Deon Barnard

Many of the people who have commented on my blogs and facebook posts have hinted or insisted that my criticism of faith is in some way hypocritical, in that Atheism itself is a faith position, or so they claim. So in my usual fashion I will attempt to turn on the lights of logic in the minds of the religious – hey, if I could be rationally born again I figure there must be hope for Christians, Jews and Muslims everywhere.

Let’s start with the term ‘Atheism’. Wikipedia has this to say –

Atheism is commonly described as the position that there are no deities.[1] It can also mean the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[2] A broader meaning is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.[3] Atheism is distinguished from theism,[4] which in its most general form is belief that at least one deity exists.[5][6]

This definition alone makes it clear that Atheism is not a faith position. Atheists don’t “believe” that there are no Gods in the way that Christians, for instance, “believe” in Jesus. Atheists don’t wake up every day having to stir up their faith in something that cannot be proven in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I’m not even sure that ‘Atheist’ should be used as a term to describe someone who doesn’t believe, or that any such terms are even necessary. Do we have a name for people who don’t believe in unicorns? Do we have a name for people who don’t believe in alien abductions? Why should people who don’t believe in Gods (an equally unlikely myth) be called anything but ‘normal’?

Even Christians are Atheists as far as Allah is concerned, in the same way that Muslims are Atheists regarding Jehovah. We don’t call these people A-Jesus’sists or A-Allah’rists because it’s what they believe rather than what they don’t believe that matters to them. Isn’t it ironic that Christians use exactly the same reasoning as Atheists in their rejection of the ‘truths’ of Mohammed or Bhudda but can’t see how their own myths fail for the same reasons (and vice versa).

Atheists don’t go around ‘believing’ anything. The moment they do they would necessarily become something other than an Atheist. If we were chatting in the kitchen and you asked me whether I believed there were Angels standing around us I would say “no”. Why? Because on glancing around the room and finding no angels I would have no logical reason to believe that they were there. If I were asked to ‘have faith’ that they were there I would immediately wonder why I shouldn’t have faith that there were invisible chocolate cakes or some other unlikely thing in the room. Why angels? Why anything? The logic of Occam’s razor dictates that I assume that the only thing in the room is what can be seen, touched tested etc. until I have sufficient evidence to make me think something else. Notice I said ‘think’ and not ‘believe’.

Atheism is also not a religion. Religion has at its core a few fundamental principles: control; censorship; forced agreement; guilt; infallibility etc. all covered in a convenient goo of fellowship, concern, belonging, music, rituals and the promise of an amazing life after death. Remember Atheists are called Atheists because of what they don’t believe, not the things they do. What do Atheists do? Who knows! It’s like asking what A-Jesus’sists or A-Allah’rists do… anything they choose to do, except believe in God. There are good Atheists (Richard Dawkins) and bad Atheists (Stalin). There are Atheists that have personal rituals (without belief) and others who don’t. There are even Atheists who go to church for any number of reasons (except belief). Atheists are not Satanists either (contrary to popular belief) – Satanists believe in God but choose to fight for the other side, so to speak – their God is Satan.

Atheists are also not by definition Skeptics or Humanists. Skeptics are people who tend to doubt any claims that are not backed by sufficient evidence – obviously Deities would fit that category among other things like homeopathy, ESP, fortune telling etc. So clearly a lot of Skeptics would consider themselves Atheists by definition, but that would simply be an aspect of their skepticism. Humanists generally take the view that we all part of the natural world and that our problems can be dealt with through rational thought rather than deferring to an unseen deity. There is no standard definition for modern humanism except that it focuses on the concerns of man and generally accepts that mankind should decide what is right or wrong for mankind. Not all Atheists are humanists and certainly not all humanists are Atheists.

There are a growing number of people around the world who consider themselves ‘freethinkers’. These people generally reject the authority of religion, tradition and other dogma on the basis of facts, science and logic. I.e. the emphasis is on FREE. Freethinkers could be Atheists, Humanists, Skeptics, Agnostics or all of these together. I am certainly an Atheist and a freethinker. I’m slightly agnostic about humanism and my personality does not entirely suit the contrariness of Skepticism, although I enjoy the company of Skeptics thoroughly.

So, to sum it up: Atheism does not require Faith. Faith is only required when you’re trying to accept as true a set of beliefs that are not backed by any reasonable evidence, logic or even common sense (like most of the Bible). A person does not require faith to believe that there is no invisible man on a throne in the sky who apparently has a name and an opinion about your choices. A person does not require faith to believe that the whole Universe was not created in 6 days, 6000 years ago. A person does not require faith to believe that children’s stories like Noah’s Ark, or Moses parting the Red Sea, are exactly that – children’s stories. A person does not require faith to believe that the religions of the world can’t all be right.

The moment any religion publically produces empirical evidence that proves their assertions to be undeniably true, I will gladly convert (to the belief, if not the religious practices of that religion) along with thousands of other Atheists all over the world.

Recent surveys and studies reveal that there are a growing number of Atheists sitting in Christian churches, and even more surprisingly in leadership positions across denominations. This is of course not because Atheists have decided it’s time to go to church, but because Christians are losing faith and remaining in church for various reasons. Here’s an example of such a study by Dan Dennet and co. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_9w8JougLQ&feature=player_embedded.

I propose that this is not a new phenomenon, but rather that times have changed and people are more honest about their positions on surveys. In times past, confessing “I don’t really believe in God anymore” could have you burned at the stake. Today the consequences are not quite as severe – or at least not in most democratic states.

The reasons Atheists remain silent about their unbelief within their communities are varied and valid. I want to go through a few of them and encourage any closet Atheist to take the plunge and protect your sanity and integrity. As an ex pastor myself I can relate to all these fears and therefore do not judge anyone who keeps up appearances for the sake of their families and churches. Here are some of the ideas that closet Atheists war with – some have to do with what they would be giving up by stepping away from religion, and others have to do with misconceptions about what being an Atheist actually means.

