Atheism in the USVI

If there is no moral standard outside of ourselves, then we must be the moral standard. If we are mere concious pieces of protoplasm, if "survival of the fittest" is the order of the day then there can be no "right" or "wrong" but only that which is expedient. Without God, there can be no morality.If I need a parking place, it should be ok for me to push your car out of the way. If I don't like your politics, I should be able to shoot you. The Mayans were right to rip out the hearts of their enemies, Hitler was correct in killing the Jews and PETA is correct to tell Obama he can't swat flies. It is written somewhere: there is a that seems right to a man, but that way leads to death. God did not make us little automatons. He gave us a will and a choice. Most of us choose badly and the world is worse off for it.
How is it that atheists can't believe a car came into being by random selection over eons, but can believe that human beings did? If there is a law of entropy, then how can things get MORE complex over time? It flies in the face of the second law of thermodynamics. If the universe started with a big bang, why does the universe seem so much more organized and complex than the world trade center after 911 or Hiroshima after the atomic bomb?

and all those klan members running around in sheets killing black people were "good" baptists,oh please give me a break and europe has always had wars whenever the population grew too big,our world will never advance until religion has been wiped out and all the separate races have melded together,then and only then will we be able to take a place at the table of the universe

I have always loved this story.

Have you ever known someone who is a die-hard Christian? You know, the ones who insist on praying over every morsel of food they eat, who insist on talking about Jesus as though he were a rock star, the ones who like to look down their thin little noses at you for having a life? Growing up in the deep South of the U.S.A. I have had lifelong opportunities to know such people and as a psychologist, I've recently come to a certain realization. But let me give you a "For Instance:"

Say a perfect stranger came up to you in a public setting. This person acted as though they knew you, despite having just met you for the first time. They strike up a conversation and somewhere in the middle they ask you if you have accepted the Easter Bunny as your God. With a perfectly straight face, they then proceed to tell you how the Earth started out as quiche baked in a giant oven for a week and the moon is just a hunk of cheese that fell off when they took it out to cool. Then after the quiche was cooled, the Easter Bunny came down, grabbed a couple of handfulls of the baked goodness, breathed life into it, and that's where humankind originated. Now, they go on to tell you story after story, and one story about how the Easter Bunny one day was hunted down and shot by the other inhabitants of the quiche, and they didn't just shoot him, they nailed him to a wall and tormented him for days on end before finally putting him out of his misery. And the Easter Bunny died so that no one would ever have to go hungry for quiche ever again. And that's why you should accept the Easter Bunny as your personal Lord and Savior. Not only that, but if you don't, when you die you'll have to move to a planet where there IS NO QUICHE and you have to do without it's savory goodness for all eternity.

It would take you all of how many seconds to walk away from this lunatic? Or maybe you're like me, and you stick around to see just how crazy they are...

Why is it that when we change the names and some of the smaller details it's easy to see how crazy it is? Yet there are millions of people who are otherwise reasonable and intelligent who fall for a different version of the Easter Bunny story and they just eat it up like it was quiche.

In a very literal, clinical context, to be a faithful Christian is to suffer from a Delusional Psychosis. They believe things that cannot be proven, things that any reasonably intelligent person would see through immediately in the right light, and they don't know they're delusional. In a very real sense, there is no way to differentiate between Christianity and other forms of Psychosis, but because we have gotten used to overlooking the "religious" we no longer see them as mentally ill.

An atheist was walking through the woods.

"What majestic trees"!

'What powerful rivers"!

"What beautiful animals"!

He said to himself.

As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charge towards him.

He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder & saw that the bear was closing in on him.

He looked over his shoulder again, & the bear was even closer. He tripped & fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw & raising his right paw to strike

him.

At that instant the Atheist cried out, "Oh my God!"

Time Stopped.

The bear froze..

The forest was silent.

As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky. "You deny my existence for all these years, teach others I don't exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer"?

