Atheism is a religion in the guise of science?

Somebody commented in the Darwin Day 2009 post about me supposedly as "really zealous in being a member of the religion called "atheism" in the guise of science" and that he would just pray that blah blah blah. Here is another example of somebody who just doesn't get it. I replied to him that "atheism is not a religion nor is science" and that "everybody, including theists appreciate science." He wants to see atheists who happens to love science as having a religion called science which is actually atheism. At first I thought he was being funny but he was not. He was just being irrational. He has deceived himself with mixing obviously different things. If he can just do an honest inquiry into this reasoning anomaly, he can surely find out what is religion and what is science and what their basic differences are. Religion oftentimes, and this is specially true to the Christian religion with which he is subscribed to, will ignore science if that is what's needed in order to keep its truths. Science on the other hand is concerned about reality and how it operates, (and if I may add just to be in context) REGARDLESS of religious truths. Scientific truths are not absolute and may one day be overturned by new discoveries. They operate quite differently when it comes to finding out the truth. For example, many truths in Christianity usually come from some near absolute if not absolute source of authority like the pope or the bible while truths in science doesn't hold such authorities to high esteem. What is important in science is that these hypotheses be testable/verifiable and falsifiable. So it may be that this indifference of science to religious truths is at the bottom of his assertion? And then there is the atheism being a religion. Well as they said, only if being bald is called a hairstyle. This so very cliche now: atheism is the lack of belief in gods. Although there are religions that are atheistic in that they don't have gods (so I heard but I myself don't know), if by religion he meant believing in something, and making this object of belief an object of worship, then atheism having no belief on gods obviously doesn't have anything to function as an object of worship. So he must be saying that instead of god, I believe in science, and am a devout believer of it to the point of worship? Now, "devout" is a religious word that has no place in science and I think this gives him away. He may be wishing that atheists in general must believe in something in place of their gods, in my case I am devout about atheism or science, only to reassure himself that we, despite of the opposing position about god, are actually in the same boat. That atheists are religionists too. No, sir. Thank you. My atheism is about being free from your religion (of Christianity). I don't wish to replace it with another crap.

Awareness

One cannot fathom the possibility of changing the society to accept atheism if one is not known to be one in his own immediate environment - friends, family, and even neighbors. If you are not an out-of-the-closet atheist, you cannot appreciate the changes in people's perception when they are confronted with the real thing. To most Pinoys, a non-believer is an unimaginable being but here I am and I am real. And more, I belong to a growing community. They cannot dismiss us if we have a case. If we can argue well our position, we can either gain respect or get derision. Personally I'd prefer respect but I can also take derision if that's the price of being intellectually honest to myself. In the end, one ends up in one hand real friends who will respect your views despite the vast difference because they saw beyond your atheism, and on the other hand may lose superficial friends. I think religious differences, which I take to include non-religion, in matters of personal relationships should take a backseat but if the other party cannot do that, it will surely result in rough roads ahead that can also mean separating. It's gotta be painful if he/she is a very close friend or family but I wouldn't know since so far I have been in good terms with all of them.

Atheism and Agnosticism

Atheism and agnosticism deal with the concept "god" in different spheres. Agnosticism is about not having knowledge about god or its existence while atheism is about not having a belief in the existence of god.

Agnosticism = lack of knowledge
Atheism = lack of belief

I think that nobody has true knowledge of the existence of god. Therefore, everybody is ultimately and technically an agnostic. A form of weak atheism is also referred to as agnostic atheism. There is a middle ground between theism and atheism in the technical sense since there are those who are "undecided" and some of them prefer to call themselves among many terms as non-theist or post-theist or what-not. Agnosticism is not a middle ground between theism and atheism since agnosticism is present in the whole set. But in practice, those who are at the atheism end of the spectrum, live in a world where gods are not part of reality.

Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll

This site is is now officially listed in Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll.

"The Atheist Blogroll is a service provide to the Atheist and Agnostic blogging community. The blogroll currently maintains over 650 blogs. Membership is limited to Atheist and Agnostic bloggers."

