"He torments you with disease, injury, psychological abuse, and discrimination, despite having the power to make it all go away. He demands constant worship and an excruciatingly close reading of a book far less interesting than Moby Dick, Harry Potter, or even One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. He makes drugs and forbids us from taking them, despite how uninspired this bland planet is for someone with infinite knowledge. Solid liquid and gas? Really? That’s IT!? And only five flavors? FIVE!? Plus a spectrum of light that is primarily invisible, and ears with a pathetic hearing range. Just think of the symphonies that could be enjoyed if we only had a majestic God! But, no, we get a God who makes a universe composed mostly of empty space, and a planet, allegedly made for terrestrial creatures, that’s mostly water. I CALL BULLSHIT! To top it all off, he makes it so that we need to get a shitty job just so we can maintain this shitty existence. And what’s my reward, spending eternity with people who actually think this is a good idea? If that’s heaven, then Satan, whet your pitchfork, my ass is itchy. Let’s get this eternal damnation started already."

"However…"

"If this is all just a cosmic accident, then isn’t it pretty neat? Pain is inevitable, but it’s not so bad with all that laughter, happiness, and occasional interesting news article mixed in. We are free to make whatever purpose in life we choose, whether it be reaching internet fame, or walking on Mars. We have become beings of depth and culture, of sensuality and psychology. There is a vast legacy of art for us to explore and invent. We can experience this universe in five completely unique ways, and can use our ingenuity to expand this experience where our natural senses fail. What’s more, this all arose out of chaos; we have proven tenacious enough to carve out a niche for ourselves in this harsh, but bearable plane. We work and build off of each other and accomplish great awe-inspiring things that cannot be accomplished in solitude. We see the fruits of our labor actualized in our secular works. What’s more, we don’t have time to get bored. This curiosity called "life" is a relatively brief phenomenon; let’s enjoy it while we can!"

This reply was posted by macromidget in response to the question: "If you don’t believe in a God, or any religion for that matter, why the fuck are you still living? If you have nothing to live for, go ahead and end yourself, your just being a waste of space."

The point of the post wasn’t to show that religion is terrible and that atheism is the only valid reason for living. Rather, it was to show that given a cynical enough perspective, one person’s reason for life could be another’s despair, and that atheism does, in fact, offer plenty of reasons for living.

(An article by Victor Stegner, Physicist, Author of the forthcoming book ‘The Fallacy of Fine Tuning: How the Universe is Not Designed for Us’)

Even the most pious believer has to admit that there is no scientific evidence for God or anything else supernatural. If there were, it would be in the textbooks along with the evidence for electricity, gravity, neutrinos, and DNA. This doesn’t bother most believers because they have heard many times that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

However, just repeating a statement over and over again does not make it true. I can think of many cases where absence of evidence provides robust evidence of absence. The key question is whether evidence should exist but does not. Elephants have never been seen roaming Yellowstone National Park. If they were, they would not have escaped notice. No matter how secretive, the presence of such huge animals would have been marked by ample physical signs – droppings, crushed vegetation, bones of dead elephants. So we can safely conclude from the absence of evidence that elephants are absent from the park.

For thirty years physicists have been searching for a particle called the Higgs boson that hypothetically plays a key role in the universe, so important that it has been referred to (perhaps facetiously) as the "God Particle". In the standard model of particles and forces put in place in the 1970s and consistent with every observation since, Higgs bosons pervade the universe and generate mass, the very stuff of matter. We have failed to observe them so far because we have lacked the necessary instruments. However, there are good theoretical reasons to believe that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, now accumulating its initial data, should provide evidence for the Higgs. If it does not – a prospect most physicists regard as possible – then the Higgs boson would be shown not to exist.

That is the situation with God. Until recent times, absence of evidence for his existence has not been sufficient to rule him out. However, we now have enough knowledge that we can identify many places where there should be evidence, but there is not. The absence of that evidence allows us to rule out the existence of this God beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now, I am not talking about all conceivable gods. Certainly the deist god who does not interfere in the world is difficult to rule out. However, the God, whom I identify with an uppercase G, is believed to play such an active role in the universe that his actions should have been detected, thus confirming his existence. Let me present four examples.

