With Religion, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

(Why people don't give up superstitions easily)

Breaking up is certainly hard to do when it comes to religion. The price for ditching religion and leaving the comfort zone is rather steep.

They might not be able to run for certain state offices, such as that of a president or prime minister. They might get thrown out of their job, or they could be targets of sniping by other members of their profession and their social milieu.

That's not counting religion's wrath against those who forsake it: ex-communication, social exclusion, condemnation, pressure on parents and family members, death threats, and even murder. The state also gets into the act, handing down jail sentences for saying the truth.

Giving up religion could even be a kind of self-ostracism, since they won't be going to the "House of God," which also acts as a kind of social club for meeting friends and relatives there.

Further, they won't be celebrating religious holidays and visit each others' home on those occasions, disrupting the family's social life, especially the children (they love new clothes, presents and special treats that go with it.) It could be pretty hard for the kids to live without any religion to identity themselves and be like every other children.

Moreover, atheists face a host of other problems, such as answering embarrassing questions from their own parents, family members and relatives; explaining to their children why you're an atheist father, and the children's complaint about their classmates' snide remarks at the school, and so on.

And as if that's not enough, there's the culture and traditions which used to be your comfort zone slip out from under you. The skeptic may suffer from the loss of culture he's been used to, not to mention a lingering feeling of nostalgia for the rituals, ceremonies and celebrations that come with religion.

He may feel left out, especially when abroad where not only nationality and ethnicity count but also a shared faith and a social and cultural milieu in which one could move around and get help in matters such job prospects, friendship, company, protection, and even getting a spouse.

Besides, some people can't imagine navigating life on their own, or even with the help of others. They also need an emotional crutch to lean on in the form of religion, especially during bad times.

Small wonder then that people would rather keep their feelings about religion under wraps, stick to the herd and avoid stirring up a hornet's nest. Any skepticism that one may have is safely locked up in the closet. Surely, breaking up is really hard to do.

***

The origin of religion lies in man's attempt to understand himself and the mysterious and terrifying world around him. - (Me)

When all are wrong, everyone is right. -- La Lehaussee

If religion is true you don't need religion
If religion is false you don't need religion
-- (Me)

(First line based on skeptics' comment that if religion were true it won't be a religion but a fact of life, a natural scheme of things and a part of reality. Religion, after all, is just a blind faith that requires no proof whatsoever and has nothing to do with reality and facts.)

You don't question religion, you are born into it and accept it as a default culture. -- (Me)

An irony: We learn bad things from the "good books." (Me)

Religion addles your brain, and when the brain addles, reason skedaddles. (Me)

4 Facts About Atheism That People

 Don't Really Know

1. Atheism is about cleaning up the cobwebs

Yes, atheism is negative in that it cleans up the cobwebs
religions have planted in our minds. When you clean up the
house you have to sweep the dirt, dust and grime, and throw
away the rubbish.

That's exactly what atheism does to a mind filled with a lot
of religion's dangerous garbage, especially supernaturalism
which is a primitive and childish belief in the existence of
imaginary worlds and supernatural beings.

Atheism leans on reality. Atheism is innocence lost. And atheism
is genuine enlightenment. That is all there is to real atheism.

Theist -- Your atheism is mere negation.
Atheist -- Not so, except as the affirmation of any truth negates
the falsehood it contradicts.
-- Charles Bradlaugh - A Theist and an Atheist

Atheism is part of the growing up process. You grow up and grow
out of religions -- just like with fairy tales. Atheism is innocence lost
and maturity gained.

 

2. Atheism is in your face, and unavoidable

There's no getting away from atheism. That is simply because you
cannot get away from reality no matter how hard you try. Only the
dead can afford to do so. The living are forced to face the facts of
life whether they like it or not.

Nature does not allow imaginary creatures and their shenanigans to
mess around in the serious business of life. Nature is no respecter
of religions.

Small wonder then that spook worshipers turn to various mind tricks,
such as self-deception, paying lip service and going through the
motions to hang on to their superstitions.

3. Atheism sets you free from superstition

Since atheism is the affirmation and recognition of reality that is the
natural world, there's nothing in atheism that conflicts with reality, truth
and facts. 

Atheists simply turn to science to learn about our world while at the
same time laughing off the stupid, childish and silly fairy tales that the
godfellas try to foist upon them.

Thus, atheism liberates your mind from superstitious beliefs and forces
you to look at reality in the face. Atheism also frees you from the fetters
of religion, unchains your reason, and enables you to think outside the
box.

4. More people are choosing to face the truth

Through the ages, man has ignored warnings from his saner self about
the lies and deceptions of the gurus of religions. But then he couldn't do
anything about it since he was a prisoner of a way of life imposed upon
him by his parents. And, incidentally, that is how religions mainly bolster
their numbers -- through procreation.

But times and values have changed and more and more people have
gained their hard-won rights to free themselves from the shackles of a
primitive, lying and deceiving culture and way of life called religion
-- even if that means facing unpleasant consequences.

