Rubénerd!

Jokes aside, it's easy to see how people get "theories" and "scientific theories" confused. Conjecture satisfies the former, the latter follows strict rules. So humble and precise are scientists that even the most accepted theory isn't referred to as fact. Of all the reasons why I'm an atheist, that's high on my list.

As you may have noticed, I've taken a brief Rubenerd.com and Twitter recess to focus on some family matters, though I hope to be back to both soon.

In the meantime, I noticed the #AtheistRollCall is Twittering away, and I'd love to voice my support. There are so many reasons one can give, but in the words of the legendary Douglas Adams, "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Peace out ^_^

"Voltaire was asked to condemn the devil on his deathbed, and all he said was: I don't need more enemies!"

I just finished watching the open forum and discussion programme Q and A on ABC1 and was delighted my man Christopher Hitchens was one of the panellists! The other guests included Waleed Aly, Father Frank Brennan, Sally Warhaft and Anne Henderson. You can download and watch it from the ABC website.

To say it was a stimulating discussion would be the understatement of the century. Their discussion topics ranged from natural disasters, to why people feel the need to be religious, to the nuclear threat of the Iranians, freedom of women (or lack thereof), the rights of homosexuals... and for some bizarre reason a discussion on why "talent" means Roman Polanski can "get away" with it.

The first topic was spearheaded by an audience member who asked Chris why he thought when good things happen God gets praise, but when bad things happen such as natural disasters, it's merely referred to as Gods will that we can't understand. Chris drew comparisons to ANZAC Day in Australia with the war memorials across towns in the United Kingdom and the lack of such memorials in three towns described by the Church as "blessed". Unfortunately yet another example of the same kind of unfortunate, one sided thinking.

Of all the panellists, naturally I thought Christopher Hitchens was the star and centre of the show, but I was really impressed with Waleed Aly's (pictured above) comments as well. When the discussion of nuclear arms was raised, Chris made the comment that the new Hamas logo contains a mushroom cloud and that any organisation that uses torture and rape to advance their agenda should answer for such crimes, Waleed added and rebutted by saying no discussion can legitimately take place about Iran without discussing Israel's own nuclear weapons and abuses. In my view, I think they were both right, but as Sally Warhaft said it would take an age to address the question, so I'm going to leave it at that! Does Waleed Aly have any books in print I can get copies of?

Father Frank Brennan (pictured above) seemed like a genuinely nice person and I appreciated his obviously heart felt opinions, but he lost me when the issue of homosexuality was raised and he simply could not say the Catholic Church condemns it and considers it a sin, even when he was asked directly. Unfortunately that was also the only time I was unimpressed with Waleed as well; he may be a member of a vast majority of rational, moderate Islamic people of whom I know many, but when asked if his own religion officially condemned homosexuals he talked about politics instead. That said on Father Franks part, he did make a critical point that conversation is what we need which I found refreshing if only because that's what I've been saying myself here for years!

I thought Anne Henderson (pictured above, far right) didn't get enough airtime, but to be honest I was somewhat offended as a non believer by her assertion that you needed to be a member of a religious charity organisation in order to do good. It may have not been her intention, but as Chris pointed out organisations such as Amnesty International do valuable work helping people around the world without the need for celestial oversight.

One of the other highlights was towards the end when a young women openly addressed the panel by saying she could walk the streets of Iran without fear of persecution and that all the things Chris was saying about eliminating poverty by giving freedom to women were exactly what she experienced. He replied that her saying that was an insult to all the women in that part of the world who have been raped, tortured, imprisoned and who's testimony is deemed of lesser value in court.

If you just read my crappy review here you could be forgiven for thinking the discussion was heavy and full of anger, but aside from the one brief incident the atmosphere wasn't hostile. Having watched so many interviews with Chris on American shows where the American anchor rapidly deteriorates into a rude shouting match it was nice to see the conversation remain civil with plenty of humour and laughs thrown in. For subjects like this, you really, really need it.

I have to say, compared to Richard Dawkins who I mostly agree with on issues of atheism and Sam Harris who I seem to agree so wholeheartedly with it's scary, I agree with less of what Christopher Hitchens says but overall I thought he still had the impeccable wit and talking points down with his performance in Australia. I just wish he were coming to Adelaide.

One other talking point they did raise which I did find heartening was the possibility of an atheist Prime Minister in Australia. They all seemed to think an atheist President of the United States was out of the question but for Australia having an atheist PM would be possible. I hope they're right.

Aside from the final line that Chris delivered which I paraphrased at the very beginning of this post though, I think Sally Warhaft (pictured above) had the best line of the evening and it'll be the one I'll end my terribly worded and constructed review on:

"Palestinians need a state. Israelis need to feel safe"

Oh yeah, and I forgot one other thing :)

Okay everyone I'm going to be blunt here and just come out. If you follow me on Twitter or read my blog here you may have noticed I sometimes talk about religion, and most of the time I have nothing positive to say about it.