I will begin with the origin of the visible universe. Our knowledge today allows us to push back in time to barely a trillionth of a second after the universe began. Extrapolating from there to the origin, we find that the universe began in a tiny (but not infinitesimal) region of space. Now, information only exists when it is embodied in some physical system, and we know that there is a limit to how compact information can be. This tiny region of space could not have contained more than a few bits of information – far too little to specify the universe that evolved from it.

As the universe expanded, it could hold more information. This created an environment in which order could emerge – as, over time, through an endless series of random events, it did. But the tiny amount of information contained in the very early universe was not enough to include any plans of some creator at that time. This allows for the possibility of a deist god who set things up, started things going randomly, and then left. It does not allow for some specific plan of creation to be embodied in the universe from the beginning. A God with such a plan can be ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt.

Next, consider the claim that the universe was designed. Many people give this as a reason to believe in God. They cannot see how the order of the universe can have come about naturally. However, observations in physics, cosmology, and biology have been scoured for evidence for design in the universe, evidence that should be there if there were a designer God. None has been found. This includes the frequently heard claim that the parameters of physics and cosmology exhibit a fine-tuning for the evolution of life. That subject will be covered in great detail in my next book: The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: How the Universe is not Designed for Us. My conclusion is that the claims of fine-tuning are based on inadequate knowledge of physics.

Intelligent design in biology has been thoroughly refuted in recent years, so I need not say much. Everywhere biologists look they find evidence of randomness and haphazard arrangements that would be called incompetent if they were designed. No matter where scientists cast their eyes, the universe they see looks just like it should look if there was no divine design.

Third, consider the supposed power of intercessory prayer. Well-executed experiments by reputable institutions such as Harvard, Duke, and the Mayo Clinic have failed to find that prayer improves the recovery of hospital patients. Apologists simply say God did not choose to respond to this test. But you can bet they would have changed their tune if the results had been positive. Trillions of prayers have been tendered over millennia. Of course, most sick people get better anyway, except once. If the God most people worship and pray to does exist, intercessory prayer would have a better batting average than what you would get from the normal operation of the natural world, including luck. It doesn’t.

As the final example, God is believed by his worshipers to talk to people and provide information they otherwise did not know. Nothing could be easier to test scientifically. All you have to do is find a few examples where a truth has been revealed that later was confirmed. This could be something simple, such as a prediction of some future event that turned out to be confirmed. This has never happened.

Of course, claims of revelation can be found in all three monotheisms, but none stand up to critical scrutiny. The so-called prophecies in scriptures were all made in the distant past and can’t be tested since the events prophesied have already happened, or, as in the case of Jesus returning in a generation, long been falsified.

In all of these examples, evidence for God should have been found, but was not. This absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It refutes the common assertion that science has nothing to say about God. In fact, science can say, beyond any reasonable doubt, that God – does not exist.

(An article by Steven Weinberg, University of Texas, Nobel laureate – 1979)

As science explains more and more, there is less and less need for religious explanations. Originally, in the history of human beings, everything was mysterious. Fire, rain, birth, death – all seemed to require the action of some kind of divine being. As time has passed, we have explained more and more in a purely naturalistic way. This doesn’t contradict religion, but it does takes away one of the original motivations for religion.

If we put together something like a final theory in which all the forces and the particles are explained, and that theory also throws light on the origin of the big bang and gives us a consistent picture of cosmology, there will be a little less for religion to explain. But religion has evolved along with science. It is something created by human beings, and as human beings learn more and more, their religion changes. Today, especially in the more established religious sects in the West, they’ve learned to stop trying to explain nature religiously and leave that to science.

The more we learn about the universe, the fewer signs we see of an intelligent designer. Isaac Newton thought that an explanation of how the sun shone would have to be made in terms of the action of God. Now we know that the sun shines because of the heat produced by the conversion of hydrogen into helium in its core. People who expect to find evidence of divine action in nature, in the origin of the universe or in the laws that govern matter are probably going to be disappointed.