The atheist looked directly into the light, "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could make the BEAR a

Christian?"

"Very Well," said the voice.

The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head & spoke:

"Lord bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen."

That's funny, Rotorhead! I thought delusional psychosis described people who believed in something they could never prove that a reasonably intelligent person would see through immediately in the right light and who don't realize they are delusional....that is to say atheists!
I must admit your story about the Easter Bunny and quiche is quite amusing. I have certainly run across tons of people just like that and have run away from more than my fair share of them. I abhor the "Christian" culture that seems to permeate the current American Christian scene and tries to . I don't have much time for organized religions that just try to shove a bunch of do's and don'ts down your throat. I do understand them though. Many Christians feel like bystanders watching a whole crowd of people on a boat going down a river. They shout, cajole and scream, plead and try anything they can think of to get the people to listen, all to no avail. They can't seem to get the people on the boat to understand that they are about to go over a huge waterfall and will drown.
Just a thought: atheists took God out of the schools,our businesses, or government and made it illegal to have prayers in schools, ridiculed believers, and removed the 10 commandments from the courthouse. With all the rampant corruption in government and big business, with the increase in violence in the schools and elsewhere, the huge increase in childhood depression, ADD, kids who have no respect for their parents or any other authority for that matter can you honestly say that atheism (or secular humanism) has made America a better place?

and TRW: those KKK folks might have been "good" Baptists, but they certainly weren't Christians!

Maybe the cause of all that antique one wasn't the athiests but the perverted priests and clergy who diddled little kids and brought disrespect to the church and its belief structure.

antiqueone: maybe you should do a little research about our founding fathers.

"Under God" was added to the pledge by Truman in the 50s.

Get a clue.

And while reading about the founding fathers, notice that many of them were Deists not Christians. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine (the intelligent founding fathers) were all Deists.

Deists believe that God waved his arms and poof, the universe was created. He then disappeared. No monitoring our daily lives, no bible, no afterlife, no answering prayers, etc.

Deism seemed the most reasonable answer given that scientific advancement at the time offered no other possibilities.

A devout atheist, Penn of Penn and Teller has an interesting blog on Youtube. (Type in Penn Says: A Gift of a Bible to see it.) He is a devout atheist, but was touched almost to the point of speechlessness ( something I thought I'd never see from him!) when a Christian spoke with him after a show about how to become a Christian. He seemed dazed at times over how sincere the guy was. One thing that he said that impressed me was - and I'm paraphrasing here- that he (Penn) totally respected the Christian for trying to convert him to Christianity. Penn said that showed he TRULY cared what happened to me. Penn thought every true Christian should feel that strongly about what he believed in. He gave a comparison to seeing someone about to be hit by a bus in which he said if you really believed that bus was about to destroy that man wouldn't you do everything in your power to 'save' that man, or get him out of danger and into safety? I think that's why true Christians (not just people who are members of some organized religion), but true Christians feel so strongly about HAVING to speak up. We HONESTLY believe in God and don't want anyone left out in the middle of the road with a bus coming at them. No offence meant, just concern.:$)

UCLA School of Medicine, USA.

In clinical practice, no clear guidelines exist to distinguish between "normal" religious beliefs and "pathological" religious delusions. Historically, psychiatrists such as Freud have suggested that all religious beliefs are delusional, while the current DSM-IV definition of delusion exempts religious doctrine from pathology altogether. From an individual standpoint, a dimensional approach to delusional thinking (emphasizing conviction, preoccupation, and extension rather than content) may be useful in examining what is and is not pathological. When beliefs are shared by others, the idiosyncratic can become normalized. Therefore, recognition of social dynamics and the possibility of entire delusional subcultures is necessary in the assessment of group beliefs. Religious beliefs and delusions alike can arise from neurologic lesions and anomalous experiences, suggesting that at least some religious beliefs can be pathological. Religious beliefs exist outside of the scientific domain; therefore they can be easily labeled delusional from a rational perspective. However, a religious belief's dimensional characteristics, its cultural influences, and its impact on functioning may be more important considerations in clinical practice.