And even the "men of God" are abandoning their boogeyman in droves
now, at least in the West. Surely, conscience has caught up with the
guru's spin doctors. No more lying, deceiving and defrauding the sheeples
by the shepherds any more. They want to make an honest living for a change.

The winds of freedom from superstitions are now blowing across the world.
The powerful genie of atheism is out of the bottle and there's no way to put
it back in.

***

The desert guru raised his goblet brimming with fresh and frothy camel pee and 
shouted: Here's sand in your eyes! Millions throughout the world have become
confused and purblind ever since. (Me)

Religion is the spiritual grog of the masses. (Me)

Contrary to our regular intuition, intelligence and stupidity are not really mutually
exclusive. How's that, one may ask.

Simple. Because intelligence is about the head and higher faculties while senseless
and irrational behavior is about the heart and it's feelings and emotions -- something 
not always reconcilable.  

A truly intelligent person gives free expression to his higher and realistic faculties while trying
to rein in his undesirable feelings and emotions. (Me)

They Said It (Some selected quotations for you)

We are all murderers and prostitutes -- no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.
R. D. Laing (1927-89), British psychiatrist. The Politics of Experience, Introduction (1967).

We are only fabulous beasts, after all.
-- John Ashbery, US poet

The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know."
-- John Heywood, English writer (c.1497 – c.1580)

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves.
-- Daniel Webster, US statesman and orator

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
Lenin (1870 - 1924)

...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions.
-- Richard Dawkins

One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.
-- Joseph Campbell, author

I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose
-- Clarence Darrow, US lawyer, Scopes Monkey Trial , 1857-1938

If there were gods, how can I bear to be no god.
-- Nietzsche

If, as they say, God spanked this town
For being much too frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And save Hotaling's Whiskey?
 -- Poem on 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, in which the city's largest whiskey distillery was left unscathed

God is OK, it's some of his fan clubs that worry me.

"No efficiency. No accountability. I tell you,
 Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a universe."
  -- Calvin & Hobbes comic

The Holy Father is neither.

If you talk to God, you're praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
-- Thomas Szasz

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
-- Emo Philips, US comedian

It’s easier to seek forgiveness than ask for permission.
- Proverb

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
-- Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.
- Albert Einstein

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
-- George Orwell

"The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men
 without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
- Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (973-1057; Syrian poet)

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-- Edward Abbey

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.”
--  George Bernard Shaw quotes (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. (1856-1950)

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
-- Lillian Hellman, physicist

Trial by combat of wits in disputations has no attraction for the seeker after truth; to him the appeal to experience is the last and the only test of  the merit of an opinion, conjecture or hypothesis.
-- J. W. Mellor - Modern Inorganic Chemistry, Longman's Green & Co., 1924

Faith without facts availeth nothing.
-- J. W. Mellor

No one is fit to encounter an adversary's case successfully unless he can make it for the moment his own, unless he can put it more forcibly than the adversary could put it for himself, and take account not only of what the adversary says, but also of the best he might say if only he had chanced to think of it."
--  William Hurrell Mallock (1849 – 1923), English novelist and economics writer.

Had I been there at the Creation, I would have given a few useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
-- King Alfonso X of Castile

My creed is this:
  Happiness is the only good.
  The place to be happy is here.
  The time to be happy is now.
   The way to be happy is to make others so.
-- Robert Ingersoll

Men will wrangle for religion
Write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but -- live it.
-- Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832), English cleric and writer

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilised, become humanists.
-- Walter Lippmann

God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable.
-- Zarathustra

When all are wrong, everyone is right.
-- La Lehaussee

The Beast (2)

(Six more ugly things that perhaps you've never noticed)

You've seen six of them. Now here's half-a-dozen more to round off the dirty dozen.

1. He is a fool who argues with a fool!

Debates about God and religions are an exercise in futility. Nobody ever comes out the winner. Nobody ever changes his mind. Debates are unproductive, a waste of time, and they try your patience. They're just playing games and spewing out a lot of hot air.

So why get down to their level and engage in childish squabbles over imaginary beings -- whether it's God or Santa Klaus -- which any sane and sensible person knows do not exist.

What's more, your opponents don't really believe in such ridiculous nonsense either. They are merely trying to win arguments to defend and hang on to their crazy and superstitious lifestyle acquired since childhood. They certainly know that without the spooky, airy-fairy foundation and castles in the air, religions don't have a leg to stand on.

They are also dodgy, steering the debate towards other totally irrelevant matters -- such as morality, and whether religion is good or bad for humanity -- instead of a discussion about  what actually exists and what doesn't in the real world. The question of reality is the basic foundation of atheism and nothing else matters. So there's not even a need for arguing or discussing about religion.

2. Religions put up a false front

Don't be fooled by appearances.

Religions are two-faced. They put up a false front of unity, tolerance, and a live-and-let-live attitude while keeping their real feelings of hostility and contempt towards each other under wraps. That's because they can't beat the hell out of each other, try as they might, as history attests. So they are forced to live in uneasy peace with one another.