What will be completely satisfying will be to show that there was only one kind of nature that was logically possible and derive the laws of nature in the same way that we derived the principles of arithmetic. I don’t think that will be possible, because we can already imagine logically consistent laws of nature that don’t quite describe the world we see. We will always be somewhat disappointed. But people who believe in God have the same problem. They will never be able to understand why the God that they believe in is that way and not some other way. All human beings, whether religious or not, are caught in a tragic situation of never fully being able to understand the world we are in.

I don’t believe in God, but I don’t make a religion out of not believing in God. It is logically possible that something could be discovered that will make me change my mind, and it will be interesting to see if that happens. But I don’t expect it. It is always possible that we will discover something in nature that cannot be explained in the naturalistic way that we’ve gotten used to in science and that will really require divine intervention. That hasn’t happened. I don’t know of any religious people who say that the breaking of the symmetry between the weak and the electromagnetic interactions requires divine intervention. Discovering the Higgs boson, or confirming the theory of electroweak symmetry breaking, is not going to upset people’s religion.

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Why is everyone so concerned with rape? I think the prevalence of boys and men being circumcised is a human rights issue. Essentially, circumcision robs a man of an idex card sized piece of erogenous tissue. This tissue by itself is capable of causing orgasm, the penis loses about half it’s sensation immediately. This is done a few days after birth and it is mind-numbingly painful for the boy. No pain killers are used. Psychologists now believe that circumcision causes life long psychological harm, and tests are only now being done on the long term effects which were once believed to be minimal if any. Now they know that circumcision is responsible for the callousing and desensitizing of the glans, rigidness of the penile skin, painful intercourse, and adherence due to improperly healed skin after the circumcision.

The foreskin is healthy tissue. There is nothing wrong with it. You wouldn’t pull your finger nails out to prevent nail fungus would you? Or pull your teeth out and immediately start using dentures. Every affliction caused by the existence of the foreskin is several times more common in women due to vaginal folds than it is in men. Yet female circumcision, which does prevent UTI’s and cervical cancer like male circumcision, is illegal.

It’s time to start respecting the rights of our boys’ bodies. Circumcision needs to be illegal unless there is an actual problem. If you have penile cancer for example circumcision might remove the malignancy. But to circumcise millions of men to prevent the deaths of ten of them in old age is preposterous.

CIRCUMCISION PERMANENTLY CHANGES A MAN’S NATURAL SEXUALITY. WHAT HE FEELS PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY ABOUT SEX IS PERMANENTLY CHANGED BY CIRCUMCISION.

Isn’t that even worse than rape?

(Excerpt from an article at the Ethical Atheist)

An Ethical Atheist is someone who lives by a personal desire to do good things in their limited life on Earth. They don’t believe in any god, religion, or an afterlife. But, that doesn’t stop us from living an ethical life and attempting to co-exist with our fellow man in a peaceful, rational manner. We have many atheist, agnostic and religious friends. Generally, we accept them as they are and respect everyone’s right to have beliefs other than our own. We listen to others with conflicting views and realize that we cannot change these views. We try to accept others beliefs and keep our mouth shut. However, if religious people push their views and criticize us, we will not remain quiet. If they insist on educating OUR children in falsehoods, we will not remain quiet any more than if someone taught our children that dirt was water, or that the sky was rock. We respect everyone’s belief in religion, so long as it doesn’t censor another’s beliefs. We believe that males are equal to females. We believe that heterosexuals are equal to homosexuals. We believe that children are equal to adults, they just lack experience and education – are you willing to provide an unbiased, truthful education to them?

The ethics of our children, and thus the ethics of future societies, is completely in our hands. Children do not know hate at birth. They do not know Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, East or West, Sinner or Divine, God or Devil, our country or their country. They know love, yet do NOT know hate. Whether you know it our not, you are giving your children these faculties.