PMID: 15990520 [PubMed]

rotorhead said, "...God waved his arms..."

I have the belief that God is far beyond our understanding, and is neither male or female, yet both at once 😉

Again, I wish to state that I most closely associate myself with Deism. Religion is abhorrent to me.

/Jesus did not believe in any religion
//was a remarkable man, but nothing more, to me

Roto, are you a southern Baptist PK? If so, I feel your pain. I am one too. Sugar, you just gotta move past it. All you are doin here is singin to the choir. It's ok. Live and let live. People should be able to believe what ever they want. Just move on and live your life the way you want to. Evangelizing either way does no good. Who is that guy that got beat up in LA. Rodney something? He said can't we all just get along? That's my motto. Just get along.

rotor: You sound like you are a bit obsessed with anger issues...
😛

I'm not sure what a Southern Baptist PK is. I was raised Southern Baptist and have read the King James version of the Bible from cover to cover twice, once as a teenager and again as an adult. I have almost made it through the Qur'an.

I am afraid that I disagree with much of what you say. I say much because I do believe that people should be able to believe whatever they want no matter how ridiculous it is, even Scientology.

Despite what Neil thinks my purpose was originally to find out if there were like minded individuals on the board. Surprise! There are. And there are others who have PMed me or emailed me to voice support even though they are hesitant to post.

The reason evangelizing does good is not that you are going to change the minds of the religious, but more to let other atheists know that they are not alone and that it is OK for us to speak out also. It's not like the religious are just letting it go.

In the last survey on religion in the US the number of people who self identified as atheist or agnostic doubled from 8% ten years ago to 16% of the population today. That's a huge jump. Many of us who are starting to speak out think that the numbers are really much higher. It's just that many feel intimidated by the religious. We shouldn't. Do you know that there is only one self identified atheist in congress? He is an independent, the big two want nothing to do with atheists even though we make up 16% of the population.

As Dawkins points out, it is people like you Tami that cause this problem. They just sit back and don't speak up. The result is that we maintain the status quo and the religious keep moving forward. We end up with God on our money and in our national pledge even though 1 in 5 do not believe in a god. We end up with Faith Based government funded organizations who continue to evangelize using our tax dollars.

Why are churches tax free? Shouldn't they be treated like any other social club?

Just so you know, all of my heroes are scientists and engineers. They are the ones who are advancing the knowledge of the human race. Not the priests or pastors. Not athletes or lawyers, and yeah not even the cowboys.

Some of the most interesting statistics have to do with data comparing religiosity and IQ. There have been 43 surveys done since 1927 comparing religiosity and intelligence, 39 of those studies show a negative correlation between intelligence and religiousness. I included a link to the surveys in an earlier post. The last survey was very interesting.

80% of the US population in general claims to believe in a god.
When you only include people who have at least a BS degree the number drops to 40%.
And when you survey the 2100 members of the National Academy of Science, these are the elite scientists and includes 200 Nobel prize winners the number drops to 7%.
For the Royal Academy, the UK equivalent of NAS, the number drops to 3%.

So atheists, stand up and speak out, you are in good company. And if someone suggests that you sit down and just let it go, they are probably religious and do not want things to change.

BTW I am not angry, I am passionate, opinionated and outspoken on this and a few other issues.

