God & Religion: Evolutionary Opiates

Religion may be a evolutionary opiate.There is a theory (hypothesis) that the tendency to have magical beliefs may be an evolutionary niche that played a role in our evolutionary survival. Magical thinking gives people hope in an otherwise apathetic cruel world. It may have helped early human endure and cope with harsh survival hardships and statistically cruel adversities. What believers really seek to find through religion is a sense security, order, purpose. It is the hope that there is an answer to the “why” of their existence (sometimes a miserable one). They want to feel special enough for a deity to concern him/herself with their obviously insignificant lives; Insignificant from the overwhelmingly large perspective of the universe. A person’s life may affect other people, his immediate environment, in very rare occasions mankind and our planet. But outside this picoscopic blue oasis the significance of their lives is nonexistent. The universe carries on unaware of our existence.

The believer’s desire is understandable, even skeptics wonder about these things. Shit! On some level we all seek some kind of validation to our existence. Subconsciously, I delude myself with the idea that I am special. However, I’m just another very curious self-aware human; One of many of our species; not exactly the same as the rest, but not very different. These false ideas help me emotionally tussle with failure, adverse circumstances. I delude myself with the prospect of an incredibly bright successful future to motivate myself, knowing full well many of my fantasies will not come true. I could fall ill and die. I could fall victim to some life altering event. A jagged frozen blue turd can fall off and airplane and land on my throat or I could just fail miserably. There is no destiny, no guarantees. The universe has no bias towards or against me. The only guarantee is that someday I will die.

It is normal for individuals to feel like they are destined to someday enjoy glory, wealth, happiness, success, peace, pleasure, a sense of fulfillment etc. These are delusions in contrast to statistical reality. Most people don’t become wealthy, glorious, and successful. Many die young, poor, under miserable conditions; work their entire lives earning meager livings with little satisfaction. Most don’t become what they dreamed they would grow up to be. Many achieve their goals, but the satisfaction is short lived or not as pleasurable as envisioned. Many, who were on the road to glory and success, living dream lives, die before their prime. But if we were to be so blatantly honest, realistic and pessimistic with ourselves I suppose we would all be overdosing on Percocet and Valium. There is plenty to be depressed about. A little Intentional self deception helps us deal with what would otherwise be overwhelming.

A very common example of this conjuration we play with ourselves occurs when a loved one passes away. To try and cope people sometimes say things like “He gone to a better place now”, “we will see her again when Jesus comes”, “I know I’ll see him in heaven” or “She is in heaven smiling down on us”. Yet our emotions defraud us and contradict our statements. We cry and grieve like we will never see them again. Deep down we are well aware death is an end and the likelihood of ever enjoying that person’s company again is nil. This is the reason why many religions, if not all, concern themselves with an afterlife. They help believers cope with the prospect of their own mortality.

So I wonder if religion is an expression of a somewhat necessary “brain generated delusion” that evolution has provided the human species. None the less, this particular expression of an otherwise useful evolutionary niche, is past its prime in many ways, and is retarding humanities progress.

Why God is a Delusion. The basics.

This is not an end all to the question of Gods existence. This is more like a conversation starter. I will not provide any evidence that God doesn’t exist, this is as impossible as providing evidence of his existence. You can only prove existence, not the lack of.

The right question to ask when analyzing any claim is “why should I or anyone believe?”. It is not your job to refute every claim made. The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. A claim is not “true until proven false”. This is backwards. A claim is only deemed true when proven true. How could we otherwise determine truth?

The premise of my argument is that truth can only be verified by evidence. If there is no evidence to support a claim then there is no reason to believe it is true. Then the argument digresses into what constitutes evidence. What quality and quantity of evidence is sufficient to reasonably justify belief? That depends on the claim made. Is it ordinary or extraordinary in nature.
If you claim to own a dog, it would it is reasonable for me to take your word as true because it is a fairly ordinary claim and of little importance or ramifications. Dogs exist and plenty of people own them. Dogs are very easy to obtain.

However, if you claim that you own a dog that poops 24k gold pretzels on command, I may try to reserve judgment on your character or your mental health, but I would surely require a significant amount of evidence of great quality prior to believing you. I would want to see it with my two eyes, repeated over many times. I would want scientist to investigate and determine if the dog itself is producing the gold or are you abusing your dog by placing gold pretzels in its rectum. I would want scientist to explain how exactly the dog is able to defecate gold. As well as determining how in the world does he make it into the shape of a pretzel? A gold limacon evacuating canine would have great scientific ramifications and is very extraordinary in nature. This is practically unbelievable from the perspective of the human experience.

If we were to objectively judge the claim that “God exists and is the cause of all existence” by the same standards that we judged the claim of a gold pretzel defecating dog, we will likely come to the conclusion that there is more evidence for a the gold defecating dog than for God’s existence; Evidence for the existence of dogs, feces, pretzels, pretzel shaped poop and gold all exist. Evidence for god however… Nil. Nol. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nashingu.

If there is no evidence of god’s existence then the universe being his creation is equally unsubstantiated. This is why faith is the corner stone of many religions. For example, Christian dogma emphasizes faith that can move mountains. As if saying’” if you believe strong enough it will come true”. It innately disregards the importance of evidence as a means of justifying belief because its claim is not substantiated by evidence.
Because most of earth’s human population believe in deities, the claim that god exists seems ordinary. It gives the illusion that this belief is substantiated because it is perceived to be common knowledge. Therefore, the claim is treated as ordinary despite being an extraordinary one. Not much evidence, if any, is requested by people before the claim is accepted as truth. Religious belief circumvents the standard by which people normally evaluate claims.