1. I will disappoint lots of important people in my life.

Yes you will. If you’ve been a Christian for a long time you will have a network of people, usually including your family, that are secure in the status quo of who you are in religious terms. Most, if not all of those people will be horrified or confused or saddened or angered about your decision. Many will assume that you’re just going through a phase that will pass. They will reprimand you, pray for you, plead with you and possibly even disown you. They can’t accept your choice because accepting it would mean having to question their own faith, and religion by nature censors that line of thought. People you love will be hurt and feel that your choice is a personal criticism of their own faith. You might hear things like, “So what are you saying? Are you saying I’m wrong to believe in Jesus?” Scientific or logical reasoning will often just fuel the emotion of their reaction. If it’s your own family it’s even worse, after all, who wants to disappoint their mom or dad or brother or sister? All of this is exactly why you’re still pretending, and going through the motions. I can’t tell you there is any easy way to do this, but I can say that many others have survived the experience and are living a more honest and free life as a result. In time you will rebuild your circle of friendship and support. You will wake up every day knowing that you’re not being thought-policed and that the universe is a spectacular and beautiful mystery that is slowly being unraveled through a process of rational enquiry. People will get over their disappointment and carry on with their own lives. If you’re lucky you will find others you have know from Christian circles that have walked a similar path – this is always very encouraging, but not guaranteed.

2. I don’t have any other skills. How would I survive financially?

This can be a truly frightening thought! Most people, Atheists and Christians alike, are concerned about financial security. Often the issue here is our indoctrination in the timeline myth, which leads us to believe we need to have a job, a degree, certain experience, etc. to ensure our survival. We almost have the notion that we will surely die without these things. This is a ludicrous thought. Billions survive every day outside of the timeline and have meaningful lives – in fact many of the people I know living on the timeline really struggle to find meaningfulness in the monotony of suburban bliss. I guarantee you that the skills and experience you have developed as a missionary or pastor or counselor etc. are all extremely useful in the secular world and with a little planning and effort and deursettingsvermoe, it won’t be long until you’re able to make a living from them.

3. My reputation will be destroyed and I’ll have to start again.

In the book ‘U2 by U2′ Bono says, “You don’t become a rock star unless you’ve got something missing somewhere, that is obvious to me. If you were sound of mind you could feel normal without 70 000 people a night screaming their love for you.” I could relate to this immediately! In my 20′s I needed crowds of people shouting Amen at me to feel normal – to feel like I was making a difference. Not everyone has this extreme crowd personality, but all of us enjoy our reputations. I have found even those that come across as really humble, enjoy being known as ‘really humble’, and become quite ruffled when something tarnishes that reputation. Among Christians it is very common for people to build reputations that seem morally ‘above reproach’, although I have never met anyone whose life matches that label. Let people think of you what they will. I have discovered over the last few years that being true to myself is far more fulfilling than being true to my reputation. I have also learned to feel normal with a fishing rod alone by a river, without a crowd to be seen.

4. I would be admitting that I’ve wasted many years of my life.

For me, this was the hardest part of my journey to freedom. It’s a lot like a divorce – every now and then an old photo of happy times emerges from a box somewhere and a million mixed emotions wage war in your head and heart. Nobody wants to study 5 years of engineering only to become a human resource manager. We’d all prefer to invest time into the thing that matters – anything else seems like loss. I have come to realize though that nothing that happens to us is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – they’re simply experiences that shape our minds and character and personalities and lead us to the next set of experiences. I wouldn’t be who I am now had I not gone through 14 years of Christian ministry, and why should I think any other version of myself would be a ‘better’ option? So I live in the present and enjoy the now for what it is.

5. I will lose fellowship and be completely alone.

This is a common critique Christians aim at Atheists. I recently saw this graphic and laughed out loud. Half a bean of logic will dismiss this outright, after all, why should religion have the monopoly on relationships? One positive thing I have to say for Christians is that they provide endless gatherings and opportunities to meet people and grow friendships. On the down side however, there is a tendency to only befriend people who agree with everything you say and therefore strengthen dogmatic stances and narrow viewpoints. The other night I joined up with a group called ‘Skeptics in the Pub’ and had an absolute blast. One thing about Skeptics is that they’re prone to disagreeing with just about anything you might have to say, and that is exactly what I enjoyed about the evening (other than the Guinness)! I came away with a whole lot to think about and even a few new friends. What religion you are (or are not) will not determine your ability to make friends – your attitude and participation will. If you’re looking for a free-thinking friend, hook up with me on Facebook, and I’ll introduce you to some others.

6. Without God and church my life will have no meaning.

Ah, this is a biggie! Some of my closest closet Atheist friends are scared to leave faith publically because it seems to them that at that point their lives will cease to have meaning. “But why are we here then?” and “I can’t believe relationships and beauty and memories etc. are for nothing – that it’s all over when we die. There must be something more.” These are the sorts of things I hear in conversation. These questions really need a whole article to address but there are two important things to keep in mind. Firstly, we don’t require a God for life to be meaningful. Relationships and careers and project etc. are meaningful in their own right because we make them meaningful. Why do we need a supernatural reason for something to be important or meaningful? Also, why should something be less important or meaningful because it has an end? Were my teenage romances meaningless because they ended? Certainly not! Secondly, we add value to the lives of future generations by what we do in this one. Sure, we don’t have to care about that, and many don’t, but it adds an enormous amount of meaning to my own life. For me life is full of wonder and purpose and I don’t fear death at all. I was oblivious before I was born and it didn’t inconvenience me at all – why should I be concerned about going back to that state?

I have an enormous amount of sympathy for ‘Christian’ Atheists and Agnostics who quietly plod along in the daily routine of their traditions, who force a smile when someone greets them with “God is Good!” and a lot of teeth, who listen to the blah blah of idiotic sermons week after week, and drag themselves away from an interesting project to go to cell group with their wife who they don’t want to offend. At some point the pain of your prison will have to become greater than the fear of your loss. I hope you find a way to ‘come out’ and be truly yourself!

