t accept some fields of science and reject the ones that don’t conform to your worldview.  Unlike religion, science doesn’t work that way.  And before you say that religion doesn’t work that way either, think about the aspects of your own religion that you disregard. Nobody agrees with their holy book and religious leaders 100%; it just isn’t possible. Even fundamentalist groups that claim to believe everything within the Bible is the literal truth and that they follow it to the letter are ignoring the parts that don’t line up with their specific beliefs. People who believe God is love are ignoring the fact that in the Bible, God himself said his name is Jealousy. The Fred Phelpses of the world have plenty of scripture to back up their hatred, but ignore the parts that preach kindness. Some Christians are accepting of homosexuality despite the fact that the Bible condemns it. Most Christians eat shellfish.  Wealthy Christians always seem to forget that Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into Heaven.  There are about as many definitions of the word “work” as there are Jews who observe Sabbath. Despite what Mohammed had to say about the matter, many Muslims don’t stone adulterers. And I’ve never met a Christian who refuses to wear blended fabrics. Every religious person has parts of their own faith that they choose not to believe, and more often than not, the decision about what to believe is made on an emotional level.

That’s not how science works. Gut feelings have nothing to do with what’s true or not. Medical science is advanced by the same scientific method as geology and evolution and cosmology; we may have more data and more advanced understanding in some fields of study, but the process is the same. You can’t accept one and reject the others. You can be more knowledgeable about one, but that doesn’t make the others untrue. Ignorance is not equatable to disbelief. Those of you who go to a doctor for treatment and accept DNA evidence in criminal trials but refuse to accept evolution lack a basic understanding of how faith and science differ. I say, if you’re going to claim that religion trumps science, you can stay home and pray your illness away. And for those of you who try to use science to support religion? That’s not science. That’s faith with smoke and mirrors. If you’re going to be faithful, do yourself and everyone else a favor and stop pretending you give any credence to the scientific method.

People who give lip service to science while still seeing the world from a religious perspective are missing the point. That’s how this whole “God of the gaps” thing got started; every time science furthers our understanding, there are people who say “right, but everything else is God”. There will always be unanswered questions. The faithful wield these unanswered questions like weapons; they say “yeah, well, your precious science can’t explain this!” What they fail to understand is that the scientist’s natural reaction is to say “Yet!” and get to work figuring shit out. Well, most of the time, the scientist’s natural reaction is to say “yes, it can, and in fact it already has,” but that’s because most of the time the person posing the question hasn’t been keeping up with the latest scientific advancements.

The thing about the conclusion being the goal is that each conclusion is just a single step in a long line of scientific investigation. Every question we answer is evidence for the next question we ask. When you start with an answer because the conclusion is predetermined and the evidence irrelevant, there’s nowhere to go from there. The question “what next?” verges on nonsensical, because you already have the only answer you’ll ever need; there is no next. There is no advancement of knowledge, no curiosity, no exploration. When you start with a question, “what next?” is just the beginning another great adventure.

Johanna is a member of CVA. The views expressed in this post are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.

by mr dan
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Tell me if this has ever happened to you.  You’re talking with a friend, or a family member, or maybe even a stranger, and you tell them you’re an atheist.  They are completely blown away, as if you’ve just shown them a double rainbow or something, and they go through a round of predictable questions about how can this possibly be.

And then they get to the most puzzling statement of all.  “I wouldn’t want to live in a world without God.  If I thought there was no God, why, I’d just kill myself right now!”

I’d say this happens to me about 10% of the time.  And I really just can’t understand it.

Their flawed little minds are correctly reasoning that if there is no God then we have no purpose in life, that our destinies are not predetermined.  Furthermore, it means that our lives are not eternal — they expire when we do. And if life ends, then nothing you ever did will matter to you once you’re gone, and nothing the human race ever accomplished will have any significance once we’ve finally been extinguished.

It’s true that without divine direction your life has no cosmic meaning.  The universe does not care if you are happy or sad, if you live or you die.  Ultimately the cosmos will swallow us all and it will not matter that we ever existed at all.

To that I say: so what?

What does it matter that it won’t matter?

