Yay! An Atheism Documentary Worth Watching!

Finally, a documentary/TV program that is about religious skepticism and atheism that is intelligent and not (very) insulting or degrading towards religious people. I am talking about “The Atheism Tapes” by Jonathan Miller.

To be honest, I have been recently quite disappointed by documentaries that are about religious skepticism. The first was “The God Who Wasn’t There”, whose ads you’ve probably seen around teh interwebz. It’s got really great reviews, but I thought it was just sort of meandering and pointless. There’s not really an overall theme, and it just left me feeling that I hope religious people don’twatch it because it would give them the wrong impression. It just made me feel its about some guy exercising his personal grudge against religion and the people who tried to cram it into his head.

Next was “Religulous” with Bill Maher. This one was better, but still left me feeling a bit empty. Maher talks with religious people, apparently just trying to understand why people are religious, but doesn’t really come to his main point until like ten minutes before the end, which is that religions can be very harmful in that they instruct people to act in a certain way against creating a sustainable rational world, that is against working for a better world, because there’s no point. They’re going to be rewarded in a few decades anyway, why make this world better?

“The Atheism Tapes” really nails it by saying that religions are harmful and that there is a real problem with the world in that religions do exist. I also liked that this documentary program was much more philosophical and grappled with the dense issues like: How can evil exist if God exists? What really happens after death? Exactly how do religions inform the behavior of human beings? It lambastes the common idea that people use religion as a cover or justification  to do horrible things (which implies that these people would do these horrible things anyway even if religion wasn’t around), and correctly states that these people do these things because they sincerely and deeply believe certain wildly implausible things are true. People blow themselves up and fly planes into buildings, not because they really like doing it, but because they KNOW God will reward them for doing so.

I especially liked it because I identify myself as a philosopher first and foremost. I may be a physics-major, and I may design complex games about finance, but when it comes right down to it, I’m a philosopher, something actually quite uncommon among physicists and the scientific community in general. Scientists do science, which is founded on empiricism, the idea that you have to be able to gather data from the world in order to know anything about it. I, of course, agree with that, but most scientists completely shun any issue in which you cannot gather data because you can never know if your musings are correct or not.

“The Atheism Tapes” is also apparently a supplement to the BBC program “Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief” also by Johnathan Miller. The main program I can’t find on Amazon or Netflix, but I’ll keep looking. If I have to buy from the UK at least I have a Region 2 DVD player in my computer.

And Iran…Iran So Far Away…

Turning to the other major evil nation on Earth, Iran is actually currently in the middle of what could be termed a revolution. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know alarge segment of the population is currently in revolt and protesting against the highly-religious conservative government (conservative in Iranian terms, like using the Koran and Hadiths as absolute law). The people revolting support a more progressively-person, someone who could hopefully help guide Iran out the shadow of Islamic rule and into a fairer, more secular society.

For both the sake of Iran and the world at large, the people revolting need to succeed. It’s unfortunate that they have to resort to violence, but sometimes that’s the only way to free yourself of a tyrannical dictator. Hey, it worked for us, didn’t it?

The reason is because of the fact that the country is completely ruled by a theocracy. And the worst part is that the religion in question is Islam. For me, religions fall on a sliding scale. Some, like Buddhism and Jainism, are near the good end. There are relatively benign and sometimes even beneficial. Jainism, for example, basically commands its followers to never hurt any living thing ever. Christianity is somewhere in the middle, trending towards the good end (now that the Inquisition is over, and Europe is no longer effectively ruled by the Pope). Islam however, is firmly and squarely near the bad end. Islam doesn’t have a problem. Islam is the problem.

I mean, perhaps it’s unfair to completely condemn a religion that is practiced by over a billion people, but when you really look into it, you can see how scary and insane it is. On nearly every page of the Koran, God directs Muslims to make war on unbelievers, to either kill or convert them, and that getting yourself killed in the process is not only unimportant but encouraged. Seriously. Imagine that you seriously believe, with all your heart, that if you go on a rampage and kill as many unbelievers as possible before being taken out yourself, God will put you on the fast-track to heaven. That you will be able to take with you any persons you select to join you (though there is a limit I can’t remember right now). Suddenly, it becomes surprising there aren’t more suicide bombings.

When an entire nation adheres to this ideology…yikes. And combine that with the fact that they are trying to acquire nuclear weapons…oh my. Plus they already have the technical capability hit any other point on the planet with a missile…excuse me while I go change my underwear.

