I've been pointedly asked to defend what atheism offers the world. Below is my concise response. The longer, more drawn out diatribe will likely be an article at some point soon.

Atheism


While you could cite the extremes like Jim Jones, the reality is that most Christians are forced to nod and agree with political agendas that at their heart conflict with what they believe in the privacy of their own prayers. Such is the price of belonging to an orthodox faith that strives to control the political process.

Atheism is not anti-theism. It is simply the lack of a god in the political and social norms. It is exactly this freedom, entrenched by great men like Thomas Jefferson, that allows people of many faiths (or non-faiths) to coexist. If the control of the body politic is not a fight for the souls and morality of the masses, then the all people can live under it's banner. THIS is what has allowed North America to flourish, not an adherence to Christian doctrine.

You ask what it is that Atheism offers the world. This is it. So long as any one religions believes itself dominant over another, or more "right" than another, the freedom of the people to decide for themselves what they believe will always suffer. Only by allowing an atheist, non-religious code of ethics to govern can you meet the needs of all society, not just the religious elite.

It's about liberty and freedom; the right of every person under the law to believe or disbelieve any aspect of any religion's canon. No religious political structure can or would allow this. Only in an atheist system that allows all beliefs to exist can people live in a semblance harmony.

I keep getting e-mails asking me what I, as a godless heathen, think about abortion. It’s one of those inflammatory topics that is guaranteed to get people angry, which I think is why I keep getting questions about it. So here we go… the godless response to the abortion issue:

Religious folks tend to frame the question of abortion around the idea of God’s Will and the slaughter of the innocents. Pro-Choice folks tend to center the issue around a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body. However, as I seem to lack both a god and woman’s body, I’m kinda stuck trying to figure it out based on the world I actually live in. You might assume that as a godless heathen I would side with those killing innocents, but (aside from the annoying brat that sat next to me at Denny’s last week) I do not condone killing children.

Ah, but then there’s that next big question… when is it a child? For the religious this is a deep and mysterious truth… life begins at conception. For the pro-choice, the answer is (usually) life begins at birth. From a heathen’s point of view I disagree with both. Follow me here… it has to do with a bus.

Pretend I was walking down the street and a bus came out of nowhere and splattered me across the pavement. An ambulance shows up and carts me off to the hospital where underpaid and overworked doctors stitch me up and put me on a variety of beeping and blinking machines. Eventually, a decision has to be made about life support.

In every province and state in every Western nation the decision on when to pull the plug on me is made based on brainwave activity. If I am brain dead [I mean for real] then I am dead. Pull the plug, call the coroner... I’m cold meat. Good Christians and heathens alike across the country agree that when there is absolutely zero brain wave activity then the person is kaput.

When it comes to abortion I basically go with this accepted medical definition of life: brainwave activity. If the woman is in the early part of her first trimester before the brain develops in the embryo, then by all medical standards you are not dealing with a human life. It may be POTENTIAL human life, but it is not in fact a living “being” by the definition used by palliative care physicians and Christian grief councilors.

Once you do have brainwave activity then it becomes an issue of two persons, the mother and the child. That gets all messy and concerned and frankly I am glad to let the courts and councilors debate the value of mother versus child’s wellbeing. But until that point, when there is no brain wave activity, there is no human life. So say the doctors.

You can fight about late-term abortions and rights, but for the definition of "what is life", I think the precedent is already well established. According to accepted medical practice a life exists where you can show brain wave activity. If there are no brainwaves, there is no human life.




Click here to get your copy of The Heathen's Guide to World Religions by William Hopper.

I am told that I need to do more shameless promo amid my ramblings, so here ya go: Promo for my books...






Click here to get your copy of The Heathen's Guide to World Religions by William Hopper.

Maybe I am mellowing, but lately I've been mulling a real and rational reason for religions to exist.
There are truths in the world... real and vital things that we have to abide by to make things work. The things that stop us all from killing each other.

If you stop and educate people on cause and effect they will in time come to understand the societal reasons for not acting on base impulses. The problem is (and has always been) that most people don't care enough to learn and the vast majority of people are too busy trying to stay alive to bother with ethereal concepts.

Religions have been the tool that's been used to instill the basic social codes in people without having to explain why or how they work. Instead, they create a "GOD" that oversees every action and keeps people in line. People seem to need either fear or understanding in order to work towards the common good instead of the personal, selfish good. Education breeds understanding, religion breeds fear. Either way the end result is the same... no one is going to mug you in a back alley.

What is dangerous about this era we are in (I think) is that we are crossing a chasm where we have lost the fear of religions but have not cultivated enough understanding and empathy in the masses to make up for it. The "common good" is a saying we just never hear anymore unless it's spoken by a politician looking for more money or power.

Just thinking as I type...

For those who are wondering, I am still alive. I have not been blogging because of a major site rebuild that is going on. Soon the blog will be on the main page with cool new graphics and links and stuff like that there.