Now as far as my general statement, “God is a delusion” refers to beliefs correlated with religion, that are unsubstantiated and or contradicted by well establish knowledge. The most common example is the bibles 7 day creation myth. It claims that all life on earth, as well as earth in its current form, was created by a god. Despite the plethora of evidence supporting scientific explanations for the evolution of earth and life (physical, geological, paleontological and biological), Christian creationist insist the creation myth is truth. If you notice most arguments against evolution merely attempt to discredit it but never provide scientific evidence for the creation myth other than quoting the bible. The closest thing to a scientific argument is intelligent design which is a merely a sophisticated version of creationism and is actually antiscientific in nature. This is merely one example of many that abound.

If someone believes a claim despite contradicting evidence it can be said he/she has a delusional belief because it is not only unsubstantiated but contrary to proven truths. People who believe in deities usually do not make habit of challenging claims by evaluating the evidence that supposedly substantiates it, and therefore they are prone to believe falsehoods or delusions.

I encourage you to ask me questions, analyze my statement, and do your own research. Question everything.

What Would Hitler Do? (WWHD?)

Do Christians ever stop and think what their beliefs imply? Take for instance the concept of original sin. According to Christian dogma, we are all condemned to burn in hell from the time of conception because of Adam’s and Eve’s sin. You are being held accountable and punished for crimes you haven’t committed. God will torture you for eternity because you’re related to Adam. Is this just? Is this moral?

If we assume God is all-good and always acts justly and morally, then genocide is also moral and just. In the Christian God’s eyes, the merciless killing of an entire race (Men, Women and infants) as punitive measure for the transgressions of one man, is moral and warranted. Imagine Hitler a moral icon. What would Hitler do (WWHD)? All Hitler would need to excuse his gruesome genocide, is one crooked Jew.

Since the Christian God is assumed to be all-knowing; he must have known that Adam would sin before creating humanity. So God was looking forward to torturing you for eternity. Not only that, he looked forward to having his only begotten son, Jesus, beaten to a pulp and crucified. His own son!!!

This Gods total apathy towards human suffering, more accurately phrased, lust for human suffering, can only be deemed as evil. To say “God is love” and “God loves you” is absurd and deceitful.

Frankly, if you get your morals from the god of the bible, you’re basically an evil piece of shit.

Atheist Response to a Christian Blog

The following was a response to a blog by a Christian at wordpress.com. The blog was a comment on an article concerning the newly built Creationist Museum (where a the creation is exhibited as per “intelligent design” theory). He had gotten upset because I made the point that the pseudo-scientific theory of “Intelligent design” is moronic. I made the point the “a man who claims to know all” is really an idiot. While a wise man admits to know very little. He thought I directly called him a idiot, though in light of the scientifically ignorant statements made on his part, it can be implied. Here is the response:

Johnathan, though I do understand I was abrasive, my intentions were noble. A wise man and moron/idiot are extreme contrasts in the same way that theist and atheist are to one another. Now, I do not believe that all theists are stupid people, as well as all atheists being bright people. There are intelligent theists with ignorant misinformed beliefs and the same can be said about atheist. I think one can be wise in some aspects and equally foolish in others.

Creationism is not science. Why? Well for one, what scientific method was used to arrive at this conclusion? Well none, if you just repeat the bible’s creation myth, but for flattery’s sake I will continue as if otherwise. In creationist theory (more along the lines of hypothesis) God is a presupposition, an assumption. The idea of God (defined as a creator) has not been reached by the convergence of empirical data. It is an assumption inherited by primitive humans who knew no other way of explaining natural phenomena. You must remember that God/gods are not unique to Judeo-Christian religions; all primitive humans seem to have utilized magical thinking in understanding their world. Greeks, the patriarchs of western philosophy were polytheist. These beliefs however, are today considered antiquated myths. I’m sure even your atheist in respects to Zeus. An assumption by nature is not scientific, Science ideally assumes nothing, and all conclusions must be supported by empirical data.

Another problem is that there is an inherent religious bias in creationism. Theist are looking for an outcome that favors belief in their deity, not seeking blindly “the truth, the whole truth, nothing but truth”( Needless to mention the obvious response to Evolutionary theory, where it’s unacceptable due to the fact that there is no acknowledgment of a deity involved in its explanation). In the scientific method one does not come to a conclusion then goes in search for supporting data. In this way a creationist train of thought differs from serious scientists. The process seems to follow an order alien to science.

“The Creation begs for a Creator”, one assumes the other (Begging the question or circular argument). This reverts back to my prior statement where a creator is assumed, except a “creation” is now the presupposition. There is no conclusive evidence that we live in a creation. The next argument I usually hear is “We didn’t ain’t come from nowhere”, or more elegantly put “everything has a beginning”. While I do agree that everything known has a beginning /origin, I don’t see the next logical conclusion being “then there must be a creator”. If so though, who created the creator? Where does this end or better put, begin? The right answer is “I don’t know”, because we don’t know at the moment. What came before the universe is speculative science at the moment (though there are some very exciting new hypotheses). This brings me to a statement you deleted. There is nothing wrong with “I don’t know” other than our need to know. But this does not excuse arbitrarily plugging in creators to the equation in place of unknown variables. If we continued to explain mysterious phenomena in this manner, as primitive people did, what would we really know? We would assume to know all, when in actuality ignorance becomes us. We would have no need to search for answers, science. Which is in actuality, was my point in saying the man who believes he is all knowing, is really the moron. This in contrast to the wise man admitting he knows very little. Thus “What do you call a man who pretends to know everything? An Idiot.” No pun intended.