Living Without God

What living without belief in a god means to me...

I didn't stop being generous when I stopped believing in Santa

It means that I value human compassion. There will be no redemption in the distant future. Each and every person needs to be responsible for improving our collective well-being. People are abused and murdered every day and we have to work to improve this situation. Those who survive the abuses heaped on them do not generally end up being better or stronger people for it, far too often they end up continuing the cycle of abuse and they need our help and compassion; first and foremost in prevention.

It means that I cannot rely on the non-existent supernatural to make everything right at some nebulous point in the future. Therefore I must take my share of responsibility for how things are now and how things will be in the future.

Where do morals come from if not from god? They come from human behavior processed by human thought. This answer should be obvious. But without god there can be no absolute right or wrong? Wrong, there is no absolute right or wrong with god. The god of the bible tried to get people to murder their own children. The god of the bible ordered the slaughter of every man, woman, and child at Jericho (Josuha 6). The god of the bible directly Murdered all the first-born of Egypt, including innocent infants. The god of the bible Murdered every man, woman, and innocent child on the planet (except Noah's family) as part of the flood. Doesn't any of that seem wrong to you? If so, why is your innate sense of right & wrong better than gods supposedly is?

There are better ways to deal with our problems.

If the Christian god existed, he has allowed billions of children to be subjected to abusive parents (emotionally and physically) and then proposes to punish those children with eternal torment once they grow up to be less than ideal human beings? Doesn't that just seem wrong to you?

Consider the alternative, that we are animals who are slowly gaining greater cognitive abilities and we're now able to look back at our history and see the evils which we have propagated on our own. We are now capable of doing better but you have to take steps to be responsible for yourself and not scapegoat your own failings onto some mythical Christ.

And we are collectively guilty today for not immediately putting a stop to many of the evils that continue. Some will take longer but there are many things that we could end today if we all say, we're just not going to take it any more (cue rock music).

For example, it is not acceptable to stone people to death. It is not acceptable to put anyone to death, however horrible of a person they have been they are a product of our own collective failure to take action. I do not propose they be allowed to roam around free, but it is just not right to kill another human being unless it is absolutely necessary to prevent them from causing immediate harm.

500 million people live in abject poverty, without access to acceptably clean water, food, and shelter. and some 3 billion people live in unacceptable conditions that no human should have to endure.

15 million children die every year of starvation but for the cost of only ten Stealth bombers, every single child that starved to death over the past 10 years could have been saved. But these children will continue to suffer and die, every year, day in and day out, until we all stand up and say 'no more'.

Another major issue we face today is that the population growth rate is alarming (despite these problems which cause unacceptable levels of suffering and death). As we begin to fix the deplorable conditions our brothers and sisters are forced to live under we must gain control over our own reproduction rates. We have to be responsible and educate people so they can make better choices for themselves and others. And under these circumstances it is morally detestable to continue to preach this nonsense that god gets irate if you use a condom (or other forms of birth control).

I would love to see a world where abortions are not necessary but human-kind has not reached that level. If you are "pro-life" and want to end abortions then you need to go about it the right way.

First and foremost, by ensuring those who are alive and suffering have proper food and health care. If you cannot do that then you are not pro-life, you are just pro-suffering.

Secondly, you need to ensure that every child has a safe and happy home to grow up in with loving parents. And you need to accomplish this with compassion, not by forcibly removing children from their parents and shoving them into foster homes where they are abused further. If you want to "fix" a broken family move in with them and show them a better way. If that is too much of your time to bother with then you are part of the problem. Our current system of child protective services in the US is utterly broken and it wreaks havoc on everyone it touches. It is not based on compassion for the child although it pretends to be so. And through the rest of the world... well, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

It is irresponsible to assume there is supernatural safety net that awaits us. This is nothing more than a boorish excuse for inaction. So please, wake up and take some action to make the world a better place.

But I Had A Personal Experience!

Why we cannot rely solely on individual memory to document events.

Remarkable false memories By Daniel Simons

I myself have personally had some pretty amazing experiences and witnessed amazing phenomena as products of meditation (and on occasion, medication). I have SEEN a golden, radiant book with letters of fire burning onto the pages (meditation), I have seen images of the future that have subsequently come to pass (lucid dreaming, meditation), and I have been 'miraculously' saved from physical harm (reality). Be they coincidences, hallucinations, lucky guesses, or who knows, maybe even some quantum process that we don't understand yet. But not a SINGLE one of those experiences is evidence for something supernatural or a soul. The dreaming brain is perfectly capable of generating PROFOUNDLY meaningful and deep, rich experiences that are indistinguishable from reality to the observer. I know this because I practiced at it for many years.