They hold inter-faith tete-a-tetes, desperately looking for the elusive common ground. They paper over the irreconcilable, unbridgeable differences between them, naturally. That's just to keep up appearances. But we know that behind the facade of plastic smiles, weak handshakes, pious utterances and a show of peaceful coexistence lies a hidden, suppressed feeling of confrontation, denigration and competition.

Fact is, religions are mutually exclusive. The believers are indoctrinated that there is only one true religion, not two or more. It's the pot calling the kettle black. But that's how the guru taught them and that's what they're supposed to believe.

3. Religions are really guru worship

Notice that it's the guru, a human being, rather than an invisible and immaterial spook that people really worship. Devotees even study the guru's life to ape or draw lessons from it. They also like to think with the guru's brain.

In fact, didn't they learned of their god's existence only through the guru? And isn't this dodgy "holy man" the one that taught them how to worship their big bwana in the sky through his spanking new religion?

The wily, scheming guru styles himself as the "savior," "messenger," or "teacher" and try to foist his crappy tales of the supernatural on us ordinary mortals. And the brainwashed dummies believe in everything the guru says and does! Moreover, they also believe that the guru is infallible and the possessor of some esoteric knowledge and unworldly powers.

The devotees quote the so-called holy book, enact laws based on it, and enforce them on the clueless masses. They build shrines and statues to the guru, light candles and incense, pile up flowers, recite his "virtues" in their chants, rituals and prayers, and make pilgrimages to his homeland. The guru is thus a human being who is worshiped as someone akin to a god.

Worship is an exaggerated and ritualized form of respect, flattery and meaningless talk reserved for imaginary gods and dodgy gurus alike.

 

4. People only swap religions

It is in the phenomenon of conversions that one can clearly see the definitive proof that people do not really regard their religion as "one true religion," sent from the heavens above to honor, cherish, and sacrifice their lives if necessary -- as they like to boast. Conversions give the lie to such pious and idle talk.

Instead, their religion, their god, and the well-thumbed holy book just get thrown out the window in order to usher in another equally absurd one. That means different rituals, different mantras, different beliefs, and, holy crap, an entirely different bunch of spooks. With some religions, even the spouse -- almost always the female -- is obliged to give up the religion of her birth and join the religion of her husband. So much for faith and fidelity!

Conversions can only be properly understood as a change of cultures. In fact, that's really what ALL religions are about: a culture, albeit a primitive one, and a way of life that has nothing to do with reality and a civilized and rational way of life.

Religious conversions show that our claims about having unshakeable faith in the sacred and the holy are just a hypocrisy and that there's no problem in dumping a religion by the wayside in favor of another equally ludicrous and moronic belief.

Conversions can also be described as the hair of the dog job!

5. Gurus are apostates, revisionists and copycats

The gurus and religious nutters like to brand atheists and other skeptics as apostates but did you ever thought about the fact that the gurus themselves are out-and-out apostates? Haven't they been chucking out the religions of their parents or forefathers, their community and their childhood and substituting them with plagiarized ones cobbled up by themselves?

Also, it didn't seem to occur to the devotees that their parents or forefathers were actually non-believers in the "one true religion."

Truth is, no religion is original and purely from the mind of the gurus. They're knock-offs of earlier ones or even existing religions, with added bells and whistles.

Many researchers also point out that followers and interpreters of religions are wont to add their own two cents and redact unsavory passages, thus turning religions into a hodge-podge cooked up by many authors. 

To add insult to injury, the gurus even denounce mother religions as false -- a case of biting the hand that feeds them.

6. Science is the nemesis of religions

Despite their denial they know in their heart of hearts that science and religions are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive -- with religions resorting to superstitions and guru worship while science engages in the serious and systematic pursuit of knowledge.

(Yes, knowledge is neutral, amoral and mechanical. It's the humans behind it that need a morality in order to use their knowledge for the benefit of mankind -- and not to kill people by the thousands by pushing buttons.)

Religious junkies like to stress what science doesn't know or cannot do. They then mumble either their religion's cock-and-bull stories to explain things, or make such stupid remarks as "God only knows" or "God works in mysterious ways."

Further, they assert that science is materialistic whereas religions are "spiritual" affairs, and that the two can live side by side without any problems -- a compartmentalized way of thinking. A doublethink, a dissembling and a perversion of reason to have your cake and eat it too!

Fact is, both science and religion deal with everything that exists -- life, humanity, the universe. Both of them dig into the origin of mankind. Both of them explain about what makes the world tick. Just like religion, science pokes its curious nose at anything and everything that concerns our life and existence.

The difference is that science does the hands-on job and spends a lot of time, effort and money on wresting nature's secrets while religions childishly turn to fairy tales and superstitions of the distant past.

And lest we forget: Science is a God-free zone. This fact alone speaks volumes about the pariah status of religion vis-a-vis science.

But of course, spook addicts will never get it.