Atheism and Death (A Reply)

Since I spent the time to write a script for my latest video, i figure I might as well make the most of it and post it here as well.


In his latest video, Theatheistantidote, hence forth referred to as Brock, said that the problem with atheism is that it does not promise life after death. He then went on to state that there is no point in living if we are without purpose, individually or collectively. All of this is nothing new, and it is also all largely irrelevant to the truth of atheism. Atheism is not about coddling people with a raft of promises, that’s the job of religion. Really this amounts to nothing more than an appeal to consequences.
None the less, I see there are several issues with what he said that I was to address anyway.
1) No god is needed for the afterlife
Simply put, it possible to conceive of an afterlife that does not involve a THEOS, a personal god. Reality could be infinite, or there could be an infinite number of universes, in which case there would have to be one in which you “survived death” all be it in some bizarre fashion. It is also possible that there is a personal god, but one that is far more reasonable that the Christian god and judges you on how well you lived your life and not what you believed or if you knew the secret password (the secret password is: JESUS!). We could all be just thought in the mind of an impersonal super-consciousness. The list simply goes on and on, and that’s not to say that any of these things are true or even likely, but they are possible and as far as I can tell, at the least they are just as likely as any religious conception of the afterlife.
2) No one knows what happens after death
No one knows for sure what happens after death. More and more I see the need as person to stress my own believe in the virtue of Socratic ignorance, because all too often, because I am an atheist, I am mistaken by people like Broke as having a definitive answer on subjects such as death. NO ONE knows from whence the universe came and NO ONE knows what happens when we die. PERIOD! I will even admit that perhaps, as Hamlet says, there is enough suffering in this life to seriously contemplate ending it all if not for “that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns”, but I will also say that part of what makes life worthwhile is the fact that I don’t know everything, that there is still a journey of discovery to be made. Religion would only serve to rob me of that.

3) Objective purpose is conceptually impossible
Sorry Brock, that’s just the way it is. Purpose implies intention, intention implies mind, and mind = subjectivity. Objective purpose is conceptually impossible. Now I know you may try to argue that god gives us something like “ultimate purpose” but really Brock, all that amounts to is say “atheists don’t have someone with enough authority to dictate to everyone what to do”. Also, I should add that having eternal life is not the same as purpose. You could live forever purposelessly. Likewise, and perhaps more importantly, having purpose is in no way a guarantee of satisfaction, contentment, happiness, or anything else for that matter, Nor is not have purpose necessarily an impediment to any of those things. Really, the reality of religious purpose, at least nearest I can tell of the Christian world view, is that you must fulfill what God wants you to do and you have to TEACH yourself to be happy submitting to HIS plan. Living your life for a purpose someone else dictates to you hardly seems like something the religious should go out of their way to brag about.
4) This is purely an ego problem
This whole issue constitutes a problem with the Ego. Unwilling to accept that we are finite being on a small rock circling (and yes I know it is actually an ellipse) an average star which is merely one of SEXTILLIONS of stars. Unable to bare the fact that we are yet another animal destined to parish like all others, the ego of man stands up and revolts. Screaming and shaking its fist at the uncaring sky saying “I cannot continue to live if the whole universe was not created for me! How can I be just another animal?!”. The response to this is GET THE FUCK OVER OURSELF! What have you done what’s so great? Why this sense of entitlement?
5) Christianity is nihilistic to the core

In reality, if you are to take the Christian worldview seriously, and what is yet to come in the hereafter will eclipse all that is in this world, then why should you not wish for death on a daily basis and actively place yourself in situations where you are likely to be martyred? Certainly Christianity contains more than enough scriptural basis for you to “take up your cross and follow Jesus” into life endangering peril. At the least you should actually take seriously Jesus’ commands to “behold the lilies of the field”. Really, according to Christianity and the words of Jesus, the shorter your life, the better; the deeper into poverty you are, the better, because greater will your place be in the kingdom of heaven. The message of Jesus was not “Carpe Diem” it was grit your teeth and bare this life in order to gain the hereafter. It is a denial of life, not an affirmation.