What About God

Let me be really clear here, I don't have a problem with the CONCEPT of a 'god' existing (if a 'god' exists fine -- prove it without resorting to lies, frauds, etc), but I DEMAND proof of EVERYTHING I choose to believe in -- ESPECIALLY when those things have large or profound impacts on my life. And I live as good of a life as I can, the existence or non-existence of a god has no bearing on me. I'm not perfect by any stretch but neither are any Christians and I would say I'm better than most.

Arguments that say life is too complex to just happen because of the nature of 'physics' are ridiculous because they propose that some infinitely complex and powerful agency JUST exists. They just make the problem WORSE, not better [and yes, Kalam, blah blah blah -- mental masturbation and nothing more, you cannot prove reality through logic - the axioms you use in logic are based on our imperfect OBSERVATIONS of reality]. I do believe that with extremely CAREFUL application of the scientific method we can EEK out semi-reliable knowledge of our world. But it is absolutely fraught with pitfalls.

The history of the texts used in the bible show that they are absolutely frauds, there are NO eyewitness accounts and absolutely NO contemporaneous accounts. The Testimonium Flavianum entry on Jesus is fairly clearly fraudulent and even if it wasn't it was written FAR too late and doesn't claim first hand knowledge. Where are the entries by Historians on the THOUSANDS of "Saints" risen from the dead? ZILCH. It is a LIE, a fake, and a fraud. At BEST, some of these people had ecstatic experiences and with their limited goat-herding knowledge they believed them.

For example, there is a lot of evidence that Judas of Galilee existed during this time period -- and absolutely ZERO evidence that the Jesus/Yeshua character of the bible existed. Absolutely ZERO. And interestingly, many of the things attributed to Jesus are DOCUMENTED by historians to actions of Judas of Galilee.

The synoptic gospels are all written 30+ years AFTER the alleged time of Jesus, they are all anonymous and ONLY by tradition attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. NONE are eye-witness accounts. Paul NEVER met Jesus, only claimed he saw him in what was essentially a vision. The earliest quotations from what we now call Matthew and Mark are NOTHING like the modern texts. There are THOUSANDS of errors/differences in the different versions of copies we have. We have NOT A SINGLE original autograph of ANY biblical text. We have only copies of copies of copies of copies. Yeah they are kinda sorta, mostly similar -- but then there are HUGE issues in the gospel accounts. See this video for just a FEW examples: David Fitzgerald Skepticon 3 "Examining the Existence of a Historical Jesus" (youtube).

[even if the texts CLAIMED to be eyewitness accounts there is no evidence they actually are because of the dates written]

So textually, the bible is an absolute mess. And even the more honest of the hardcore biblical scholars ADMIT that the accounts of Jesus are clearly false.

"The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed."
Albert Schweitzer(1875-1965, Nobel Prize 1952), Ph.D, Christian theologian and Dean of Theological College of Saint Thomas at the University of Strasburg
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: First Complete Edition, trans. W. Montgomery, et al., ed. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), page 478
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/

And in some cases critical passages have clearly been added to the texts later (e.g., in 2 Peter).

And claims it has been faithfully transmitted? COME ON! There are THOUSANDS of Christian sects who disagree with each other over what the passages even mean. Which ONE of those THOUSANDS have it right in every regard? Even if one of them had the right of it there would be absolutely no way to know. They disagree on MAJOR issues -- do we have Free Will or not? How do you get to Heaven? Etc It's just utterly ridiculous to suppose anything has been faithfully transmitted.

And then we come to the actual history of the 'Christian' church itself. After 1800 years of slavery, abuse, torture, murder, selling of indulgences (and yes, I know what indulgences are), misogyny, prejudice, suppression of valid scientific knowledge that was viewed as in conflict with the claims of the church, utter destruction of native CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE... it is absolutely filthy and disgusting to me to even SUGGEST that these filthy, disgustingly evil BASTARDS have anything to do with God in any way, shape or form. And they were the SOLE arbiters of 'God' for 1500 years, until the Protestant reformation -- and do not be confused, that did NOT fix anything what-so-ever so don't tell me you follow some protestant branch and that makes everything ok -- it doesn't. Every dollar you give them is a dollar spent in hatred of mankind. They should be WIPED from the face of the earth forever (peacefully I hope -- I'm not an advocate of violence).

So all we're left with is a nice metaphor and a FEW little bits of clear thinking from the bronze age like "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbor" (things I almost NEVER see any christian practicing). And these FEW nice little bits are utterly washed out by all the absolutely VILE and DISGUSTING parts of the bible (god COMMANDS genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide, COMMANDS infanticide, COMMITS genocide and infanticide, etc) -- that is NO God that I wish to be associated with, it's disgusting, vile and evil nonsense. The bible says "By their fruit you will recognize them" and you have to be fucking blind not to see the evil fruits of the Christian religion.