Imagine a normal person, someone from Mars or Venus – an average middle class, church going human being that has two and a half kids, watches rugby, has picnics at the local park, and attends parents/teachers meetings and scrapbook clubs. Now imagine this person accidentally, or by some other mysterious coincidence, finds themselves at a Warhammer club somewhere in Johannesburg one night. Their first thought might be, “Oh. My. God!! What planet do these people come from??!!” And they wouldn’t be far wrong – you see, Warhammer players come from the planet Pluto, which has recently been declassified as a planet, but that suits Warhammer players down to the ground.

On Pluto the average E.Q. of people is about 12 – there are small shrubs on that planet that are more socially captivating – however, the average I.Q. is about 200. Ask them what a female g-spot is and you’re likely to be drowned in a chorus of blank stares (and wondering if you’ve stumbled across the set of ‘Village of the Damned’), but ask them the statistical probability of a five rank unit of spear elves with a standard of balance breaking a unit of witch elves with ASF and a death hag in it in one round of combat and they’ll instantly respond with percentages ranging from 15.7 to 42.3 as well as a heated debate about the pros and cons of paying for a musician.

Another puzzling phenomenon on Pluto is the incredible focus and endurance of Plutonians. These people can play five back to back games, each lasting two to three hours, and at the end of 15 solid hours of gaming interrupted by nothing but two toilet breaks, they will proceed to explain the results of every dice roll that occurred during that day to anyone willing to listen. After an hour or two of passionate recounting they will go home and sacrifice a night of sleep as their brains continue to process every move, roll and decision they made during the day, again and again. On waking the following day they are able to do it all again on nothing more than a bacon roll and a cup of coffee. Truly remarkable!

From time to time a daring Plutonian will attempt to start a conversation not related to gaming – usually when this happens there is some nervous twitching and frightened looking about. If the group feels that their status quo is not in danger of being completely devastated they will tentatively add to the pool of conversation, all the time hoping that the diversion doesn’t last too long. A typical conversation might go like this:

• So, anyone see the news about Eugene Terreblanche dying?
• Uh, yes. Hmmmph.
• Oh well, I guess he had it coming.
• Yeah. Yip. Poor guy, he had no chance.
• Nope. Got hacked by two guys with pangas.
• Fuck. That’s like an Empire captain with one wound left getting taken out by two black Orcs with extra hand weapons…
• Geez! You’re right!
• No way! Did you see how Sean took out my black Orcs with his Hellblaster!
• I hate Hellblasters… (etc)

One of the most visible signs that they come from another planet is their immunity to Venutian magic. Take a pretty Venutian to an all Martian braai for instance and she can single handedly stop all proceedings as Martians drop braai tongs, spill beer and cease conversation, completely bewitched. Take a pretty Venutian to a Plutonian event and nobody skips a beat – in fact most Plutonians are not even aware that she is present, such is their supernatural focus and cerebral distraction.

Martian expats are not always easily accepted on Pluto, but if you’re planning an extended visit any time soon, here are some tips for getting by on Pluto:

1. Read the rule books. These are Plutonian dictionaries. It’s easier to get by when you can speak Plutonian.
2. Don’t hug Plutonians! They don’t do hugs unless they’re French. (You might be able to hug their Venutian mates, but don’t push it.)
3. Tone down your enthusiasm. Plutonians are cool and reserved on the whole, unless they’re rolling 1′s or 6′s.
4. Don’t mention cheese. They don’t like cheese – especially the smelly blue kind.
5. Black T-Shirts with gothic prints are essential.
6. Paint your shit. Plutonians respect painted shit.

You will not see this article on National Geographic!

I’ve been reluctant to write this article primarily because I’m not enthusiastic about wading through a mountain of Christian “we’re praying for you” responses. The reason I write this article about my journey from Christian leadership to atheism is that I’ve had numerous people, mainly Christians, asking me on Facebook, “what happened to you?” or “how did you become so anti?” or something similar – and even though I generally point those people in the direction of my blogs, the truth is you need to read several articles to put the whole picture together; so I’ve decided to put the answer in a single blog so that I can point newcomers here when the question is asked again.

I’ll start by dismissing the first assumption that comes my way, which is that I was ‘hurt’ by someone or some church and therefore rejected God in some kind of emotional tantrum. This did not happen. Sure, there were people within the ministries I was involved in that I didn’t see eye to eye with, but on the whole I enjoyed my time in Christian ministry and enjoyed the people and communities I was involved in. I generally had good relationships with my leaders and was happy to carry out my responsibilities with enthusiasm. If I had disagreements, we talked them out. People did not chase me away from God. If I believed God actually existed I would not be as stupid as to think people were any reflection of his character. So to all you well meaning Christians who are convinced I must have had some sort of “fall out” – sorry to disappoint you.

Some people say I was ‘on fire’ for Jesus! One of the most enthusiastic Christians they ever met. That’s probably true, but not because of the ‘power of God’ or anything supernatural – simply because I’m one of the most enthusiastic ‘anythings’ you’ll ever meet – it’s called personality, and mine is extrovert, charismatic, and crowd oriented. I’d be just as enthusiastic a Muslim if I was one, but I’m not. The level of someone’s enthusiasm or charisma has nothing to do with the truth content of their beliefs. It is precisely because there are a bunch of good communicators in the church that masses of people are led to believe absolute myth. I often feel a great amount of regret for my part in so many people being so ‘sure’ of something so wrong. I also regret the amount of time I wasted on those activities for so many years – but that’s another paragraph.