6) How we should face death and life without purpose? By living the best we can here and now.
What is comes down to is that all that any of us are really able to do is make the best of what little time we have in this life. If there is any meaning to life, it can only be found through actually living it. If you live your life to the fullest and are annihilated after death, then what have lost? Well you may have wasted a few decades, but there will be nothing there of you to care or regret this lost time. If there is more after death, whatever that may be, at least you can go out with the knowledge that you lived your life the best you could, and really that all any of us really can do in the end.

Survey

035: Heavy Survey
Do humans carry souls?
Not likely

2. What about animals? .
Also not likely

3. Was September 11th a government conspiracy?
It was a conspiracy of 19 Muslim hijackers.

4. Do you believe a plane actually hit the pentagon?
all evidence points to YES

5. Are the methods the U.S. is using to handle illegal immigration satisfactory?
No

6. Do you think that John F. Kennedy's assasination was a government conspiracy?
No

7. Do you believe that the moon landing in 1969 actually happened?
Yes

8. Do you believe in ghosts?
No

9. Can subjection to violence in media lead to violence in the real world?
rarely

10. Did O.J. Simpson murder his wife?
All the evidence and statistics point to yes.

11. Do you believe going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do?
We went in on bad evidence, which due diligence would have expose as bad. however, once we were in, leaving would have done more harm than good.

12. Can we as people ever co-exist with each other peacefully?
On what scale? People do all the time, they just draw arbitrary distinction of “otherness”

13. Do you believe the course of our lives are pre-determined by unseen/unknown forces?
Yes, but not in any sort of supernatural way.

14. Has democracy made the world a better place?
Yes and no

15. Was the governments reaction to Hurricane Katrina acceptable?
No. they should have had plans to deal with a cat 5 DECADES in advance.

16. Are celebrities punished justly for crimes they commit?
rarely

17. Can we ever win the war on terror?
Wars on ideas tend to fail. The definition of terrorism is so vague WE are terrorists as well.

18. Are professional athletes over-compensated for their abilities?
Yes.
19. Did the fabled people of Atlantis ever exist?
No.

20. Are there other intelligent beings in the universe?
Seems fairly likely statistically speaking given that there are 72 sextillion stars in the visible universe and who knows how many planets.

21. Should the 1st Amendment protect all forms of expression, including those that may be offensive or harmful to others?
Yes on offensive, no on harmful.

22. Is it better for one innocent man to be sent to death or 5 murderers to be pardoned?
No.
23. In the case of homosexuality, do you believe it's sin?
Don’t believe in the concept of sin and cannot thing of any good reason to condemn it under any other moral model.

24. Can the human race ever help the planet Earth to recover from the ecological damage it has suffered?
Not totally

25. Will race/ethnicity always be an issue amongst differing peoples?
I think race is not actually the real problem. People are scared of difference and race just happens to be one of the more tangible differences between people.

26. Are you for or against abortion?
Pro-choice is not “for abortion” it is for choice.

27. Are you for or against capital punishment (i.e. the death penalty)?
I don’t think it works to deter crime and I don’t believe the state should be in the revenge business, but I am not crying for the people that get killed either.

28. Do you practice any form of religion? Why?
No. because all reason and evidence points to them being human fabrications.

29. Do you believe that the writings in the bible can still apply to today's world?
So of it can, but that’s not saying too much really. There is plenty of wisdom from all over the world and people really need to broaden their horizons beyond the bible.

30. Has religion made the world a better or worse place?
The effects of religion are manifold and likely incalculable.

I will...

eventually get off my lazy ass and make a video and write new blogs and all that jazz soon. I swear!

Summer Classes are over

Now only 20 more days till fall class. I hope to get a lot of reading, writing and other projects done in the meantime.

