Quote of the Day: Belief in "Belief-in-God"

It is seldom remarked (though often observed in private, I daresay) that many, many people who profess belief in God do not really act the way people who believed in God would act; they act the way people would act who believed in believing in God. That is, they manifestly think that believing in God is—would be—a good thing, a state of mind to be encouraged, by example if possible, so they defend belief-in-God with whatever rhetorical and political tools they can muster. They ask for God's help, but do not risk anything on receiving it, for instance. They thank God for their blessings, but, following the principle that God helps those who help themselves, they proceed with the major decisions of their lives as if they were going it alone.

Those few individuals who clearly do act as if they believed in God, really believed in God, are in striking contrast: the Christian Scientists who opt for divine intervention over medical attention, for instance, or those who give all their goods to one church or another in expectation of the Apocalypse, or those who eagerly seek martyrdom.

Not wanting the contrast to be so stark, the believers in belief-in-God respond with the doctrine that it is a sin (or at least a doctrinal error) to count on God's existence to have any particular effect. This has the nice effect of making the behavior of a believer in belief-in-God and the behavior of a believer in God so similar as to be all but indistinguishable.

Once nothing follows from a belief in God that doesn't equally follow from the presumably weaker creed that it would be good if I believed in God—a doctrine that is readily available to the atheist, after all—religion has been so laundered of content that it is quite possibly consistent with science. Peter de Vries, a genuine believer in God and probably the funniest writer on religion ever, has his hyper-liberal Reverend Mackerel (in his book The Mackerel Plaza) preach the following line: "It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us."

The Reverend Mackerel's God can co-exist peacefully with science. So can Santa Claus, who need not exist in order to make our yuletide season more jolly.

- Prof. Daniel Dennett, Philosopher of Science,

Interview for Science & Spirit, 2007

Quote of the Day: Birth and Death

"I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

Mark Twain

Quote of the Day

"Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win."

- Bobby Knight, Former coach of the
Texas Tech College basketball team

Quote of the Day: Jobs that Sucks the Life Out of You

"My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn't so closely resemble Hell."

- Lester Burnham, "American Beauty", 1999

I am now an "Atheist"!!

As I said at the outset I'm reluctant to use the word 'atheist' to describe my own unshakable disbelief and that's not because I'm ashamed, afraid or even embarrassed, but simply because it seems so self evidently true to me that there is no God that giving that conviction a special title, somehow dignifies what it denies. After all, we don't have a special word for people who don't believe in ghosts or witches.

- Jonathan Miller, Director & Author,
"A Brief History of Disbelief", 2007

God dammit!! In a feeble attempt to boost my readership levels (from the current zero readers who read this blog, to something even resembling half a reader), I have signed up to Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll and the OUT Campaign Blogroll, both of which is a conglomeration of blogs written by atheists, secularist, brights, agnostics, skeptics, non-theists, humanists, anti-theists and so on.

In the process, I guess I am now "outing" myself as an "atheist", whatever that means.

So what is an atheist anyway? How do we begin to define a group of people who lack the imaginative powers to believe in any form of supernatural agents, playing checkers using our arses as the pieces.

I can't really begin to fathom the idea of atheism, because it is much too broad and varying of a term. Similarly, theistic beliefs are very hard to nail down as well, since no two Christians (or two Muslims, two Jews, two Buddhists, two FSM-ists) of the same denomination would ever believe in exactly the same bucket of religious ideas.

So it is pretty meaningless to say that I am an atheist, not because I am not an atheist, but the labeling of myself as one is pretty pointless to say the least. It doesn't say that anything about me as a person at all.

Still anything and everything to pander for some readership, eh? ;-)

PS. Please have a look at the some of the other blogs on Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll, some of them are quite good.

Quote of the Day: The Right to Free Speech

Why we must protect everyone's right to free speech, especially those whose opinions we disagree with:

'How do I know that I know this, except that I have always been taught this and never heard anything else?'

It is always worth establishing First Principle...

'How can I prove the Earth is round? Am I sure about the Theory of Evolution? I know it is supposed to be true, here's someone who say there's no such thing, it's all Intelligent Design. How sure am I of my own views?'

Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus and the feeling that whatever you think, you're bound to be okay because you're in the safely moral majority.

- Christopher Hitchens, Writer & Journalist,
Debate at Hart House, University of Toronto, 2007

Quote of the Day: Probability and Fame

It's all about luck. The problem with famous people in general is that they actually think they're geniuses. You get famous and you think, 'Yes, of course I should be famous and I've earned it all'. You haven't, you got lucky.

I got lucky, I was in a TV show that got a Thursday night-time slot at 10pm and it was a massive hit, and as a result I get to do movies I want to do.

- George Clooney, Actor, smh.com.au, 2007

Quote of the Day: Probability and Religion

All religions were forged as defences against this virus, chance. Once you have dreamt up a god or a goddess, you can abase yourself, offer up burnt offerings, put your knees to the ground or your bottom to the air, all in the hope that by fawnings and repeated praise you may ward off ill fortune, or gain an imaginary better world.

- Brian Aldiss, Science Fiction Novelist,
"Fiction or Prediction?", 2007