I've mentioned here and on Twitter I'm an atheist and people ask me why. I responded in the past the same way virtually every other atheist does; by saying there has been no scientific or empirical evidence ever put forward to justify the belief in any god from any religion. People distort this to claim I'm saying there is no god and that it takes as much faith to deny it as it does to believe, claims which are nonsense of course. It turns out at least for me this is only part of the story.

For most of my life I was agnostic, but it wasn't until my mum died that I finally figured it out. I guess you could say it was a cynical Newton moment. She was one of the nicest, most moral people I have ever known, but she spent the last 12+ years of her life in slow, agonising pain and died around Christmas in 2007.

Now here's the part I don't understand. I'm told God stands by as earthquakes and the like happen because of the concept of free will, that god can't stop us living in earthquake-prone areas. If we lend this explanation credence we're still left asking: why did God create fault lines that cause earthquakes in the first place? And why go to all the trouble to create us in His image but leave dangerous and sloppy imperfections in our genetic coding that predispose us to diseases and mutations like cancer? Why did He invent bacteria, to punish those who can't afford sanitation? God can't stop us smoking to cause lung cancer, but my mum was healthy. It's obvious when we dig below the surface of this free will explanation, its bunk.

It's claimed god is all powerful, all knowing and all wise, and that most importantly he loves us. Much like a good piece of computer software cannot be made quickly, cheaply and well at the same time, all four of these conditions about God can't be true. The classical Greek philosopher Epicurus made this observation 2,000 years ago.

Given the amount of hate mail I get this doesn't seem to be self evident when I thought it would be, but if religious people are allowed to discuss the ways in which they saw the light and converted to their particular faith, it seems only fair I should be allowed to discuss why I became an atheist. If you were offended by what I said, I encourage you to take as open a view as you would with a person of another faith to your own instead of reading it as if I were an atheist and try reading this entry again.

Because this is a very personal family matter, I'm doing something unprecedented on the Rubenerd Blog and turning comments off. Believe me, I've heard every single possible response to this anyway. Feel free to comment on other sites and places, but don't expect a reply.

I'm now putting this issue to rest and moving on. I may discuss spirituality and science at some point though, I'm absolutely fascinated by the idea. When we applied science to astrology we got astronomy, when we applied science to alchemy we got chemistry: what will science yield when we apply it to spirituality? I'm really excited by the idea!

Thank you everyone. Peace, health and happiness,
Ruben

To all my readers,

After my latest post concerning matters of religion and my assertion that "pro life" and "pro family" are misnomers, I received positive feedback from half a dozen people in various channels, rude emails from over ten people, and two comments here that included so many profanities and nothing of value I did what I thought I would never do here and decided not to publish them.

People obviously have heartfelt opinions on these issues and many are willing to discuss them in constructive ways, but a disproportionate number seem to be unable to post without resorting to ad hominum attacks on my character. To be blunt, I couldn't be bothered dealing with these any more.

I am a proudly a humanist atheist and may on occasion relay some interesting sites I find here, but I will no longer be creating new posts from scratch about such material. If you have been offended by posts about religion I've posted here, believe me when I say it was not my intention and I apologise.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can have frank and honest discussions about religion and faith without being insulted by religious conservatives or being labelled intolerant by social liberals whom I identify with on virtually everything else. Clearly this time has not yet come.

If you came to my blog here expecting such material, I encourage you to click over to RichardDawkins.net, SamHarris.org, the Skeptics Annotated Bible, the Out Campaign and of course the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Searches for Russel's Teapot, Occam's Razor, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, humanism and secularism will also (to borrow a phrase) set you on the right path.

Sincerely,
Ruben

I was reading a book
Well maybe it was a magazine
Suggestions on where to place faith
Suggestions on what to believe

But I read somewhere that you've got to beware
You can't believe anything you read
But the good book is good and that's well understood
So don't even question
If you know what I mean

But it's all relative even if we don't understand
And it's all understood especially when we don’t understand
And it's all just because
Even if we don't understand then let's all just believe

~ Jack Johnson, "It's All Understood"

Epicurus bust at the Louvre

Ever since my coming out as an atheist and subsequent family events that were made more complex by religion, I've been posting occasionally on the topic on Twitter and on my blog here; some have supported me, most have sent hate mail! I find it ironic that some religious people feel they have a right to post comments about their faith, but if agnostics or atheists do the same thing we're being rude. Ah well, you can't win them all!

In the years since this self realisation I've come to think the term "atheist" is a bit too narrow, and with the automatic angry knee jerk reaction so many religious people seem to have when they see the term, I've been looking into others. Think of it as a philosophical quest to save my arse.

For example, as an atheist I assert there has never been sufficient scientific or empirical evidence produced to rationally believe in deities; as an antitheist I believe the religions themselves are the problem given they can be interpreted in so many ways and that the perceived benefits of religions pale in comparison to the corrosive effects on politics and medicine they're having around the world; as a scientist I reject the disproved and implausible (if not completely impossible) theories of young earth creationism and intelligent design, as well as the stories of Noah's Ark and so on.