Deut 7: When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them...nor shew mercy unto them

And for WHAT crime are the children to be put to death? Allegedly because their parents were committing child sacrifices -- do you fail to see the ignorance of this claim?


There are certainly many very GOOD people who just happen to have fallen for the Christian lies. They are lied to so I don't hold them directly responsible but their money certainly goes to support many agendas that I view as absolutely EVIL.

Whatever you might think about God the use of the Church to deny GOVERNMENT RIGHTS GRANTED EQUALLY TO ALL (e.g., gay marriage) is absolutely DISGUSTING.

For all those reasons (and more, as you see I have MANY thoughts on the Christian religion -- my position is NOT unconsidered) I will NEVER support any Christian church (maybe if Jesus or God comes and talks me into it and even they will have a difficult time). There are MOUNTAINS of evidence they are frauds, evil, liars, and corrupted. No. Thank. You.


I see no evidence for God in the general sense, other than it seems to make some people feel better to think that others will suffer in eternal torment for their sins while the person being comforted invariable will spend their eternity in heaven, DESPITE their own sins.

On the other hand... (and let me know if you cannot use Google and need citations for any of these, I will be happy to supply them but this is already very long)

• There is LOTS of evidence that very complex chemistry happens, even in outer space!
• There is LOTS of evidence that every chemical needed for life to "happen" (and I reject using the word "by chance" here unless you can demonstrate anything in the universe is truly Random -- things happen by laws of physics -- we don't understand those ultimate laws of physics and we may never fully understand them -- but we observe consistently that things happen according to rules and not by Will).
• There is LOTS of evidence that these chemicals CAN hit a point where they being to self-replicate -- even WITHOUT the complex arrangement we have today.
• There is LOTS of evidence that these self-replicating molecules will TEND towards self-replicating RNA and with the right proteins available RNA is converted into DNA
• There is LOTS of evidence that these self-replicating RNA and DNA molecules CHANGE over time in various ways that explain ALL the variations we see today
• There is LOTS of evidence that this happened only once on earth (the possible alternative is that it happened several times but in extremely similar ways)
• There is LOTS of evidence that this CANNOT HAPPEN TODAY BECAUSE THE CHEMISTRY HAS BEEN UTTERLY CHANGED BY EARLIER LIFE -- well it could happen today but the changes are MUCH closer to zero than they were 4 billion years ago
• There is LOTS of evidence that this process involved clay, geothermal vents, ice, lipid vesicles, etc
• There is OBSERVED cases of a single-celled organism evolving multi-cellular forms -- OBSERVED, we SAW this happen
• There is LOTS of evidence in DNA that things have evolved from form to form over billions of years
• There is LOTS of evidence in fossils that MATCH the DNA evidence - the timelines MATCH, the types of mutations MATCH, the rate of mutation MATCHES

There is so much evidence for abiogenesis and evolution that it is almost inconceivable that the theory is incorrect. It is POSSIBLE that it is incorrect and MANY details are yet to be worked out, but I seriously question your credulity at believing these moronic ID/Creation people who have almost NO evidence that matches their claims. And when they stick their necks out and make a claim like the flagellum being irreducible complex they get TORN TO PIECES by the science.

There are hundreds of thousands of HARDCORE scientific, published, PEER REVIEWED papers on these topics that examine in great detail EVERY aspect we have the funds and time to investigate and they ALL align in one direction and it sure isn't Creation.

More importantly -- it is UTTERLY unimportant to me if evolutionary theory is correct or not -- science will progress, we observe, we learn more. Science has NOTHING to prove to me or you because it is YOUR OWN CLAIMS that are in question and YOUR CLAIMS are extremely lacking ANY evidence or support. I don't need science, or evolution, or abiogenesis, or physics, or the Big Bang, or ANYTHING else to REJECT your claims as ridiculous, unsupported, and UNdemonstrated.

And yes, I am 'angry' about the atrocities committed by the Christian churches over the years (and YOU should be too) -- the actions of individual Christians are on their own head -- but the church as a whole is responsible for actions commanded by the church leadership over the years in dogma, deed, Edict or order.

For just a FEW examples: Edict of Milan, Pope Innocent III said "the Jews, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord...As slaves rejected by God, in whose death they wickedly conspire, they shall by the effect of this very action, recognize themselves as the slaves of those whom Christ's death set free...", Roman Catholic Papal bull, "Cum nimis absurdum" which required Jews in Vatican controlled lands to wear badges, and be confined to ghettos, Catholic Christians who massacred of Jews in Nemirov, Polonnoye, Tulchin, Volhynia, Bar, Lvov, Crusades, Inquisitions, LIES about condoms in Africa resulting in massive unnecessary suffering and death, fighting against human rights (e.g., gay marriage), promoting poverty and suffering and the oppression of women, etc.

This is an off the cuff rant so I apologize for any errors in the text, feel free to note any corrections or make fun of me.