Correction...... Pete Stark the atheist congressman is a Democrat.
http://www.nysun.com/national/california-lawmaker-becomes-highest-ranking/50312/

Hey Roto--I'm a scientist, can I be your hero? 😀

To antiqueone, it's really unbelievable that you believe individual morality cannot exist without believing in some higher power? What about inner goodness, or just wanting to be a decent person? I'm not religious, but no, I would not run your car down just because I do not believe some higher power will burn me in hell or reincarnate me as a slug for it. I won't do it just because I'm a decent, reasonable human being, don't want to cause damage, upset another person, have the patience to find another parking spot, unwillingness to go to jail etc etc.
Morality and good deeds and instruction on being a good human being don't need to come from some god (although for many, those instructions may need to come from a god or religion), they can come from your own sense of self and belief in right and wrong. This may come from within, but also passed on through parents, friends, family. I'm not going to cheat on my husband because it would destroy our friendship, love and trust, NOT because the Bible tells me its a sin. Morality can, and often does, come from within ourselves rather than a higher power.
Perhaps those people unwilling to think hard or soul-search and trust in themselves need outside help such as God or religion to keep them on the "right" path. For others, whether declared atheists or not, we can do it on our own, thank you very much.
And, to respond to your post on the rampart corruption and all the "bad people" in the world, atheism doesn't necessarily influence all that. Most stringent atheists have given much thought, perhaps as much thought as you do to religion, about their personal beliefs and life philosophies. Atheism doesn't give someone a free ticket for bad behavior. Conversely, it may encourage a well-examined, thoughtful life because you become answerable to only yourself and your own standards. And if those standards are high, there is no limit on the possibilities of achievement.
I doubt that the most of the "naughty" people (Bernie Madoff comes to mind) in the world give much thought to either atheism or religion. Or conversely, those "bad ones" may be religious but don't think hard about their lives because they believe as long as they confess and say a few hail mary's their souls will be saved. In this way, religion may abscond a lot of people from a well-examined life. Some of the most nasty people I have known, including thieves and homophobes, have been devout Christians. Some of the best people I know are atheists with strong moral beliefs. And then I've known really religious people who are great too. There are bad eggs all over the table, and the world's problems certainly cannot be generalized to one group or the other.

Oh, and by the way, evolution actually does satisfy the the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Obviously you are not formally trained in chemistry, biology or physics otherwise you would not say such things which you don't have much of an understanding of in the first place.

Suggested reading:
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=15-answers-to-creationist

On corruption and religion: I'm hard-pressed to think of any corrupt people - and I have known lots of them - who do not profess to believe in some god or other.

As to terrorism: Again, I can't think of any who do not adhere to the idea of a supernatural being.

And "ordinary criminals": Who killed George Tiller? An upstanding "Christian" named Scott Roeder.

Recommended reading: The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. http://richarddawkins.net/godDelusion

I know this is rather off-topic, but when I came to my belief in a Deistic God, I came up with the working solution to this problem - some people say it is harder to come up with a problem than to solve it, and I have working code that performs what the problem says is possible without using any math - remember, computers are much unlike us - computers are binary, and inherently mathematical.

Please notice that the solution uses the ancient Pascal's Triangle, in a new way, and no, I did not solve it:

http://www.mathhelpforum.com/math-help/basic-statistics-probability/17147-combination-lock.html

This is a very good paper about quantum information theory by Andrew Steane:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/9708022

“The new version of the Church-Turing thesis (now called the ‘Church-Turing Principle’) does not refer to Turing machines. This is important because there are fundamental differences between the very nature of the Turing machine and the principles of quantum mechanics. One is described in terms of operations on classical bits, the other in terms of evolution of quantum states. Hence there is the possibility that the universal Turing machine, and hence all classical computers, might not be able to simulate some of the behavior to be found in Nature. Conversely, it may be physically possible (i.e. not ruled out by the laws of Nature) to realize a new type of computation essentially different from that of classical computer science. This is the central aim of quantum computing.”

I can (and have a working model) perform all the permutations that the problem says is possible, without using any math. In other words: I can make an "evolutionary" system through a stateless manipulation of memory.

It is pure connectionism. I only use one command; a command that links pieces of memory together. I think of it as a geometry of information. I also like to think it is a bridge between psychology and math. Herbert Spencer's work is based on connectionism - I suggest you look him up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer

Heh. I can hit 1,441,729 possible combinations in eight keystrokes or less. This grows exponentially, along with Pascal's Triangle, into infinity.

