When observing the complex beauty of the natural world and the diversity of plants and animals and how each species’ characteristics seem perfectly tailored for a particular lifestyle, it is not difficult to jump into conclusion that everything was designed.

I was staring at a small clover garden, admiring the structured leaf formation and how it uniformly blanketed the patch of ground when I realized that underneath the miniature canopy of clover crowns must be a thriving community of insects and other tiny creatures. And beneath the ground dozens of earthworms must be burrowing and ingesting dead matter and minute soil particles, aerating the earth and secreting humus and minerals needed by the clover plant to grow. At this point it makes sense to imagine that this nice little ecosystem must have been orchestrated by an intelligent and loving being.

However, also living underground are thousands of ants, and ants feed on earthworms. Anybody who has seen a live earthworm being attacked by red ants knows that it is a slow and very painful death, the worm writhing and rolling and curling in a feeble attempt to escape the tormenting mandibles that tear all over its soft flesh, each bite leaving behind a burning toxin. It must be one of the most excruciating deaths an animal can experience (although perhaps not as agonizingly slow as that of a caterpillar whose body is being leisurely devoured from the inside by a growing wasp larva). Even if one believes that earthworms have souls that will be eternally rewarded in Earthworm Heaven for all their sufferings under the earth, it is absurd to conceive of an intelligent designer.

A lot of people especially those living comfortably in civilized societies are not aware of this life and death struggle among the lower animals.  Most have not even considered that the burgers they’re munching came from a once-living cow whose throat was slit with a very sharp industrial blade, causing it to stumble and thrash around as its air sacs get filled with its own blood, flooding its lungs and simulating a slow drowning effect that would last several minutes until the cow finally expires. Or that the drumstick they’re nibbling came from a chicken who endured its entire short life in cramped captivity, injected with chemicals to speed up growth for early slaughter.

When you’re on top of the food chain (and blissfully oblivious to the great inconvenience you are causing those below), it is easy to be overwhelmed by a feeling of gratefulness, and there even seems to be an almost instinctive need to seek an object of gratitude. But imagine if we happened to be the cow or the chicken, or the earthworm for that matter. I wonder if gratefulness would come as naturally.

If there was an intelligent designer, animals wouldn’t have to feed on one another. Every creature would be responsible for its own photosynthesis and capable of absorbing moisture and minerals from the air. Predation and parasitism would be totally unnecessary. All animals would also be able to fly, swim, run and burrow, freely frolicking across the bounds of the earth, fully enjoying the planet’s blessings.

And maybe this is why a lot of people believe (or would like to believe) that we have a soul. Perhaps unconsciously we think of the spirit as the perfect form of existence, totally free and having no need for transport, shelter, clothing, air, water, or food. And no need for food means no need for other animals to die just so we can live. The earth would be a true paradise where no creature has to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. If there was an intelligent designer, existence wouldn’t be as cruel, and the struggle for life wouldn’t be as bloodthirsty.

Last night I watched Creation, a film about the life of Charles Darwin and how he came to write On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. What I found especially moving was his own struggle against the authority of religion and the beliefs of his religious wife. With religion he had no qualms, but the fear of breaking his wife’s heart almost stopped him from finishing his book.

In one of the scenes, Darwin described to his friend, a reverend, how some caterpillars never become butterflies because parasitic wasps lay eggs into them. Once the egg hatches, the wasp larva will feed on the flesh of the caterpillar, leisurely devouring it from the inside, killing it slowly and painfully until all that is left is an empty shell. And then the larva will emerge as an adult wasp, ready to mate and repeat the cycle. When confronted with such cruelty in nature, the reverend simply said that it was really not for them to speculate on the mind of God.

How convenient it was for the reverend to say that they had no right to second-guess God’s reasons while religion has eternally claimed to have the ‘revealed’ word of God and stubbornly holds on to this ‘revelation’ amid contradicting evidence, insisting that it is the truth.

Ah, Truth. A word not to be taken lightly. How do we know the truth? That is a very hard question, but we can ask an easier one: How do we know if something is false? For starters, we could shed the light of science into claims asserted from behind the dark shroud of ‘authority’. If there is a God, he/she/it gave us eyes to see and minds to interpret what we see. Science isn’t asking us to believe anything; science is merely asking that we open our eyes.