There’s so much good stuff in the world. There is love and beauty and humor and sex and ice cream.  There’s science and history, and art and literature and music and more ice cream.  Sweet, delicious, fattening ice cream.  I’m not saying we should live only for simple pleasures.  There is also the joy of caring for other people, of trying to make the world a better place by ending suffering or ensuring freedom or teaching or entertaining.  On top of all that, there’s still more ice cream.

But no, all these people want to do is live forever on a fluffy cloud somewhere, surrounded by angels playing harps or a half a gross of virgins.  I don’t know anyone who actually likes harp music now, and when can you ever remember meeting a virgin whose company you enjoyed?  But no matter — it’s what they want and they are too set on it to consider any other possibility. It’s eternal life for me, they say, or I might as well just cash it all in right now.

It’s bizarre to me to suggest that if something has an end, it must be worthless.

This ice cream isn’t bottomless!  Throw it away!  You mean my paycheck is not infinite? I’d better rip that up right now.  What, this cell phone plan doesn’t have unlimited minutes?  Where’s my hammer?

Every thing you do matters.  Somehow, in some small way, each thing you do sets off a chain reaction.  It is a staple of science-fiction lore that if you were to travel back in time and trample a flower or kill a bug, the results could alter the present and future in ways you could not possibly anticipate.  Doesn’t it logically follow that the same applies even without time travel?  Our smallest actions shape the world around us in ways sometimes subtle, and sometimes obvious.  Without boring you with all the details, I can assure you that my life would be unrecognizably different had it not rained one afternoon in September of 2002.  I don’t know where I’d be or what I’d be doing now, but I doubt I’d be sitting here, making this video, eating this ice cream, trying to convince you that your life is meaningful for as long as it lasts.

The human race has done a lot of extraordinary things.  Many have been good and many have been terrible, but all have their meaning.  We invented the wheel, flying machines, sophisticated timekeeping devices, aerosol cheese, telescopes that can see the furthest reaches of space, a big thing that smashes little things together really quickly.  We built pyramids and killed 11 million people in a holocaust.  We walked on the moon and killed 58,000 more people in a war in Southeast Asia. We kept slaves, freed them, built walls and tore them down and built more.  We killed another thousand people in the Inquisition, three thousand more on 9/11, and four hundred thousand more in Darfur.  And we developed modern medicine, invented the iPhone, and figured out how lower primates evolved into human beings.

How anyone can say that none of that matters is beyond me.  Judging an occurrence solely by its cosmic significance, which, I agree, is nil, is the most futile and meaningless act of all.  Because what you’re really admitting when you say that is that you lead the life you lead solely to impress the cosmic scorekeeper, and if no one’s keeping score, it doesn’t matter.  Whatever happened to “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game”?  Like actors rehearsing for a play, you wander through life anticipating raucous applause on opening night with no regard for the beauty of the dialogue or the unique and unpredictably meandering plot.  Take a moment to just enjoy the play.

What really gets me about all this is that there’s an old allegory perfectly illustrating my point, which, ironically, is frequently retold in poor grammar on Christian websites and by motivational speakers with clear spiritual biases.  After a storm, or sometimes during low tide, thousands of starfish wash up on a beach.  A boy frantically tosses them back into the sea, saving their lives one at a time.  An old man asks him, “Why do you bother? There are too many to save them all, so what does it matter?”  The boy throws back another starfish and says, “It matters to that one.”  Even if in the long run the majority of the starfish die, saving one is a worthwhile endeavor because its life, simple and meaningless as it is, has worth.  How sad that these same people often fail to recognize that the meaning of our own lives is not what you get out of them when it ends but what we put into them while we’re here.

So whether the Earth is vaporized by an expanding sun 5 billion years from now, or we’re all killed by global climate change or famine or polluted oceans or some unknown pandemic, or we annihilate ourselves with weapons of mass destruction or we all just kill ourselves to see what comes next — sooner or later it won’t matter that we were ever here at all.  And I don’t care.  It doesn’t matter to me whether we’ve got 5 billion years or five.  It’ll never be enough, and the only thing to do is live them as well as we can.

Life is short.  Life is meaningless.  Life is delicious.

Grab a spoon.

mr dan is vice president of CVA. The views expressed in this post are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.