Beautiful quotation about atheism from 4 horseman ( dennet , dawkins,harris, hichens ) and othersmain source : https://www.facebook.com/Iran.Atheist.agnostic |
There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story’
Stephen Hawking: ‘There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story’
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the cosmologist shares his thoughts on death, M-theory, human purpose and our chance existence.
A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a “fairy story” for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said.
In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain’s most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time.
“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he added.
ASA clears Atheist Bus Campaign ads
The advertising watchdog has ruled that a controversial atheist ad campaign, which sparked the ire of Christian groups for proclaiming “There is probably no God”, did not break its code.
Religious groups including Christian Voice complained to the Advertising Standards Authority arguing that the Atheist Bus Campaign, which ran on buses with the strapline “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, broke the advertising code on the grounds of substantiation and truthfulness.
The ASA, which said that some of the complaints were that the ad was offensive and denigratory to people of faith, faced the prospect of having to decide if God existed in order to rule on Christian Voice’s complaint.
However, the watchdog said today that the British Humanist Association’s campaign did not breach the advertising code or mislead consumers and that it therefore would not launch an investigation.
“The ASA council concluded that the ad was an expression of the advertiser’s opinion and that the claims in it were not capable of objective substantiation,” said the ASA. “Although the ASA acknowledges that the content of the ad would be at odds with the beliefs of many, it concluded that it was unlikely to mislead or to cause serious or widespread offence.
God Probably Doesn’t Exist in Sweden
Sweden is a confused society when it comes to religion. It’s here, but not really. The Swedes happily take various Christian holidays off from work and treat them as public holidays. Like the Day of the Ascension. I had never even heard of this day until I moved here. And found out I didn’t have to go to work because instead I should be celebrating the day Jesus headed up to heaven.
Of course, start a conversation with the average Swede and they will deny any belief in God. They might admit to some sense of spirituality, believing in “something” and give you some new age nonsense about the sun or nature, but to name it God would be sacrilegious. See what I did there?
Keep in mind though that until just recently, 2000 to be exact, Sweden still had an official state church. In 2008, about 73% of Swedes were still members of the Church, that’s almost seven million people. This has been decreasing slowly, but steadily since 1972, and maybe further back but those are the Swedish Church statistics I could find. In a half-hearted search I couldn’t manage to find how many people actually go to church. Well I found a ballpark number on Wikipedia, but I’ll be damned if I start referencing Wikipedia, even if this is just a blog.
Sweden is known to be an incredibly secular society. Which I think is why I find this ad campaign to be so very interesting. In a society that actually prides itself on its lack of religion, the need for an ad campaign like this seems like overkill. Or a waste of money. Then I started reading the website. And about the campaign. The last line hit the nail on the head. The group behind the campaign, the Humanists, want new members.
The God probably doesn’t exist website starts you off with a test. Which I took. I was impressed by the horribly loaded questions that don’t actually do much good for starting a reasonable discussion. This was especially noticeable when I answered a question “wrong” in the eyes of the Humanists. Depending on your point of view I either passed or failed. But the Humanists seem to think that I should join them. Take that for what you will.
Of course, a group that wants you to join in their beliefs, wants you to donate to them, wants you to become a member might remind you of an already existing entity. Like a church for example. I doubt the Humanists would want me to mention that.
I am not a religious person at all. I mean at all. But I have no problem with people believing in something. Belief is good. Faith is good. That being said, I don’t want you knocking on my door trying to sell me your particular God. Whether it be a particular savior, or knowledge and secularism. It’s the extremism that bothers me.
And hypocrisy. Hypocrisy also bothers me.
Welcome to Sweden. Where God probably doesn’t exist.
Godless billboard in Fredericksburg
“Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”
These words, superimposed over an image of a blue sky and clouds, are slated to appear today on a prominent billboard in Fredericksburg. It is located on the west side of I-95, three miles north of Route 17. The ad will be visible on the right hand side of the road to southbound traffic approaching the city. The 16′ x 72′ billboard is illuminated at night and will remain up all month. This ad is being placed by the Fredericksburg Coalition of Reason (Fredericksburg CoR) with $7,200 in funding from the United Coalition of Reason (UnitedCoR).
The billboard campaign marks the public launch of Fredericksburg CoR, which is an alliance of five area non-theistic groups, with activities ranging from support to education to parenting. As part of its launch, Fredericksburg CoR will also march in the Religious Freedom Day Parade this coming Sunday, January 8, behind a banner designed after the billboard. The parade begins at 1:30 PM at the Fredericksburg train station and ends at the Thomas Jefferson Religious Freedom Monument, where a ceremony will be held.
This Fredericksburg campaign is the latest in a nationwide effort. Since the spring of 2009 there have been similar billboards, as well as bus ad campaigns, in 27 states and the District of Columbia. The states are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington and West Virginia. Fredericksburg’s billboard will be the first of this type in Virginia.
