Two Dudes: More Questions

The Ginx Challenge

There are a fair number of wagers made by atheists regarding the existence of gods, but I would like present my own challenge.

First off, I am a man of modest means. I cannot offer a million dollars or fabulous prizes to entice you. In fact, I have nothing to give… or do I?

Rather than offer material excess (which wouldn’t be an appropriate prize, anyway, given the nature of the challenge) I can offer myself. If you can convince me of the existence of god(s), I will join your religion.

But wait, there’s more. I’m well aware of the fact that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. So, I also am offering my own personal actions for a day to each participant. If you so desire, you can request that I do whatever you want (within reason…) for an entire day.

If you want me to sit in meditation for 14 hours straight, I’ll do it. If you want me to attend some kind of church service (excessive travel expenses paid for by you, of course, as I am still a man of modest means), I’ll do it. Anything short of violating the law, I’ll do it (and maybe I’ll even break a few laws here or there, if I feel I can get away with it… I’m talking to you Rhastafarians).

Also, if you feel there needs to be more prep time, I’m willing to make some concessions. I’m willing to read books that more than a day to finish (I am a very slow reader).

My hope is this: because I am not offering something that I stand to lose, I have no vested interest in trying to “debunk” your religion. I am not presenting this as a challenge to you, it is a challenge for me – the challenge being that as an atheist, I have never “experienced god/spirituality.” This is a personal challenge to see if I am even capable of being religious, and it is an opportunity for believers to share their faith.

This challenge is open to anyone, and I encourage anyone interested to contact me: AnythingButTheist@gmail.com

Hate Crimes

The legal definition:

Hate Crime - threats, harassment, or physical harm motivated by prejudice against one’s race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability

I’m not a biblical scholar, but I have read the Bible several times, and I’m on my second complete reading of the Quran. While I’m not an expert, I know what I’ve read, and I know this: if these books had been written today, they would be considered hate crimes.

Of course, if they had been written today, they would not be as popular as they are now, because these are by-and-large shoddily written, self-contradictory diatribes of blatant ignorance. On second thought, they would find a decent audience among Tea Partiers and Glenn Beck viewers.

Ignoring all traditions and practices that have sprung up around these “holy” books , the books themselves are guilty of promoting some of the most vile and petty ideas to ever stain the human mind. Mass genocide, the treatment of women as property, the explicit calls to kill people for being homosexual or worshipping different gods… these are the hallmarks of the Abrahamic religious texts.

This is no accident; it is by design. Most religions function not by channeling emotions like love, but by standardizing emotions like hate, and religions usually define themselves not by the good deeds they perform, but by the things they oppose.

“But Ginx, doesn’t that mean you’re a religious Atheist, since you hate religion.”

I would certainly be a religious Atheist if I hated religion, but I don’t; I hate religious people. Not all of them, mind you, nor most of them. Rather, I hate those special individuals who treat their religion not as a club they have joined, but as a club to beat others over the head. Moreover, I don’t harass or threaten religious people (let alone physically harm them or destroy their property).

There’s just something fundamentally ignorant about hating people you don’t even know. That’s why I believe in order to really hate someone, you have to get to know them first. How can you hate (or treat differently) someone based on something so inconsequential as skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or religion?

Now, I’ve heard (and even made) the argument that something like religion is a choice, and it is. But frankly, it’s not like joining most religions means that someone condones all manner of bigotry advocated by their holy book or perpetrated by unsavory elements in the flock. Moreover, there is a compelling case for homosexuality being a choice.

I don’t want to get into whether homosexuality is choice, but I would point out that I consider it a “choice” in the same way that eating sushi is a choice; anyone can do it, only some people will like it (either naturally or through acquiring a taste for it), and it disgusts some people who haven’t even tried it. However, I can honestly say that it is supreme ignorance to hate someone for being gay, as ridiculous as hating someone for liking sushi.

But I digress. I originally titled this post, “Religion is a Hate Crime,” and indeed some are. However, such a statement is itself prejudiced. Not all religions are particularly hateful, and even if they were, I can imagine one that wasn’t. In fact, I need look no further than a Christian phrase to define the concept behind it: love the sinner, hate the sin.