Like pretty much everyone else in South Africa I was raised Christian. Christened in the Anglican church, confirmed in the Methodist church, baptized in a Pentecostal church and later worked in various denominations around the world as a missionary and pastor/speaker. Like most Christians I never doubted the truth of anything I came to believe – the Bible, the sermons, the teachings etc all became part of the foundation of who I was. Muslims were bad, Hindu’s were mysterious, Atheists were demon possessed and Jews were confused cousins. By age 20 I was set firmly on the path of expanding ‘God’s Kingdom’ to all the poor unbelievers of the ’10/40 window’ and beyond (you’ll have to Google that one). Between mission trips and preaching in the middle of Africa I was doing theological studies and reading the bible, over and over again. Later I moved into local church ministry where I led youth groups, music worship teams, taught Bible studies and preached sermons. I was a Christian fanatic that wanted to save the world for Jesus.

By the age of about 25 something new was happening in me. My youthful, unquestioning, overzealous self started to be replaced by a thinking, tolerant, more observant me. I started developing a distaste for cliché, which Christians are so prone to use when they have nothing intelligent to say. I started realizing that the average Christian really had no idea why what they believed was true, except that it was, and that was that. This was not good enough for me. I thought that maybe a revolution was required in the church to make it more practical and relevant to an emerging post modern society. I started having church services where I would put all the chairs outside or bring in a rock band to liven the place up. I had people communicating with each other in church services and sharing real problems. The congregation in Bakerton grew from 20 people to 120 in a month, but no amount of transforming the physical activities from wooden pews to electric guitars, or bible studies to prophetic healing sessions could help me shake a growing niggle in my conscience that there were some fundamental problems with everything we stood for – primarily the exclusiveness of our beliefs and the idea that God would create billions of souls only to leave the vast majority to the whim of the devil while the Christians enjoyed all sorts of ‘advantages’ in this life and the life to come primarily because they were privileged enough to be born in a Christian country. My faith was fighting with my intellect and losing. I was becoming less and less satisfied to sit around giving the same message every week to Christians and never forming loving bonds with anybody else in the world. For some time I stopped preaching and active ministry involvement, although I remained an elder in the church. During this time I sat quietly and observed. I listened to the stuff we were proclaiming and watched the lives of people. I considered the truth of what we said, and did so rationally and calmly – and as I did, the illusion started to crumble all around me. I prayed frequently during this time for wisdom and clarity.

By 2005 I had stopped ‘paid’ ministry totally and had started what felt to me to be something more genuine and honest – I started corporate training. In that year I moved up to Johannesburg to improve my marketing opportunities and during that time I visited a few churches looking for my new ‘home’ (another cliché). Wherever I went I threw my weight into supporting however I could, but as much as I loved the people I had serious issues with the facts underlying the faith. I couldn’t help but feel that it was all just an incredible waste of time and resources. I was also doing a lot of training for a very broad range of people – Christians, Muslims, Hindu’s, Jews, Agnostics and Atheists and I realized just how little I really understood any of these people. I understood what they ‘believed’ sometimes better than they did, but I had never tried to befriend non-Christians without the hidden agenda of ‘getting them saved’. I realized how frighteningly arrogant Christians can be – at least those that actually do what their scriptures suggest they should do. I also started studying Philosophy and Anthropology, and in a very short time was inspired by the beauty of logical thinking and the integrity of scientific observation, hypothesis and testing, both of which were conspicuously absent in all religions, including my own. By 2007 I had decided that even if Jehovah existed, there was no clear mandate for Sunday services and all the trappings of church life, and decided to stop looking for a local church to be part of. Shortly after that I entered an agnostic phase, because intellectually, logically, and scientifically, I simply couldn’t see how any of the facts presented by Christianity could be true – but at the same time I was reluctant to give up the faith that had consumed a large part of my life and had come to define me.

In 2009 I woke up one morning and realized that I couldn’t stay satisfied with a state of agnosticism in light of the evidence against the world’s religions. The probability that a ‘God’ exists is small, but that any of the specific ‘Gods’ of our known religions (Jesus/Allah/Ja etc) could exist as laid out in the traditions is almost nonexistent. I realized in a moment of terror and relief that I no longer believed in any God at all and that non-belief would forever change the way that I related to the thousands of people who knew the ‘radical Christian’ version of me. All my reasoning and arguments are laid out in my other articles on Religion, so I won’t cover them here.

My period of ‘Agnosticism’ was the hardest time of my life. Everything I was, everything I’d done, had been defined in Christian terms, and suddenly it just wasn’t so clear anymore. I wept many tears during that time and felt a great sense of loss. I knew I would lose friends, many friends, as well as social recognition. The other problem was that ‘Church’ was what I did best and now I would have to reinvent myself, or more accurately, rediscover myself; but at the same time there was a part of me that was evolving and growing up and becoming free – for this I was excited. As the scales of superstition and dogma began to fall away, I kept going over my entire life again and again with new understanding of what was really happening in those times when I thought I was having ‘spiritual experiences’ or seeing ‘miracles’ etc. I have also come to realize what an incredible sense of guilt and worthlessness Christians walk around with and cover these feelings up with clichés about being weak in self but strong in Christ; and how much time and resource is wasted on meaningless activities. When I was a Christian I just couldn’t see any of this because we all just hid behind a language and semantic that kept us all in check.

It is hard to describe just how free and empowered I feel since throwing off religion. There are no ghosts, no Gods, no spirits – nothing that cannot be explained. There are elements, and energy and light and other measurable forces all doing an amazing dance in a mind-shatteringly large and beautiful universe. We are a young and evolved species of mammals that individually have precious little time, only about 80 years so, to add benefit and happiness for future generations as they evolve into greater creatures. For their sakes I hope we realize the folly of war and religion and mysticism and tyranny, and turn our eyes to the stars and peace and longevity and science and reason, before we become the cause of our own extinction.

The last few months of blogging and Facebook debates have been a real roller coaster ride. The responses have ranged from amorphous confusion, to intellectually challenging, to patronising evasion, to ranting hate speech – the sum total of which is rather eye opening.