But what does all this have to do with the protests? Everything. If the people protesting are actually successful, then Iran will no longer be (hopefully) absolutely ruled by Sharia Law. Iran will no longer be (hopefully) a threat of nuclear war. And, you know what? This is exactly the path it needs to take. Reforming Iran, and the Middle East in general, can’t be done from outside. It has to be done by its own people, by courageous people standing up and demanding change. If we were to put sanctions on or even invade Iran, all it would do would bolster support for the local government to stop us, and Iran would slide even further back. But if people inside start opposing the government, others who may also have grievances will also stand up, and so on.

Incidentally, the media, particularly the internet, is helping keep this revolt alive. All totalitarian governments need to have control of information to maintain their power. Without that, people learn what’s going on outside their country and how other countries view them. And then, the government loses their power. This is one reason the Soviet Union collapsed, particularly in the Soviet Bloc. People began having things like television, where they could see how screwed up their world really was, and did something about it.

Why Do Christians Cry When People Die?

It’s never made much sense to me. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but, you know that you’re going to see them again, at least, assuming you both get into heaven. I suppose if someone dies, but they weren’t a good Christian, and so they’ll probably end up in hell, then I could understand that you’d never see them again. Plus, you’d be upset that someone you love is going to be tortured for eternity.

If I were a Christian, and I had a friend who died, someone who I knew was very likely going to heaven and that I’d follow, I’d probably be happy for him. In fact, I might even be a little jealous. He’s made it, and he no longer has to worry about having enough faith and being a good Christian. But I’d be able to overcome that jealousy by realizing that the little time I have in this world is insignificant compared to the billions of trillions of years I’ll spend in paradise, with the opportunity to see my friend whenever I wish.

Now, being an atheist, and not believing in an afterlife (because the two are not necessary related), it is entirely reasonable for me to be sad. The person I cared about is gone. I will never see them again. Ever.No matter how much I want to, short of building a time machine, I will never be with them again. I’ve known a couple people who were around my age when they died. Not really friends, but acquaintances that I liked.

Well, crazy athiestic rant over. Today is the first day in three months where I have no work or school and absolutely no plans. I get to stay home in my pajamas and write politically-charged blogs all day! No actually I’m working on my game some more. I know I said I was done, but I’m mostly just re-doing the layouts and adding tiny things here and there.

Hey, Things Are Looking Up…

According to this article, Americans are moving away from Christianity, and it is mostly because of an overall rejection of religion, rather than people converting to other religions.

Without sounding too obnoxious, YIPPEE!!!

I’m not a big fan of religion. Not that I think religion is always bad, but–at best–it’s just unnecessary. I mean, yeah, having to pray five times a day in the direction of some city may not hurt anyone, but why? Are there any solid verifiable reasons to think that Joseph Smith really did find golden plates in Manchester, New York? That being a good warrior means that you can expect to wind up in Folkvangr or Valhalla? Or that any of the literally hundreds of thousands of gods that people have believed in over the course of human history actually exists?

If there aren’t, then why are they given any rational consideration at all? Oh yeah…faith. While I may not be explicitly anti-religion (it depends on which religion we are discussing), I am staunchly and rabidly anti-faith. Faith is, to put it mildly, evil. Believing in something without evidence or support is, I think, a form of insanity. It means that something in your brain has gone spectacularly horribly wrong, yet people think that it is a virtue.

The ability to reason, to be able to sit down and objectively figure things out, is what makes us human. The ironic thing is that most people (in religious fundamentalists) are rational people in most ordinary circumstances. It’s just that they seem to have set up a divider in their heads, where the most imporant and profound questions are shielded from honest inquiry. The very fact that subjects like the meaning of life and the existence of god(s) are profound demands careful investigation, skepticism, and rigor when confronted with possible answers.

Oh well, perhaps this poll shows that people in the future will be less religious and more rational. If the rest of the world is any indication, non-religion is correlated with better, safer societies. It would only be a boon to the human race.

The Human Soul

I came across this article on Yahoo! today about the origin of the idea of a soul. It claims that the idea of a soul possibly came about as far back as 200,000 years ago, when humans first started talking.

What’s really interesting to me is that, despite all the scientific and technological breakthroughs made in the time since, so many people still believe in the concept of a soul. The idea came from so long ago, in a age where superstition and ignorance were standard, yet people seem to think that out of all the various religious and social beliefs that we now know to be 100% wrong, they managed to actually get one completely right.

I think it’s more likely that the humans of the past were just completely wrong about everything. Once they started actually objectively observing nature and experimenting, then they could say for sure what is and what isn’t. And once they starting doing that, they became us.