Oh wait, that isn’t actually Christian… Mahatma Gandhi said it. Nothing like that is written anywhere in the Bible, but that hasn’t stopped Christians from appropriating it to soften their brutish creed. I suppose Christians need to give the archaic Bible an update… but I’m sure God doesn’t mind. God loves people who take the initiative, after all: God helps those who helps themselves.

Hold on… it was actually, “The gods help those who help themselves,” until Benjamin Franklin appropriated it from Aesop and made it singular. Again, there is nothing like this in the Christian holy book. The Bible version?

Thus says the LORD,
“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind
And makes flesh his strength,
And whose heart turns away from the LORD.”
- Jeremiah 17:5

It’s no wonder Christians are so ignorant of what’s in the Bible… you can’t read this stuff and remain impressed. There is a reason is why most of the modern religions have dropped the vast majority of their bigotry: most aren’t even aware it’s there. It’s as though the Bible is a License Agreement on a piece of software, and Christians just scroll to the bottom and click “Accept” without reading it. The next thing they know, Google Chrome is installed in their brain…

But I digress, yet again. There is a certain presence of anti-hate crime sentiment. “Every crime is a hate crime,” some say, and why should we treat crimes differently if they are committed against a loved one or against a targeted stranger? This is a valid concern, and I don’t necessarily believe in special punishments. Rather, it is a distinction, a way of defining the nature of a crime. It would be tantamount to saying, “Well, should we call anything ‘rape,’ because isn’t every crime doing something against someone’s will?”

What’s more, hate crimes can actually be worse than a normal crime. Say you hurt someone because they slept with your wife. This “crime of passion” isn’t something you could spontaneously repeat, though it is a crime. Now, suppose you hurt someone because they are... a red head. You are a greater danger to society than the person who hurt someone who did something directly to them. In fact, you are potentially a danger to every person with red hair. Society has an interest in this distinction.

Photo courtesy of failblog.org, at the suggestion of the first commenter.

Furthermore, the most heinous crimes against humanity tend to be large-scale hate crimes. Genocide and other forms of systematic persecution are very real problems. They occur in the form of institutional prejudice, and there is always some component of bigotry against entire groups. And therein lies the problem: when anyone can look upon a group of people as a singular whole, they will fail to see the individuals, and it will be easier to mentally dehumanize them in order to justify abuse.

And that is the mechanism behind hate crimes which is so insidious: it makes it possible to hurt large amounts of people.

Two Dudes: Tofurkey

Music Monday: The Toadies

Music Monday: The Toadies

After two 11 hours drives, I listened to a lot of music in my car last week. And one band stuck out as being particularly obscure, yet they have several songs that will have people saying, “Oh, I love this song.”

The Toadies are a band out of Texas who have only a few studio releases, despite having formed in 1989. They broke up in 2001, though I learned just recently (while doing research for this short blurb) that they reformed and released an album in 2008, though I haven’t heard it.

Interesting note: the final video I posted, “Hell Below/Stars Above,” features the late Elliott Smith on piano.

Ending The War

Today is Thanksgiving, November 25th, and tomorrow is the biggest shopping day of the year, the official start of the bloated Christmas season: an entire month of commercialized material excess and gratuitous religious iconography, both Christian and pagan.

Manger scenes, Yule logs burning for Thor, and Santa (whoever he is, be he Saint Nick or Odin) will be common sights where ever you go for the next month, not to mention salespeople resisting the urge to pierce their eardrums with candy canes when "Frosty the Snowman" plays for the 500th time that day in the store.

There's also a spark in the air that can mean only one thing: it's the beginning of the war on Christmas. You know, that time of year when evil secular atheists foam at the mouth with anger over the celebration of the birth of Mithras Jesus.

Despite America being saturated with Christmas cheer for a solid month, Christians breathlessly throw their arms in the air with mock outrage at any complaint regarding the separation of church and state, let alone any atheist's attempt to voice their opinion or feelings on the matter.