If you are maintaining an atheism or an agnosticism blog, please consider joining the atheist blogroll.

Dear God

Dear God, I hope you got the letter and I pray you can make it better down here...

This is a work in progress. I will still do some minor edits later after I have reviewed it. I just want to see it earlier so I am posting it now. If you have any suggestion or critique, please let me know.

Merry Christmas!

I tried my hand at creating a small video from a slide-show. Enjoy and please feel free to comment and/or criticize! BTW, the song title is Ask Me Jon by the Ocean Blue.

Edit. I have made 3 small edits on the original video. Here is an updated version.

Being Blunt

My manager and a peer were discussing their project this morning and joking about it while I was staring at my PC when I thought I heard my name mentioned again so I peeked behind my monitor and asked them what it was they're discussing. They were telling me, as a kind of joke, that my manager should first convince me about something (I didn't really catch what it was) because I am hard to convince, as I am an atheist. My manager said, "but he is not an atheist" and turning to me repeated it, "you are not an atheist" and I replied: "What is it to you? Is it relevant to your project?" Yes was my peers reply. I asked them again, "how is my lack of belief relevant to your discussion or project?" My manager insisted that I am not an atheist. But I stood firm and asked him again "why is my belief a relevant subject in our work environment?" Sensing that I was serious, they changed the subject. Sometimes, you have to be blunt in order to deliver the message.

A Matter Of Inconvenience

I am starting to have a reputation in the office regarding my non-belief. I don't know why it had to be so since our company values diversity highly and put it in concrete written policy for everyone else to understand. Every opportunity, the word "diversity" is emphasized. Something that I fully believe to be sincere and effective. I believe religion has no place in our work environment so this incident came as a real surprise for me. Just the other day, A, was talking with R about something related to their project when I passed by them. I had to excuse myself since R was blocking the aisle. Then out of the blue R called on me and ask me: you don't believe in anything do you? I was a bit taken off. It was loud enough for everybody to hear and I can say I was a little bit "embarrassed" by the frankness of the question. I said, of course I believe in something. Please be more specific. In god. R: you don't believe in god do you? No, I don't. A: what? I am sure you must believe in something higher or anything like that. If you define god, I may answer in the affirmative. Now if you'll excuse me. Why did they have to do that? I never discussed my atheism with them. In fact, I don't discuss my atheism at work. Specially at work. It's a non-issue. I work in a company of diverse culture and presumably of belief. But could it be that some people simply assume that this diversity doesn't extend to non-belief in the same sense that many Filipinos simply assume that freedom of religion does not extend to freedom from religion since the constitution clearly states god almighty. Why does atheism seem inconvenient to the average believer? If I don't believe in their god, why is it a big deal? It's not that people of other religions share their belief so why is atheism being singled out?

I Was Once An Atheist

I often hear the score: like you "I was once an atheist" but I weighed the evidence and found {Jesus Christ|Allah|Natalie Portman} to be real! While I'd prefer not to doubt their sincerity, the phrase has become too common that it has now almost achieved cliche status. Now I take it as the usual yadda yadda you can skip to arrive at the point he/she is trying to make, and that is: I know the emptiness of your (atheism) argument because I have been there already and it ain't any better. I wasn't really a true believer so I cannot counter with "I was a believer once". All I remember is that I finally accepted "god" is nothing but an excuse not to pursue the big questions any longer. Once you accepted the "god did it" hypothesis as fact, all the important questions fall in the proper places, i.e., under the philosophical rug.

Tommy's Story

This is about the story of Tommy on which I was commenting on in one of the forums I participate in.

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a wrote:

Dear ----:

I guess the story is really told from the perspective of the instructor, John Powell. And you are correct, there was no direct mention on why Tommy was looking for God. However, Tommy did say the following:

Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks....
Well, it could be worse.
Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies' in life.