If you teach your children to hate and to be intolerant of conflicting religions: they may grow up to be suicide bombers and they may even become the next Hitler. If you let your children grow up watching violent television, your children may grow up to have little regard for life; they may kill others or promote war; they may torture animals; and they may have no concept or desire for peace on Earth. On the other hand, if you raise your children to understand morality and ethics; and to live by these rules, the world just might be a better place. If more truth and honesty existed in educating our children around the world, we believe that chance would exist for peace and reconciliation.

Atheists have been long termed as "sinners" by the so-called believers. Atheism has given to the human race the intellectual monarchs of the world. When the great Darwin discovered the law of the origins of species, he was called an Atheist because he disproved the special creation of Man. When the Chemist went into his laboratory and discovered the indestructibility of matter, he was called an Atheist because he proved the impossibility of a Creator. When the Astronomer pointed his telescope to the sky and explored the regions of unlimited space, he was called an Atheist because he found no God within the confines of space, no heaven within the region of his explorations. When the Geologist determined the age of the earth through it’s rock and soil and formations, he was called an Atheist because he, too, destroyed a belief in the special six-day creation, and exposed the falsity of the divine cosmogony. When the Physician sought to alleviate the pain and suffering of Man, he was called an Atheist because he refused to accept disease as a special visitation of a vengeful God.

Religious people should ask themselves the question, "Why have atheists given us most of the greatest scholars and scientists we’ve ever known?" Or, "Why did we murder, torture and imprison scientists that were helping us understand the world in which we live?" Or, "Why did Christianity carry out the Crusades?" Or, "Why does our Koran teach us to kill the infidels?" Is it the earliest or most recent religion that deserves to be treated as true? In either case, it appears that most religions are ruled obsolete. Where does that leave most religious beliefs? Answer this question on your own. Your answer will not be graded.

We believe in living in peace with our fellow man. Without a belief in the afterlife, this life is all we have. We cherish it and are grateful for our time alive on this planet. We have a strong desire to avoid conflict. We also have a strong desire to educate our children with what we have learned during our time on this planet.

Photograph © Veer.com

(Excerpt from the Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy)

"we are disturbed not by things but by the views we take of them…"
This statement sums up for all that follows below!

• Feel appropriate sadness, irritation, and concern – rather than inappropriate depression, anger, and anxiety when we encounter an obstacle that blocks one of our goals. And these appropriate responses to life’s variations result from our rationally preferring things to go our way – rather than irrationally demanding that they do so. Any particular adversity is best seen as unfortunate, inconvenient, disadvantageous, or frustrating – as opposed to awful, horrible, terrible, or unbearable.

• See short-lived annoyances for what they are – merely temporary inconveniences. And it implores us to accept the harsh realities of the world and the more permanent inconveniences (eg. the probability that after we die, we’re actually dead) without bitterness. We should try to change everything that is in our power to change, but there are many things over which we have little or no control – and being bitter about those things is neither pragmatic nor psychologically healthy… because, for one thing, bitterness detracts from our enjoyment of life.

• Accept the "sinner" no matter how strongly we may disapprove of their "sin". We humans are fallible animals, so we often say and do foolish things. Unconditional Self-Acceptance is the key – to rate and evaluate our thoughts, feelings, and actions in relation to our goals and purposes, while refraining from rating our personhood as a whole. And it’s only fair to extend that same courtesy to others as well – Unconditional Other-Acceptance – rather than judging others as people who are intrinsically good or bad, it would be more realistic to instead judge the usefulness and ethicality of their deeds.

• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, never make the following three godlike demands of people and things – because these three musts are at the root of almost all disturbed thoughts and behaviors:
(1) musts directed at oneself ("I must perform perfectly everywhere and all the time")
(2) musts directed at others ("Other people must treat me justly and fairly at all times")
(3) musts directed at environmental or world conditions ("Things should always go my way – and nothing must ever get in my way or the whole world is completely worthless")

These practical tools can help us to live a more rational and enjoyable life. And although applying these principles in your everyday life won’t necessarily make you totally, perfectly, utterly unflappable, it will take an awful lot to get your ass flapping.

Photograph © Veer.com