It never ceases to amaze me how emotional people get about something they didn’t invent and have no responsibility to defend, as though saying something like: “The creation myth is far less likely to have occurred than the possibility of biogenesis followed by evolution through natural selection” could be interpreted to mean: “You’re really stupid and your character is seriously flawed!!” Of course there are people who fit that description, but those traits can be found in Theists, Agnostics and Atheists alike. When I propose an idea, I am simply hoping to get some rational response with underlying reasons for why people agree or disagree – quite simple really… one would think.

I am particularly fascinated by people who say, “I’m not religious – I just love God”, or the Charismatic favourite, “It’s not about religion – it’s about relationship” – a relationship that results in weekly temple attendance, weekly bible studies, prophetic-intercessory-worship meetings, daily devotionals, blessing of homes, religious marriage-baptism-funeral ceremonies… how stupid of me to call it a religion! “Of course, anyone else that does any of that stuff is certainly religious – what we do is relationship because our God is actually real” – ah, I must have missed that very crucial piece of the puzzle…!

So in the spirit of calling apples, apples, and to settle the debate about whether or not what you’re doing is religious…

1. YOU MAY BE A RELIGIOUS FANATIC IF
   
   1. You think God cares what banners or objects you hang in your church auditorium.
   2. You thing God cares if you understand how the Trinity works.
   3. You think God favours your church above everyone else’s.
   4. You would kill for God if you really believed he was telling you to do so.
   5. You think there’s a lake of fire somewhere in the universe called ‘Hell’ where most people (except those in your church) will be spending an eternity in spirit form crying in agony and gnashing their teeth!
   6. You think there’s a calm and white place in the universe called ‘Heaven’ where God sits on a chair (possibly tired from standing) and you’ll be going there in spirit form when you die to be very blissful and sing a lot about how great God is for saving you and a few others.
   7. You believe that God has a prescribed way for people to dress and live and love and cohabitate and have sex – and it’s your way.
   8. You believe that no one should ever dare question the existence of your God or the reasons why you believe because doing so would result in a great smiting upon that individual by God, and if God’s not quick off the mark you’ll be happy to do it for him.
   9. You believe that the best way to live is by faith and not intellect. If you can believe something without evidence, it is bound to be more real than believing any silly evidence that may be presented. After all, it’s those Atheists and Scientists (spawn of Satan) that are always asking why, why, why?!!?!!?
   10. You know how to deal with sceptics on Facebook… just ignore everything they’re saying and respond with something that will move their heart like, “It’s not about religion brother, it’s about relationship”, or, “what happened to you my brother? God still loves you”, or, “I’m praying for you”. That’ll show em!!
   11. You only watch God TV, only read books from CUM bookstore and have Hillsongs playing on your radio 24 hours per day – either to keep the demons away or more probably to make sure you don’t hear or see anything that might shake your immovable faith…
   12. You feel guilty when you don’t wake up in time to get to church on Sunday.
   13. You’ve been trying to ‘save’ your husband for 10 years but he’s somehow always happier than you are.
   14. You can’t speak to non-Christians because… well… you just can’t.

    

2. YOU MAY BE A RELIGIOUS FANATIC IF you actually believe any of the following:
   
   1. That every living species of animal made its way, in pairs, to Noah’s house, and survived the journey – then somehow fitted onto a large boat and survived several weeks at sea – then left the boat and moved out into the world, previously flooded, and survived long enough to have offspring – and that every marsupial found their way (across the ocean) to Australia, not stopping anywhere along the way to inhabit any other part of the world, however no other animal decided to take that journey – and that the world’s population started from scratch again after the flood even though we know that Egypt was already in its 5^th dynasty (at least) at this time, not to mention the Minoans or Ancient Greeks or Chinese…
   2. That an all knowing, all powerful, all good, all loving God
      1. Created the devil.
      2. Licensed Joshua to perform genocidal exterminations of every living man, woman and child of at least 7 people groups.
      3. Allowed Solomon to have 1000 wives but sends modern day polygamists to hell.
      4. Destroyed two whole cities because of their sexual choices, not to mention turn an innocent woman into salt for the abominable crime of looking around.
      5. Was responsible for more killing, smiting, punishment, judgment, censorship and changing of rules than any of the most evil dictators of history, if the bible is to be believed…
      6. Answers your prayers about: your football team winning; which job to take; getting that new car; or how to forgive some poor sod who doesn’t know they did anything wrong – but can’t feed a dying child in the Sudan; or save a drowning child in Haiti; or heal a friend with AIDS – quite selective really.
   3. That the end of the world is coming soon and that all the conflict happening in Israel and the Middle East is all just God preparing to return to finally judge all the evildoers so that the good guys can get on with living forever in Heaven – and if there’s anything you can do to make it all happen a little quicker you’ll be delighted to help out. After all, who cares about all the Arabs and Muslims dying and suffering, it’s all part of God’s loving and generous plan for mankind who he made in his image.

It strikes me that it’s pretty hard to be religious and NOT be a fanatic! All the rules (of all religions) require faith-based obedience. The only way to keep from becoming a suicide bomber is to hang onto the ‘good’ bits of your religion and flatly ignore the embarrassing, illogical, insane parts.

Looking forward to your responses!