But of course! Thanks for pointing it out. Not believing and having no values nor ideals are two separate things. This makes the story suspect because it is associating atheism with *vices* when it's not really necessary. I searched for it in the net. Although Mr. Powell is still alive to confirm the story to be "true", unfortunately Tommy is no longer here to dispute it. For the sake of discussion, let's asume the story is true. But first, we must admit that one can be a believer, be fifty and think that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies' in life. This is so obvious now even as we speak.

As for meaning, one can be a non-believer and still find meaning (think Sartre here). Meaning is not the monopoly of (Christian) believers.

On Kant (so far I have only read his introduction to his philosophy Logic so I may be off the track here. This is how I'd put it using my own understanding.), if there must be an absolute code of morality - The Right Thing (tm) - then even a god must be governed by this absolute code. For example, if murder in any context is absolutely unjustifiable, then even god will have to abide by it. But if god is exempted, i.e., if a god sanctions murder (e.g., god of the Old Testament) and if this is justifiable simply because it's god (I have heard this often enough that even genocide is justified if it's god who is doing/ordering it) then there will be no absolute code of morality because god must be following a separate rule (murder is okay), while humans follow another set (murder is unjustifiable). But.... if there must be just one absolute set of values (e.g., murder is in any time and all cases is absolutely unjustifiable), then this absolute must be above both gods and humans alike. That god must abide by this same absolute code, it then follows that the same absolute code can and must be existing independently of the gods. Therefore you don't need a god in order to have absolute set of values. OTOH, if god is required in order to define this absolute moral code, again morality becomes arbitrary because god can say murder is a virtuous act and because it was god who said so, it becomes absolutely the right thing to do, magically. If, as you say, human minds can grasp these supposed absolute code of morality, why do we *have* cultural relativism? And why is morality evolving? Whereas slavery and race segregation used to be acceptable in the southern states, they are not now? And very recently, the Philippine congress moved to abolish capital punishment whereas it was re-instituted as lately as 1993?.

I personally believe that people do the right thing because they think it's the Right Thing to do given the context or circumstances. Man is capable of weighing the quality and consequences of his actions and act morally. Even if there is indeed an absolute code of morality, it still doesn't follow that there must be a god who put it there (Occam's Razor). It's just there. Now, Tommy could have been a better person than he already was without having to believe. This reminds me of this challenge made by one fundamentalist Christian website on whether turning to atheism could make an ex-believer a better person for example by making him stop beating his wife. The idea being, that there have been atheists who have lead sinful lives but who have stopped beating his wife after turning Christian. The question that should have been asked in the first (Christian) case was pointed out by one visitor is that, why despite being a Christian would one would lead *sinful* ways and want to beat his wife?

I apologize if I seem to be out of context. This being under the inspirational and spiritual. I just think that if a story should inspire us or uplift our "spirits", it must not come at the expense of other religion or in this case, non-belief. Just in case you are wondering, I do have very strong opinion against religion (not on belief itself) and its effects to our society but I put it somewhere else. For me, mere belief and non-belief are not ethical systems by themselves.

Incoherent Article in INQ7.net

This is a letter I sent today to INQ7.net. The article is a confused one about secularization or so it seems. Click on the link and go judge for yourself.

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Dear Editor,

This is about the article titled "Gullibility" (PDI 04/17/06) by Antonio Montalvan II. I don't quite understand why a paper of your stature allows articles of such low quality to be printed in its pages. This must be one if not the most incoherent article your paper ever allowed to see print. I understand that the amount or articles that the editors have to sift through on a daily basis is just enormous but this one at least should not have been allowed to pass even an assistant proofreader's eyes if only to correct the atrocious sentences.

I originally set out to rebut the assertions he made against secularization but the gist of his message escaped me completely.

Please take this constructively.

Thank you.

Spreading Lies

In the INQ7.net article yesterday (Mar 26, 2006), the priest Jerry Orbos in his column Moments : Spread light, not lies he started off with telling a lie masquerading as a "good" story.