Idea For An Internet Show

More and more I have been thinking of creating an internet show that uses live action, action figures, Legos (with green screens to scale them to each other’s size) and picture cut outs as well as 3D animation combined together with programs like 3Ds max and After Effects to create one giant, crazy show. Part of me wishes I could make it into something serious, but in reality I know that comedy is about the only direction one can really go with such as thing. I have some action figures collecting dust in a box in a closet, as well as some Legos. I have seen a couple of things like it on YouTube, but nothing quite like I have in mind.
I am certain though that it will mainly fall into the sci-fi/fantasy genre.
My cousin and I used to make parodies of the X-Files with action figures when we were kids. I am still going over ideas in my head, but I think this is a good way to get practical practice using a whole host of programs in an integrated fashion which I may do as a side or full time job in the future.
Also, I think I could recruit people from YouTube to do the voices and even some script writing and music.

Coining a New Phrase

I am Coining a phrase, It is “transformers 2 bad” which is when a movie is so bad that it is actually great because its entertainment values comes from bashing the movie or listening to other bash it.

Fox On A Tombstone

I was out taking pictures when I spotted what I thought was a cat at first. it was in fact the fox that lives in the wooden area between this cemetery and the river. i have seen him/her at the river a couple times on my daily walk. sadly, i went to slap a mosquito and scared it away. i wish I could have got a better shot of it. I have never seen a wild animal ask in a manor I am accustomed to seeing a domesticated one act. come to think of it, I don't think I have ever seen a dog lay on top of something like this, only cats.

The Epic Plot Holes of Transformers 2

I found this highly amusing and true

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/smg-transformers-10-questions.html

I Was On The Atheist Experience

I am the first caller

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1693806

My former Teacher Arrested For Child Porn

My old study hall teacher in sixth grade was recently arrested for Child Pornography.
he actually was fairly well know in the community, as this article explains

Above is what he wrote in my year book.

YouTube - Hulu Merger

I have come to realize that Hulu merging with YouTube might make it so MORE people see my and other original content providers videos because new traffic will be brought to the site that otherwise would not have been. so maybe it will not be such a bad thing after all.

Mac Wars

Some people might tend to think that I am of the mind that getting rid of religion will get rid of war. This is simply not the case, as I realize that the reasons for war are deeply rooted in human psychology and are not simply all caused by religion. Sadly, after religion is gone, there will still be things such as nationalism and limited resources to fight over. I do think that not all hope is lost and we are simply doomed to fight each other forever though, s I think that many of the source have both common causes and common remedies, such as expanding the scope of who we see as a member of our ‘tribe’.

 

Let me tell you though what I think will be the next great, post religious war. I believe that the next great war will be between Mac and PC users. Well actually, as Mac might be construed as a religion, this might instead be the last great religious war. At any rate, In the year circa 3428, at the command of the 11th clone of the supreme leader Steve Jobs, Mac users will engage in ‘OS Jihad’ in which they will attempt to bring new meaning to the words ‘Mac world’ though an orgy of violence against all those that still use a PC. They, despite there numerical disadvantage, believing themselves to the smartest, hippest and most creative people in the world by virtue of owning Mac, will rise up and declare that all infidels that do not convert to Mac-ism and follow the prophet Jobs will be killed!

 

I am joking about all of this of course, but I wrote this after watching a documentary called “Macheads” which confirmed my belief that some people have a religious like devotion to Mac and their leader, Apple CEO Steve Jobs. There is one part of his Mac world documentary where they talk with a sense of foreboding and trepidation that is Mac goes under, they might have to one day use a PC!!! Oh, the horror!!! “We would have went into the dark ages if apple went away” is a quote from one woman. Really?! The dark ages?! You don’t say! After watching it, I wanted to take clips from the documentary and juxtapose it with clips from a video on how a cult works. The parallels at points were scary.