The point of this article is to highlight how billions of otherwise rational people gamble on insane odds in the area of their religious ‘faith’. Many religious people tell me that Atheists are making the gamble, because if they (Christians for instance) are wrong they ‘lose nothing’, but if we (Atheists) are wrong we ‘go to Hell’. I was a Christian, the convicted deeply sure kind – missionary, pastor – the works. I can tell every Christian that if they’re wrong (and I know they are), not only do they lose an incredible amount in terms of wasted time and personal resources, but they are accountable to humanity for terrible atrocities and ubiquitous control and manipulation of populations. If Atheists are wrong they bring a strong argument to a ‘loving God’ that they had no reason to believe and surely would not be punished for eternity for being reasonable. Let’s talk about that ‘reason’ not to believe…

Because this article is about probability and reasonable evidence I will use a casino metaphor. We’ll call it the ‘Casino Argument’. All over the world hundreds of thousands of people play slot machines at casinos. I don’t personally play because the probabilities of winning are so remote that I’d have a better chance of coming across that money by working hard, which is also more enjoyable to me than sitting on a stool and pressing a button for hours on end. Nevertheless, people keep doing it. They ‘believe’ they have a chance of winning because they have evidence that others have won – i.e. it is possible. There may be a one in a million chance of winning – insanely improbable odds – but those odds are backed by the fact that real people actually do win. We can get their addresses and verify their winnings with a bank statement or casino records. We have tangible evidence that million-dollar-winners actually exist in the world.

Now let’s say there was absolutely no evidence that anybody ever won at a particular casino. For years there was never an officially announced winner and the casino had no records of such a thing ever happening. No winner was ever published in a newspaper or announced on the TV. No-one had ever SEEN a winner. Would people keep going to that casino with one-in-a-million odds against them and no knowledge of their ever having been a winner? Probably not. A rational person, even a rational gambler, would find a casino where there was some evidence to back his faith in the machine.

But what if rumors started to circulate that a guy called ‘Moses’ (a popular South African name) had won a million dollars, but that he chose to keep it a secret and forbade the newspapers from publishing the story, and the casino conveniently ‘lost’ the records. On top of that Moses had no surname and no-one knew where he lived or how to find him. Would the ‘Moses Myth’ add weight to their belief in a win? For some it would, but for most it would make more sense to go to a casino where real people, rather than myths, won real money from time to time.

Now back to religion. The average human is not entirely stupid in my view – if I thought they were I wouldn’t bother writing these articles. On the contrary I see people making logical decisions every day. When people make decisions about moving home or personal finances or career plans etc. they use logic and reason. They weigh up the facts and go for the option that makes more logical sense. At times two options have the same weight and then they either go with feeling or preference or seek advice from someone who might tip the scales one way or another.

Why is religion exempt from this rational approach? Why do we believe ‘Moses Myths’ when there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary? Why do we hold onto something with insane odds when the odds presented by science and reason are almost undeniable? I think the reasons are similar to that of another great illogicality – love. They say love is blind and it usually is. Millions of people fall out of love every day and yet when they fall in love again they forget all the lessons learned from the previous round of insanity. Why? Because it feels good! Because we don’t want to be alone. Because we want to be acceptable and accepted. Because we need someone else to give us a reason.

Just because the benefits of feeling in love doesn’t make a ‘happily ever after’ true – so the benefits of religion (feeling good; communal acceptance; people to do things with during the week; feeling right or justified; something to stand for; etc.) don’t make the myth true. While religious people harp on about the ‘good’ that religions do for the world, they refuse to recognize how pervasively sinister the whole thing is, and more importantly, how they personally contribute to the insanity of war, death, bondage, manipulation and mind control from the warmth and safety of their prayer meetings, worship sessions and church family fêtes.

Many religious people will get personally offended by this article because, in their minds, religion, or certainly their own religion, is above reproach, question or analysis – it is simply true and requires no reasonable evidence! I do have hope however that some rational religious people, if that is in fact possible, will respond with probabilities and evidence to back up their belief and follow the rules of rational discussion they would use for any other topic.

There’s a cheesy but true cliché that goes, “If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will”. I have spent my entire life overcoming my inadequacies with self belief. Growing up as a child I had really bad acne – the kind that had other kids making jokes about the first moon on the man. I also had rounded shoulders from a scoliosis of the spine, snowy dandruff, no detectable biceps and I really sucked at ball sports like soccer, cricket and rugby, which had me aimlessly running around the field, missing passes and goals. I was always delighted when I got a glancing touch on the ball – even if I was just an obstacle in the way of a cannon-like boot from a team mate.

Despite all this I believed in myself – not in a spiritual, ‘God is on my side’ kind of way, but rather in a mathematical probability kind of way – the kind of way that had me reasoning that if I tried enough things I would finally find something I could do ‘better than average’. I ‘evolved’ through a process not too dissimilar to Darwin’s ‘Natural Selection’ whereby I gave up on the things I was clearly destined to fail at and applied more energy to the things I showed some promise for. In this process of elimination which probably started in about grade 4, I tried my hand at everything! I tried every track and field event that existed and found that although I sprinted about as fast as a giraffe running on well oiled ice, my long legs were a great advantage for hurdles, high jump, the 1500m run and the 3000m walking race for which I won a few Johannesburg boys records. I tried my hand at tumbling, ballet, choir, debating, drama, speech, rugby, soccer, cricket, chess, math & science contests, art contest and other activities – many of which I suffered humiliating failure at.

During this time of trial and error, and several embarrassing blunders I’d rather not remember, I was also finding myself, and realizing that my set of skills was unique, and that I didn’t need to be like anyone else or impress anyone else with something I was never going to be impressive with. I started to get a sense of my strengths and weaknesses and realized that I would have to use the weapons at my disposal to achieve success in my own life and not try and shoot with someone else’s gun. Today I consult… and train… and speak… and design… and cook and hundreds of other things because I still try everything in my quest to uncover all the hidden weapons in my arsenal. For everything I find I’m good at, there are five other things I suck at first – but if I don’t try I’ll never know.