THE story is told about an atheist couple who had a son. Both parents never told their child anything about God or about Jesus. One night, the couple had a fight where the father shot the mother and then shot himself. It all happened in front of the child. The child was sent to a foster home. One day, in a Sunday School, the teacher held up a picture of Jesus and asked if anyone knew who it was. The child in our story raised his hands and said: "That's the man who was holding me the night my parents died.

Of course we know that the story is just fiction. When you tell that to the kids, let them know that it's just a story. Just like Jesus Christ is just a story. In the same article, he wrote:

An example of the absurdities of a liar: It's Ash Wednesday. A Catholic dines at a restaurant and orders shark, dolphin and whale meat. Told that there was none, he right away orders roast beef, lechon and steak thinking that, at least, he tried to order fish.

Well, the thing is, only shark is a fish. Dolphins and whales are mammals. Talk about spreading lies and half-truths.

Duh? Atheism List?

The Pinoy atheists are in a cunundrum. A poll was conducted to determine if the atheism list should rid itself of a believer who has made it a point to make it his turf and think it’s his right to defend his belief when it’s being attacked by atheists. Does that make sense? But it seems it does to some atheists if we are to take the result of the poll as an indication.

It’s only in Pinoy atheists where a Christian runs amuck and atheists think that such behavior is necessary for the health of the discussion, or to serve as a reminder of how far stupidity can go. The same nutcase claimed that “god is energy” and the resident irreligious members think that they are learning from such claims. It’s also in Pinoy atheists where posts by believers - believer really, since there is only one very active nutcase - is a good percentage of messages. It’s only in Pinoy atheists where you can see that believers complain about being provoked by atheists (duh? as expected since atheists are irreligious) and getting sympathies from the atheists! On first glance, an atheist who is willing to join might mistake the list as an INC-ADD debate list and turn away. No end to be in sight, the debate has caused undue distress to some of the early members who never intended the list to degenarate into its current state where discussions have been hijacked from being mostly secular to just about anything nonsense and a long parade of name calling. If there are topics that the non-believers try to bring up for secular discussion, they are quickly lost in the longest raging debate that should have been moot and academic in an atheism list.

What This Is About

This is my space for writing anything not necessarily about atheism nor geek stuffs. Instead, I will put my thoughts on many other things that interest me. I figured, maybe the reason why I was not very productive writing is that because I am trying to write on one area only suppressing my ideas about my other interests - because the outlet is a very narrow one. So here you go, a new blog! I deleted my earlier blog in another blogging service. I hated that blog. And the colors, pamatay!

Introduction

I have always been fascinated by science. I was introduced to it by my penchant for reading. My nanay kept lying around the house some college papers that I was able to read --- Greek mythology, geology, paleontology, and astronomy and astrophysics. I also loved to read her college physics book, and an old popular science magazine. In fact, I was in a hurry to understand how the physics math worked but there was no book in the house on at least algebra and trigonometry. All of that before I turned 12 or 13. Of course, I did not learn advanced math to had understood much of the physics but I understood that it was supported by math. And I knew math was reliable because I loved math too. I contented myself with the color pictures, diagrams, and the descriptions, and skipped the math with letters and symbols (instead of just numbers). I also loved to read science journals. I noticed that they never mention anything about prayers in explaining how things work. So somehow, I knew or thought I knew that prayers just don't work or at least unreliable. I even tried praying to the devil to experiment. :) Eventually I stopped believing there is ever a devil, just as there is no Santa.

I grew up in the province in Laguna. We had an old man neighbour, a hilot, who would always tell enkanto stories that I really enjoyed since I was six til eight or nine when I grew tired of it. Often times, I'd ask my mother if such stories were true and she'd say it's just myths. My nanay is also a non-believer in the mystical. I know this for sure and have seen her show it many times. Both my parents don't go to church but my sister and brothers do. My parents is what they call themselves KBL or kasal, binyag, libing. Nanay doesn't believe in usog (balis as it's called where I grew up in), for example. She doesn't believe in aswangs or kapres and all of those stuffs my summer nights of pangangapitbahay were made of. It had a great influence in my thinking as a child. For her, all things can be explained without resorting to superstition or what is beyond nature - the supernatural. Of course people can argue that our senses may not be enough to discover the existence of non-material entities. But as far as I am concerned, if it is not supported by evidence or the claim violates natural law, I will not believe existential claims. I also began to suspect that there were no American kapre or a British manananggal, as well as Filipino banshees. I thought mystical truths must also have some universality in them first to be acceptable.