“The point of our ongoing nationwide awareness campaign is to reach out to the millions of atheists and agnostics living in the United States,” explained Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason. “Such non-theists sometimes don’t realize there’s a community for them because they’re inundated with religious messages at every turn. We hope our effort will serve as a beacon and let them know they aren’t alone.”
Reaching out to the like-minded isn’t the only goal of the coalition: “We hope people will realize that we are a regular part of the community,” said Matthew Jordan, spokesperson for Fredericksburg CoR. “Folks like us live all over Virginia. We’re your friends and family, neighbors and coworkers. We might even be sitting near you in your pew at church.”
“Being visible is important to us,” Edwords concluded, “because, in our society, atheists and agnostics often don’t know many people like themselves. Moreover, if traditionally religious people can be open about their views, why can’t we be open about ours?”
Why people believe in god: The evolutionary origins of belief
Today I want to look at why people believe in god, starting with its origins.
As to why religious beliefs arise in the first place, this is a fascinating and yet open question and any theories are at best speculative. The vast number of gods that have been independently invented in human history (see here for an exhaustive list) suggest that it is quite plausible that there is some propensity to create god beliefs that has nothing to do with the popular perception that religion arose to provide us with a moral code. As Robert Wright argues in his new book The Evolution of God (2009):
People in the modern world, certainly in America, think of religion as being largely about prescribing moral behavior. But religion wasn’t originally about that at all. To judge by hunter-gatherer religions, religion was not fundamentally about morality before the invention of agriculture. It was trying to figure out why bad things happen and increasing the frequency with which good things happen. Why do you sometimes get earthquakes, storms, disease and get slaughtered? But then sometimes you get nice weather, abundant game and you get to do the slaughtering. Those were the religious questions in the beginning.
It is possible that a small naturally occurring tendency to assign a causal agent to certain natural events provided a survival advantage that grew over time according to the Darwinian natural selection algorithm. For example, early humans who ascribed thunder and lightning to the anger of some unseen agent and hid in fear in their caves were more likely to survive than those who did not assign agency and wandered about freely in the storm. The natural selection algorithm worked on this advantage so that over the long period of evolutionary time, people have evolved a tendency to believe in causal agents for natural phenomena that make them more easily susceptible to religious-type explanations than to scientific ones, and this tendency would become ingrained and dominant.
It is similar to how we all seem to have a fear of snakes. It seems fairly well established that we have evolved to have an instinctive fear of snakes. Even baby chimpanzees have such a fear, suggesting that this fear developed fairly early in primate development, during the time when the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans lived.
Once you are susceptible to assigning a mysterious invisible agency to natural phenomena, certain culture-based beliefs can take root. For example, it makes sense to postulate things like a life after death to overcome the fear of death and this, coupled with beliefs about an unseen agency, would lead quite naturally towards a belief in a god-like entity that rules the afterlife.
It is easier to understand why these beliefs, once originated, continue to be perpetuated. While childhood indoctrination by parents and priests and society at large is undoubtedly a major factor in perpetuating religious beliefs, the more interesting question is why children are so susceptible to this particular kind of brainwashing.
There seems to be a clear survival advantage for young children to believe unquestioningly what their parents and other adults tell them. Those children who unquestioningly heeded warnings not to touch fire or to eat poisonous plants or try and play with lions or wade into crocodile infested rivers were more likely to survive than those who rebelled and ignored the warnings of adults. So the propensity of children to believe authoritative adults could easily have evolved to become hardwired in the brain.
The combination of assigning agency to natural phenomena and believing adults makes it easy to understand how religion originated and is perpetuated and why children are so easily indoctrinated into religious beliefs, because they do not distinguish between those adult edicts that are truly beneficial (“Don’t pick up snakes”) with those that are nonsensical (“If you pray silently to god he can hear your thoughts and will answer your requests” or “If you get together with others and pray for rain, it will rain.”)
But what is really interesting is why people still cling on to these beliefs long after they reach adulthood. After all, as we age we develop reasoning capacities that enable us to subject ideas to close scrutiny. As a consequence, there are a lot of childish beliefs we give up as we grow up, like Santa Claus. Children soon figure out for themselves that it is highly implausible for one man to fly around the entire world in one night to deliver toys, going up and down chimneys.
Why isn’t belief in god one of the beliefs we discard, since it has as much evidence in support as Santa Claus
Acceptance of atheism increasing
There are further signs that atheism is on the rise. David Niose points to surveys that show that for the first time ever, a majority (54%) of Americans “would vote for a qualified, open atheist for president.” This is a substantial increase from the 45% of 2007 and a huge increase from the meager 18% of 1958.
Niose goes on to say that “atheists still rank lowest among the groups listed. Muslims (58 percent), gays and lesbians (68 percent) and Mormons (80 percent) all ranked higher.”
He says that this is bad news but I don’t see it as so. I think that what this shows is a rising tide of acceptance of diversity and pluralism that is lifting all formerly marginalized groups. It does not bother me that atheists lag behind the other groups as long as the general acceptance trend is upwards.
Smile to The Fact of Life. 
Written
on September 14, 2012