I know that many people reading this article allow low self esteem to railroad their success and discovery. For you every failure is just another ‘sign’ to give up and throw in the towel. Some people are looking for anything that will back up their opinion that they’re a failure. In my journey I have learned a few things about life I’d like to share in simple terms – I hope something speaks to you:

• If you don’t believe in yourself – no one else will – really!!!
• Most people give up just before they’re about to break through.
• Everyone is the best in the world at something.
• You can do anything – you just haven’t learned how yet.
• It’s OK to have enemies. If everyone likes you, something’s wrong.
• Help other people become great and your success will follow.
• Don’t EVER be scared to ask questions. Pretending to be clever is really dumb.
• Don’t rate your successes and failures by other people’s standards. You have to live your life – not them!
• Don’t tolerate people talking down to you or dismissing your potential. Stand up for yourself.
• Don’t live other people’s dreams – live your own.
• Don’t get freaked out when people tease or ridicule you about your inadequacies, it’s just their own self hatred manifesting. Don’t ever tease other people in this way – you’re poisoning yourself.
• Try everything once before you say you can’t or that you don’t ‘like’ it.
• Understand your limitations. Maximize your strengths.
• When you fail, get over it!!! Get up, and get going again.

The Christian Bible has a scripture that goes, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free”.

I find it ironic that this scripture is often wielded in defense of that religion or simply to make them feel justified about their ‘rightness’ – as though the random use of clichés makes anything you say more accurate or truthful… after all ‘All roads lead to Rome’ so… well I’m not sure but it makes me sound clever so I’ll go with it. That said, I have to admit that I love the statement from an Atheistic perspective – and I agree that as we start reasoning, thinking and enquiring, we do find the truth and we finally become free.

Free from what? Freedom suggests that we are enslaved to something in the first place – imprisoned – bound. Christians think they are free? What are they free from? – Apparently sin and eternal damnation. Let’s put aside for a minute the fact that most Christians disagree on which activities/thoughts/actions are “sins” and which are not, or that most Christians believe we’re born ‘sinful’ whether we like it or not, despite never having ‘sinned’ before birth. And let’s not even start looking at the absurd improbability of a place called Hell, let alone the fact that nobody can agree about what it looks like or who’s going there… What really is far more difficult for me to swallow is that Christians actually believe they have the monopoly on all things right and wrong – good and bad. A frequent response to my blogs and Facbook updates is, “How would we know what right and wrong is without religion?” Let’s take the set of ‘rules’ that are most commonly agreed upon – the Ten Commandments. Are you honestly trying to tell me you think the Israelites didn’t know that murder was ‘bad’ before they got the tablets from Moses? Do we think that without Christians preaching every Sunday the whole of humanity would go off on a murderous, raping, stealing spree of carnage and destruction? Have we forgotten that religion is so often the cause of this type of behavior and not the cure?

In exchange for promises of heaven and praising God forever (another absurd concept), we give up our freedom: Freedom to challenge nonsensical doctrines; Freedom to think private thoughts without being though-policed; Freedom to decide how we want to have sex; Freedom to do what we want on a Sunday; Freedom to consider the evidence and come to our own conclusions; Freedom to read what we want – hear what we want – watch what we want. Whatever truth Christians claim to ‘know’, it has not set them free at all – it has replaced real freedom with false promises, mind control and subservience. When I look at the Christian church, I don’t see freedom – I see millions of victims and a handful of opportunists who feed off the system. Don’t even get me started with the other religions. Religion has convinced billions of people that the life they live on earth is meaningless and arbitrary compared to the eternity they will spend in their respective ‘Heavens’ – so instead of recognizing the mind blowing significance of these 70 or so years and living life fully, they spend their time ‘denying’ the world and ‘preparing’ for the end – yet another absurd concept. Why would God punish or reward you for a gazillion years of eternity based on the decisions you made in 30 years on planet Earth? Who comes up with this stuff?!

If I have 70 years to live I’m going to live it as a free man! I will not be dictated to by the ever changing whims of religious groupings or fantastical myths. I will dedicate my life to making the world a great place for my kids and their kids – because that’s what I would have wanted my forefathers to do for me. I will resist all attempts to coerce me into relinquishing my free will for promises of life after death in a place that cannot be proven, tested or found. I will neither blame God, nor the Devil for any consequence of my own decision or any random event of nature. I will decide who I have sex with and how. I will decide what I look at, listen to, taste or touch. I will not allow my life and actions be reduced to a list of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ to be judged by the self righteous. I will oppose mind control and oppression wherever I see it. This is freedom! Can you handle it?

“Success is 99 percent failure” – Soichiro Honda (Founder of Honda Motor Company).

We have all failed. We will all fail. These are undeniable truths. Most of your successes have come from how you’ve handled your failures. There are people who…

• fail and then believe they are ‘failures’ – triggering a cycle of failure in their lives.
• have suffered from some big failures and have thrown in the towel. They’re tired and have lost all hope for future success.
• deny their failures and shift the blame. These people never succeed because they never learn or grow.
• are scared of failing and so never try anything daring, anything risky, and anything big in their lives – just in case they fail in the attempt.
• believe it is a sin to fail. They have been trained to perform at all times and meet the expectations of someone else. This devolves into points 1 and 3 above.

Being scared of failure is about as clever as being afraid that you might be hit by a crashing plane on the way to work. If we keep thinking about it we’ll never leave home. In the case of the plane we push aside the fear by considering the how miniscule the probability is of that ever happening. In the case of failure we need to develop a sense of self esteem and adaptability. So what if I fail? I’ll try again, or I’ll try something else, or I’ll use the failure as a catalyst for a new plan of action.

I remember my first ever assembly as head boy. It was my role to assemble the 1000 or so students in the quadrangle and go through a list of general announcements while the teachers filed in from their morning staff meeting. I had my new flashy blazer on and a few natural stage-fright jitters. I took a deep breath and strode boldly onto stage to take my place behind the microphone at the podium. Just as my long clumsy legs approached the ‘spotlight’, my size 12 feet swept up the microphone cable and in an instant I was falling like a giant redwood among the ruins of podium, mic and cables. In that instant I had to decide what to do with my failure. Would I lie there like a rabbit in the headlights or would I get up and acknowledge that I hadn’t made a great start to my year and get on with what had to be done. I got up and joined in the applause and laughter I was receiving from the crowd – told a joke – and carried on with the announcements. I had many failures that year, but in the end I think my season as head prefect was a successful one.