In high school, my science teacher (I had only one science teacher until my senior year) was mediocre. Imagine someone with more than a decade of teaching experience in chemistry, using chalks for counterweight of a platform balance! Duh, what for are those metals with engraving on them telling us how much matter they contained? I wondered how she managed to continue doing that year after year after year. I wondered how un-questioning, un-critical, un-thinking all of her previous students had been! Were they all grade conscious? Luckily, I had some common sense in me and a little science as well. So I answered my experiment paper with a strong "philosophical" essay. I expounded on the virtue and wisdom of using the provided for counterweights and the evil of using chalks. I was rewarded handsomely, a good investment I'd say. ROI was only a year. I got grades only I could ever be proud of. I was proud of it as soon as I received it. Because of it, I never trusted my teachers again, so did my classmates. I told myself, I'd manage myself just like before. I needed to verify by myself what they were talking about if it really bothered me, or if I thought it mattered at all.

I attended a Catholic high school so that religion was a yearly and year-round boredom. My first day of school, we were forced to buy an illustrated bible at an exorbitant price. The pictures were not really cool and I thought they were drawn by religion teachers. I grew up in Paete and lots of kids there can draw better. I was told that god is benevolent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. I don't know how they managed to ram that big concept down our throat while good god himself did nothing to stop famine in Africa, a war engulfing the Middle East and elsewhere children suffer; all these however hard Jimmy Swaggart prayed. I don't know now how I managed to not always ask my usual pilosopo questions in the religion classes. Maybe I got tired of being excommunicated from the class for one hour. My religion teachers were what you would call marginal, one of them could not even spell Pentateuch (tama ba?) correctly and kept mistaking it with Antioch (<---how about this one?). Sila yung isinusuka ng seminaryo. Bro. Noli is now a baranggay captain. Good for him, he found his real calling. If science teachers can teach wrong science which is supposed to be based on observable facts or demonstrable, repetitive, and universal concepts, but not know they taught wrong, how much more if the subject does not admit evidence as the basis of truth? How much wrong could I be forced to believe or accept without question? One way to find out was to read the only evidence they rely on, the Catholic bible. I loved reading the bible. My favourite is the King James version. It's like reading Shakespeare, only better. The stories were true, er, supposed to be true. I loved the story of Joseph. Lotsa miracles then and mostly in the Middle East. I kept hoping I'd read Manila or Luzon somehow. Cool, the Philippines is part of god's plan after all. I thought the Philippians were Filipinos. I turned to Grolier's and I was deeply upset but I never told my parents or teachers afterwards. If Christianity can save us from hell, I was glad Magellan discovered the Philippines. The rest they say is history. Wait a minute, that was 1521! So the earlier Filipinos, not by choice but by birth and death, are now in hell? But I could not care less, I was glad the Spaniards came and subjugated our pagan forefathers for 300 years. Why, more than 90% of us are Christians. We are indeed lucky god is with us. Look at our progress now! We know we can improve the economy by praying, we can choose good presidents in prayer rallies, we heal the sick by prayers. I think in the next millenneum, we can totally eradicate diseases, and usher in world peace if we each light a candle and pray just a little bit harder.

Stay cool and, God less.
tinderbox

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I posted this message in the now-defunct Yahoo e-groups Pinoy Defenders of Faith and Pinoy Atheist. Now both lists are gone, so I am re-posting it here to serve as introduction.

Pinoy_Atheist@yahoogroups.com
From: pinoy_infidel
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 18:38:59 -0000
Subject: [Pinoy_Atheist] Science and Religion