In reality, there is no war on Christmas, only a war on secularism, and it ramps up around the holidays. It's odd, really, because Christians are always saying that this is the time of year when we should put differences aside, but apparently they really mean, "This is the time of year atheists should just shut up."

It's an odd situation, because most atheists I know celebrate Christmas. If I were a petty asshole who was part of some religion, perhaps I would recommend that people stop celebrating Christmas, or that atheists should fight legal battles over public displays of religious iconography. I just don't care, because secularism and atheism are not a religion, and I know nothing bad is going to happen just because Christians are having a good time.

There is a fundamental difference I have noticed between atheists and Christians. While not a tried and true rule, Christians get really upset when other people are having a good time doing something they don't do. They're threatened by homosexuals getting married, premarital sex, blasphemy, other religions, people without religion... all sorts of victimless "crimes."

On the other hand, I don't care. I don't care if people celebrate Christmas. In fact, I have never even heard of an atheist who believes anything even resembling the idea that Christmas should be abolished or attacked, so where does this "War on Christmas" nonsense come from?

Quite simply: Christianity just works that way. Personally, I would like to call a cease fire, but as is often the case, this was a war started by Christians, and they have no desire of ending it. But why?

Well, to understand the artificially manufactured war on the artificially manufactured holiday of Christmas, you have to get to the very heart of the psychology behind Christianity. To put it bluntly, Christians love to be victims. They need to be victims. They imagine themselves as pious, noble beacons of light shining in a dark world that is out to extinguish them. They imagine themselves hanging up on a cross alongside Jesus, suffering at the hands of brutal oppressors.

Does the fact that Christians are the overwhelming majority in America change anything? No. Does the fact that Christmas is not actually under attack make any difference? Not really. Does the idea of Christians standing up for their Lord and Savior give them a huge faith boner? You betcha.

So it's like this... Christians want a war on Christmas, and atheists don't seem to be willing to fight it. Christians need to feel oppressed (because their faith tells them they will be), while no one is stepping up to oppress them because, frankly, it's scary to stand up to such a large and violent group of crazy people. The solution? I have no idea, but I hope it involves chocolate.

Music Monday: Franz Ferdinand

I used to do top ten lists for music, but my mp3 collection was decimated after I had to reformat my computer. I figured that doesn’t mean music has to disappear from my blog. So, every Monday I’ll spotlight an artist or band I like a lot, and post a few examples of their better work.

Fair warning, I am a sucker for popular singles, so hipsters can save the criticism: I have no indie cred and I don’t want any. It looks sticky, anyway.

My favorite band that still produces new music, Franz Ferdinand is not one musician, it is the name of a Scottish alt-rock band named for the Archduke of Austria whose assassination resulted in World War I. Many people have heard and seen the music videos for “Take Me Out” and “Do You Want To,” and “No You Girls” was prominently featured on an iPod commercial.

I would describe their sound as David Bowie meets Queen in a grunge-themed disco. It’s been called “dance-punk.” While I suppose it wouldn’t sound bad being piped onto a dark club’s dance floor, I think it’s great music to drive to or have in the background while doing just about anything. A fair number of my blog posts are written while listening to them.

So, without further build-up, here’s a few Franz Ferdinand songs:

Contagious Ideas

Buddhism is arguably the most attractive religion on the planet to anyone willing to give it a chance. Sure, there are hurdles in its reality that I can’t bring myself to jump over, but there is something fundamentally different about Buddhism.

For one thing, Buddhism is the first salvation faith (though I imagine this is not what a Buddhist would call it). It was the first major world religion to really coin the idea of death as something that could be overcome by the average person. Other major religions shared this basic concept to some extent, primarily the Egyptians, but their religion was highly focused on the nobility and monarch. The average person was not mummified and prepared for their transport into a blissful afterlife.

Instead of relying heavily upon rituals of appeasement, Buddhism is a path defined by one’s personal search for knowledge. What’s more, Buddhism likely had a heavy influence on the salvation faiths that followed.

It is a fairly well known fact at this point that Eastern religion found its way into Mesopotamia centuries before the time of Jesus. It’s also accepted by most scholars that Christianity could have been influenced by Buddhism. Even devout Christians are obliged to admit that Buddhism is particularly influential in the Gnostic sects and Manichaeism.