Anyone who claims never to have failed is either delusional or Superman, and even Superman fails a whole bunch in the new era of comics. So what do you do when you fail? Here are some suggestions for getting over failure and moving on to success:

• Assess the situation honestly. Ask yourself why you failed. Consider which of the reasons for your failure had to do with poor decisions and which were out of your control. Be honest. Ask the opinion of someone you trust to give you perspective.
• Learn from your mistakes! If you made a poor decision – acknowledge it – and decide how you might have done it better if you could do it again.
• Don’t wallow! There is no benefit in telling yourself what a loser you are, or sitting in a dark room drowning in misery and self pity. This attitude is a failure in itself! Get up. Call a friend. Talk about it. Get it out of your system. Move on!!
• Consider who you are. You are not the sum of your failures. You are so much more! You have talents, skills, passions, dreams, gifts and attributes that are unique in the world – in fact I believe that everyone is the best in the world at something – you may just need to find out what it is.
• Get back on the horse! Leave the past where it belongs and dare to try something else. Most great achievers suffered massive failures before they discovered their success.
• Put things in perspective. Many people think they have failed because they have been conditioned to see certain things as failures that are not. For example, a man is retrenched and finds himself unable to pay the bills for a few months. Is this failure? Not at all! He hardly needs to feel ‘guilty’ about circumstances out of his control. It can become failure if he gives up hope, sleeps all day and stops looking for new opportunities – but that’s a different story.
• Plan. To get over your failures you need to plan and strategize. What’s your next step? Write it down. Discuss it with a friend. Draw pictures. Make phone calls. Send emails. Get organized.

We might not always have direct control over our successes, but we certainly have control over how we handle our failures. When you fail – and you will most certainly fail at something – exercise your will and look to your success.

In the spirit of reason, logic, communication and rationality, I am going to suggest a few reasons why people so often don’t make sense, and what they can do about their sense-less-ness. I refer to the way people engage in conversations, debates, critiques and other interactions with people where they’re trying to say something, but in fact say something else – or even worse, are trying to say something that really has nothing to do with the topic or context of the conversation.

There are several root causes for the dreaded disease of sense-less-ness:

• People don’t listen. Many people have the insanely annoying habit of listening only for gaps in the conversation so that they can continue to spew forth their out-of-context agenda at any cost. These people have no idea what anyone is talking about because they’re not engaged for the purpose of discovery or learning anything, but rather to give… and give… generously from their never-depleting resource of knowledge and oracle-like opinions. There are others in this category who simply don’t have time to both listen AND speak, so they err on the side of speaking. And then there are others still who can’t listen to you if they don’t like you – so the more offended they get, the less they hear anything you may have to say. You will never make sense until you learn to listen.
• People don’t understand or care about the rules of rational argument. This is my personal favorite! I can still handle someone who may not understand that they have broken three rules of logic in one sentence because they simply don’t have a clue what logic is or how to use it, but when someone who understands logic, insists on being illogical, for manipulative and bullying effect, I tend to lose my sense of humor. The following are NOT reasonable or logical arguments:
  • “Because I say so!”
  • “It must be true because I read it in a book”
  • “I’m fond of carrots. Some cakes have carrots in them – so I love cakes”
  • “Zulus are taxi drivers”

  It’s one thing for someone to get their argument muddled up in the heat of verbal dialogue – not everyone thinks quick on their feet – but there’s no excuse for sending an illogical email or letter which you’ve had time to think through and double check with a colleague for instance. Logic takes practice, and I have a strong conviction that all children should be taught logic and rational debating skills at school in their language classes, especially because so many kids drop mathematics as a subject in grade 10.

• People are dominated by their right or left brain. Not all systematic and logical people (left brained) make sense – mainly because they often lack in the emotional and people skills department. Often discussions only make sense in the context of both feeling (right brain) and fact (left brain). For instance, an emotional wife says something like “My whole world is crashing around me!!” Her left brained husband says “Don’t talk rubbish!” Of course, from a purely logical point of view he is correct in his assessment that his wife may be overstating the case, but he’s not connecting with the emotional truth that she feels as though she’s about to be crushed by a heavy weight. Her statement makes more ‘sense’ than his in the context of what is being discussed. Equally, an entirely right brained person might take every conversation down a rabbit hole of fantasy and feeling and ignore all rules of logic. To be truly good at problem solving you need to develop both sides of your brain and also learn to be in tune with irony and sarcasm, as most people don’t usually ‘literally’ say what they mean.
• People don’t know the difference between healthy debate and emotional warfare. All points of view that can be argued or defended are merely that – points of view. There are multitudes of people who simply cannot discuss some topics without getting ‘personally offended’, as though the topic defined them, and any disagreement is perceived as an attack on their character. Here are examples of points of view that have such people lashing back with personal attacks and irrationality:
  • “I don’t think God exists”
  • “Marriage is irrelevant today”
  • “Pornography can be healthy”
  • “Women should have the right to have an abortion”
  • “There’s nothing wrong with being gay – people have the right to have sex with anyone they like”
  • “George bush was correct to invade Iraq”
  • “The bible is not God’s word. It was written by men”

  These are the sorts of topics that cause people to switch off, stop listening and shut down – and they shouldn’t be! It’s 2010 – time to grow up and stop living in the dark ages of cultural and religious censorship.

So what can one do when they discover the early symptoms of sense-less-ness in their lives? Pray… Only kidding! Read – grow your paradigms and vocabulary which are tools for rational discussion. Learn about the language of logic (Philosophy 101). Listen! Listen to hear and understand – not to respond – then your responses will make sense. Grow your general knowledge and sense of the world. Practice – engage in debates on hot topics with people you trust and feel safe with, this will help you practice the techniques of reasonable and rational debate. And finally – don’t take everything personally – have fun talking to people, even when they disagree with you… no wait – ESPECIALLY when they disagree with you!