 

As I have stated before in a video, I have no ill-will against Mac. I do not own one because I simply do not have the money to buy one with the sort of power that I want. Nearest I can tell, Mac is a very stable platform, but you are stuck mostly with the hardware you get (IE you cannot just go out and get a new video card, except on the most expensive models) and most people seem seduced mainly by the granny-ware. Personally, having experience with audio, video, photo and 3D modeling and compositing, I am not exactly someone who needs iMovie to do all my thinking for me. The reality with software is that most of it that is worth a shit actually requires something of an effort to learn, regardless of the system you are running it on. 99.999999% of all easy to use software lacks any significant robustness. Also, I hear the point that, allegedly, all creative professionals use a Mac. However, when I look at what the industry leading software is, it is things which are cross compatible (like Photoshop) or even a couple of things that are PC only. My point is I fail to see the true substance behind all the hype, but boy do they cost a lot.

TAG is still a failure.... Sorry!

I just watched Matt Dillahunty’s debate with Matt Slick over his version of the TAG (Transcendental argument) on the Atheist Experience. While I think that Dillahunty did a much better job then the last time, when a different host debated slick, he still failed to get at the most effective and simple refutation of TAG which is to point out that the argument is circular. TAG claims that there are logical laws which are absolutes, that those absolutes are mind dependent, and then that because “our minds disagree” we cannot be the source of those absolutes, so there must be an absolute and perfect mind behind reality. The problem here is that in a hypothetical universe without minds, either these laws would not exist, and thus not be absolutes or they would exist, making them non-mental. If these laws are mental then the absolute nature of these laws is contingent on there being an absolute mind, which is what the argument attempts to conclude. Ergo, it is circular. It simply amazes me how many theists parrot this argument mindlessly none the less.

Let me also state that Matt Slick is a whinny bitch. I actually could not make it thought all 5 pars of the video without having to turn it off for wanting fly to Idaho and smack him upside the head.

The debate can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/FFreeThinker

Another atheist experience channel
http://www.youtube.com/AtheistExperience

The official Atheist Experience website
http://www.Atheist-Experience.com

Matt Slick’s version of TAG
http://www.carm.org/secular-movements/atheism/transcendental-argument-existence-god

Twitter

I have jumped on yet another bandwagon

http://twitter.com/Tooltime9901

Renewed Motivations

I have been struggling to gather motivation to write a book on the subject of atheism. As of late I simply have not felt like doing much productive. That was till this morning when I went on YouTube and watched a video someone had sent me as an “Epic Fail!” candidate by a user named Since33AD with a link on the side to the conservapedia article on atheism. Needless to say, the article was so full of bull shit that I feel a new breath of life come into my desire to write my book. Needless to say, the conservapedia article was nothing more then a totally bias and heavy handed bit of atheist bashing filled with the usual tripe.

Religulous

So, the other thing which I have been pestered about as of late is whether or not I have seen Bill Maher’s movie Religulous. I can now finally say that I have now seen it. my over-all opinion of it is that it was better then I thought. It was not a heavy handed, in your face, fuck all religious people, sort of movie one might expect it to be. I am still amazed on a daily basis how the faithful can simultaneously constantly be on the retreat when it comes to giving reason and evidence and yet at the same time be on the advance when it comes to asserting their dogma is “truth”. How is it that the human mind can call something “truth” then they cannot even give a valid reason for why it should be believed, let alone for why it actually is the truth. That said, the movie was somewhat of an edifying experience, but over all told me nothing I did not already now, and in some ways only dealt with things on a very surface level.

Venomfangx's site

People keep asking me about Venomfangx’s web site. I have to say that my basic take on it is that he created it as a place where he would be the king of the castle. This is in keeping with his narcissistic and dictatorial personality. As for the content of the site, it is filled with the sort of creationist drivel we have all come to expect from mini-Hovind.
If you are up for some masochistic lulz, the URL is www.venomfangxsite.com