While much of Buddhism’s influence is found in the apocrypha, some found its way into biblical canon. Both Buddha and Jesus were conceived to virgins by divine means. The birth of both was preceded by a bright light in the sky. Both abandon their lives and families to practice ascetic lives of wandering with disciples, preaching in towns and staying in the homes of strangers. While Buddha calls himself the great father with sons of light, Jesus calls himself the son of the great father and “the light of the world.” Both call their ideologies “the way” or “the path.”

The evidence continues to mount when looking at the historical iconography. Early Christianity used Buddhist imagery. The wheel with eight spokes (a symbol of the Buddhist eight-fold path) is seen in this satellite view of St. Peter’s Plaza in Vatican City:

This seems quite comparable to the Buddhist eight-spoked wheel:

But The Vatican might just be a coincidence, right? A little harder to simply write-off is this piece of graffiti from the ancient city of Ephesus:

Written next to the Greek word “ichthys,” meaning “fish,” this links early Christianity (of an undetermined sect) with Buddhist iconography.

In fact, it is likely that Jesus knew of this connection. Those three wise men who were so eager to meet him at his birth go largely unexplained in the Gospels. Why would Persian magi have any interest in a Jewish Messiah?

In all likelihood, the magi were Zoroastrians who had been in contact with Buddhists. Jesus was born roughly 500 years after some estimated years of Buddha’s death, and many believed this was when the Buddha would return. They were likely looking for Maitreya, the reincarnation of Sakyamuni (the Buddha). Would it be such a stretch to suggest these Zoroastrians, who are attested even in the canonical gospels, may have played some role in the formation of Jesus’ ideology?

There is also the small matter of many early Christians believing in reincarnation. Origen and Augustus of Hippo believed in reincarnation for a time (or their work was redacted by later theologians to appear as though they changed their opinions). Many Gnostic sects not only believed in reincarnation (Sethians and Valentinians, for example), they sought a personal need to attain the knowledge that makes one capable of transcending the material world… which is awfully reminiscent of Buddhist enlightenment.

Nor was the influence one-way. Indian religion (for example, Mahayana Buddhism) was influenced by Christian missionaries (like St. Thomas) who set up Christian communities in the East. There are even radical and unfounded (though entertaining) claims that Jesus himself travelled to India during the decades of Jesus’ life that are undocumented by the gospels.

At this point, it is important to note that some of the underlying claims are speculation, as the life (or very existence) of Jesus are subjects of extreme historical controversy, bias and tampering. Centuries of suppression make any analysis of early Christianity sketchy at best, and direct influence is difficult to prove or disprove.

It is possible that two groups of human beings experiencing the same world independently came to the same philosophical conclusions. Mathematicians in both Mayan and Indian cultures came up with the concept and representation of “zero,” and the Aztecs and Egyptians both built pyramids worlds apart. However, we know with certainty that ideas (along with goods) passed between the less disjointed ancient worlds of the East and West, compared to the largely isolated New World.

Mani is one particular figure who perfectly exemplifies an attested East-meets-West thinker. A 3rd century Iranian philosopher who wrote in Syrian Aramaic and Persian, Mani’s theology was the basis for Manichaeism.

Even later, medieval Norse mythology was heavily influenced by Eastern theology. The Norse Aesir and Buddhist/Hindu Asura are linguistically linked, as are many of the names and functions of various gods. They also share a belief in reincarnation which can be escaped (Buddhists seek Enlightenment, Norse seek to die in battle… a slight divergence).

I suppose my point is that ideas are catchy, or as the Buddha would put it: a single flame can light an infinite number of candles.

Two Dudes: Maize

Too Offensive? #1

I think this is the perfect series for me, because I think it’s okay to say anything.

So, my first “Too Offensive?”

Would it be too offensive for atheists to print up placards of people being burned at the stake, stoned, or just generally being oppressed by religion? Might as well have some slogan signs too, like, “Death Cult,” or “END CHRI$TIANITY,” or “Your God Took His Mom’s Virginity.”

Too offensive?