/OK, I am nuts, but...
//desperate to find someone to listen to me
///Zero is the most important number - it is the other side of infinity and the only way we can define infinity
////mum found the divide by zero error in old IBM mainframes
/////should I talk about her cracking the Monroe Sweda IRS-certified tamper-proof cash registers, so my father could steal money from the government?

PK, preachers kid.

Stxem: There certainly can be "morality" without God. But it comes down to situational ethics and societal norms. If you lived with the Sawhi people, the greatest good would be to befriend someone, do everything for them until they trust you completely, then take them by surprise, kill them.....and eat them. It was the most "moral" thing you could do in that society. But I am not talking about how humans behave; I am talking about a reality greater than yourself.

Society: the US is a pleuralistic society. Everyone has the right to express their opinion and the whole point of the political process is to try to influence how we do things. I am not surprised that atheists push their agenda. It is proper for you to do so. Don't be surprised when Christians do the same! It is somewhere written: Come let us reason together. Let's have fun with this conversation without getting our feathers ruffled, ok?

Entropy and Science: Science means man's knowledge, nothing more. Scientific principles cannot be applied to the "Why" of our experiments. We can know the earth revolves around the sun, is at the exact distance away to allow for intelligent life to be sustained. We can know that our sun is on the edge of an arm of the milky way, not in the center where life is (likely) unsustainable. We can observe the actions of pulsars, Quasars, quarks, ups and downs, but we can't explain "why" they do what they do. Recognize the limitations of the scientific method. Explain to me again how the 2nd law of thermodynamics explains evolution?

As to intelligence and religiosity: I suspect these are only European and US studies. Since the Humanist Manifesto, non-Christians have taken over education and laughed at any mention of Christ or God. We have done our best to mold the minds of our young to believe only in Humanism and the religion of science. (I have not been impressed with science. Too many cheaters fudge the facts to get the results they want.)

We are allowed to believe whatever we want. We can believe we evolved from rocks if we want. We can believe that hydrogen, oxygen, iron, phosphorus, carbon, magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium, and a myriad of other elements just magically, for no special reason came together and formed a self-perpetuating life form that seems bent on destroying its own habitat. Go right ahead. I find the concept a bit preposterous. My problem came when I had to deal with the fact of the one called Jesus of Nazereth. How do you explain him? Fool? Confused? or a liar? (cs lewis)

My problem came when I had to deal with the fact of the one called Jesus of Nazareth. How do you explain him? Fool? Confused? or a liar? (cs Lewis

I think of him in the context of a good and meaningful story that was popularized, has endured and was told and edited over history. All I need is to see a few miracles, loaves and fishes, resurrection from a clinically dead person or something like that and maybe I could buy in the factuality. Or if noOne can come up with a scientific explanation I could be swayed. Right now it is too much of a leap from reality and my life experience to wrap my arms around the christian ideology. I admire people who embrace the concept of faith but I don't get it.

antiqueone, I am always eager to learn about people. I'll be teaching an anthropology course next semester. I've not heard of the _Sawhi_ cannibals. Can you share your source? I'd like to mention this phenomenon to my students.

[I'll resist commenting on a _pleuralistic society_, as I'm sure I know what you mean.]

When those who believe in God defend the existence of God, they tend to ignore the issue of how God came to be, because the only possible response is to propose something even more improbable.

When those who believe in God defend the existence of God, they tend to ignore the issue of how God came to be, because the only possible response is to propose something even more improbable.

Exactly. This disturbs me greatly. Is there only one Creator? Are the possible multiple universes run by multiple Gods? If so, do the Gods work together?

Multiple dimensions, multiple universes and alternate realities are seen as very possible by our best scientists.

The possibilities are incredible.

/wish Einstein wasn't such a wh0re, he was very remarkable