With all this combined, I just feel as though if as much time, money and effort was accorded to real people instead, the world would be a better place. I know there almost certainly isn't a God or an afterlife, so the best moral guides we have are the universal golden rule, and instead of waiting for a Heaven, we should be trying to create it here.

But wait, there's more! Order now and...

As it turns out, there is a school of thought that thinks like all of the above, and it's called humanism. When I read the first paragraph on Wikipedia about it, I felt like leaping out of my computer chair and shouting Eureka!

Humanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts.

The article goes on to explain how morals should evolve and be derived from social necessity not rigid texts:

Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation; as such, views on morals can change when new knowledge and information is discovered. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin.

I also really related to this one line under the Knowledge subheading:

In demanding that humans avoid blindly accepting unsupported beliefs, [humanism] supports scientific skepticism and the scientific method, rejecting authoritarianism and extreme skepticism, and rendering faith an unacceptable basis for action.

I'm usually not a fan of labels because they tend to oversimplify people's beliefs and views on a subject, but I feel proud identifying myself as a humanist now. It just surprises me that a movement like this has existed for so long and that is identical to my own views and beliefs, and I didn't really know about it!

It's also relieving in a way to discover there are other people out there who share my views. I feel much less isolated today.

It's been a while since I filled in another of these LivingSocial Top Five lists I've grown so attached to, so this afternoon I created and filled in a new list entitled My Favourite Heathen Tomes!" I figure at best only a few billion people follow each of the major religions meaning the majority of the people on Earth will be going to Hell including me, so there's no point trying to work against it right? ^_^

• On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
• The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
• The Portable Atheist, Christopher Hitchens
• The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris
• The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Bobby Henderson

If you've been displaying the Scarlet A with pride on your website, I noticed recently that there's a new so called "fancy version" with a metallic gradient you can use now instead of the previous solid colour. Looking at it on my site with mostly dark colours I think the previous one suited it better, but for the sake of something different I've switched. Hard hitting stuff!

For those I've lost, check out The OUT Campaign.

As for the devil smiling? Let's just say I'm being realistic about my future prospects!

Graphic by mrnorify on Flickr

Beautiful picture, might be my desktop background for a while. The question is whether or not I have the guts to have it as my desktop background on my laptop which will be seen in public.

It's weird in a way that I'm more than happy telling people online I'm an atheist, but it doesn't get out much in the real world. I don't quite know what I'm afraid of, but I'm afraid. I guess that's what I get for sticking to the only "religion" that people are apparently free to criticise and lambaste.

Funny how certain vocal folks are so hung up about not offending people's faiths under any circumstances, but those same people are more than happy to incessantly bash atheists. I reckon that qualifies as hypocrisy... though to be fair I think we do bring it upon ourselves. People tend to get extremely defensive when their most cherished beliefs are questioned. Then again, if they're so confident they're right, why would they exhibit actions and words that in any other realm of discourse would imply uncertainty? Are they simply afraid of our questions because there's a part of themselves that knows it's not true, but they don't want to admit it? Are they fearful of the consequences?

As a human race, we sure have a long way to go.

Flinders Ranges, South Australia from my Flickr gallery

I was direct messaged on Twitter this afternoon about what I meant when I said I was a spiritual atheist. I couldn't explain it in 160 characters or less, so I decided to elaborate here.

The idea behind spiritual atheism is that you can meditate, have life changing experiences, alter your perceptions of the universe, heighten your senses to become aware of things you weren't aware of before, and that none of this needs you to presuppose anything on insufficient evidence. What this means is that you can be spiritual without believing in celestial dictators/gods or believing things to be true without facts, logic or common sense, and allows you to remain rational.

We find it a shame that religion has a monopoly on spiritual discourse, and feel it is about time spirituality should be decoupled from it and properly explored without religious baggage. Imagine if we had a field of scientific study on spirituality, and how much more we could understand. For example, when we applied science instead of mythology to alchemy, we got chemistry. When we applied science to astrology instead of mythology, we got astronomy and a greater understanding of physics. Imagine what we could achieve with a similar approach to spirituality and to perhaps an even greater extent psychology?

As for the claim that I may as well be an agnostic: there is a clear difference between spiritual atheism and agnosticism. Agnostics on the whole assert that large claims about gods, spirituality and the universe can't be proved or disproved either way.

Spiritual atheists are the same as atheists in this regard: we assert that something isn't true until there is sufficient evidence, and that the fact you can't disprove something isn't evidence in it's favour! For example, you can't disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Russel's Celestial Teapot, or the fact you could have an invisible unicorn in your bathtub.

That's what it means to be a spiritual atheist :). I guess I won't be invited to a large number of houses now:

"If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds." (II John 10-11)