Religion’s authority is derived solely from what they claim to be ‘divine revelation’. Who indeed would dare question an instruction or doubt a story if it was God Himself who said it? To answer that, one simply has to look at the deists’ definition of ‘revelation’:

Revelation: The act of revealing or of making known. In the religious sense, revelation usually means divine revelation. This is meaningless, since revelation can only be revelation in the first instance. For example, if God revealed something to me, that would be a divine revelation to me. If I then told someone else what God told me it would be mere hearsay to the person I tell. If that person believed what I said, they would not be putting their trust in God, but in me, believing what I told them was actually true.

Now the lack of credibility of this hearsay revelation is not as sinister as the supposed message from God. Religion is basically telling us that this life is infinitely less significant than the next. And because of this, a lot of people fail to live their lives fully in terms of time and freedom, and some don’t get to live a life at all. And for me that is the ultimate wrong.

If religion is this influential in the Information Age, just imagine how powerful it must have been at the time of Darwin when knowledge could only be found in a few books held by an elite few. One of this few is religion of course, and they even have their own brand of ‘knowledge’ which they gladly publish and distribute.

Fortunately, science is steadily keeping up. Religion has practically let go of the literal creation story, shifting to a metaphorical translation disguised as Intelligent Design, but this too is losing ground to natural selection. Then there is the question of the origin of life itself, to which abiogenesis, although not yet a scientific theory in the strict sense, is offering plausible explanations.

With these significant grounds being conquered by science, religion is desperately holding on to its last bastion of authority in its claim for holding the truth: the origin of the cosmos. And with this I remember what Richard Dawkins said in a debate with John Lennox:

“Cosmology is waiting for its Darwin.”

I watched a youtube video titled “Imagine If All Atheists Left America” and it served as another eye opener for me. It made me realize that atheists are the most important people in America and possibly, the world! Most Nobel Prize winners, university professors, scientists, and charity founders are ATHEISTS!!! And the video showed what would happen to an atheist-free America: it will have a poor, unhealthy, unhappy economy. Come to think of it, countries with the least atheist population are those in the third world: Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and the Philippines. Then I did some research. All of this is true, and there is more. Countries with 50%+ atheist population are healthy, happy, and economically stable.

And those in history’s most evil were THEISTS!!! Not atheists but THEISTS – those who worship the Judea-Christian God. Stalin, another mass murderer, was an atheist, no doubt, but he didn’t kill for atheism. Hitler, on the other hand, killed Jews for his religion. It is utterly absurd and ridiculous to say that atheists are evil people. There are relatively few atheists in jail since most of the convicts are theists. Terrorist are Theists. Few atheists even killed anyone.

Most of the notable atheists are promoting peace; they are scientists, trying to improve humanity as we know it. It’s illogical, irrational, and ridiculous that I can’t express my feelings for those who say atheism kills society. Let’s say, what if the theists left society? Maybe less war, less stupidity, less genocides, less freaks, less trouble.

Atheists are good people, no doubt. It’s just a matter of time before you’ll realize this. I’m an atheist and I love humanity. I promote peace. Just because we don’t have God doesn’t mean that we also don’t have morals. Humans should help each other, not discriminate one another. And who do you think does the most discrimination? Think again.

Looking at Mr. Daniel Razon’s reasoning we can clearly see the problem: People like him have defined goodness as equal to God. There are two versions of this “argument” – One, Goodness and God are almost the same entity (based of some quotes from the Judeo-Christian holy scripture) and Two, As long as there is goodness and a person believes that goodness exists, there is a moral Lawgiver which is God.

According to the article I have read regarding Mr. Razon’s so-called refutation on the issue of being good without God, he used several Bible passages such as Mark 10:17-18 and Psalms 100:5. VIOLA! Case closed…or is it?

I don’t know…Is Mr. Razon pulling us by the leg? Anyway, based on his..er…refutation..Uh what makes God good? Is it his love, his mercy or his sense of justice?

And what is meant by “good”?

Goodness is an action that purposely benefits the human organism or society. That’s how I define it. The problem here is that people like Daniel Razon simply equate goodness to God, based on their holy scripture. Christian apologists like Giesler and Ravi Zacarias for example use this to connect God to the concept of a moral Lawgiver – So God must be good all the time. But is the goodness of God based on the Bible just a perception of the writer on how goodness should be defined? It seems like it. God is good because the author of a particular chapter in the Bible wants God to be good…based on his own definition of goodness. For example, God is good because He supposedly loves the people of Israel. That’s not a universal definition of “good”. Is it?

According to the authors of Mark and Psalms only God is good. But do these writers include…well those other books in the Bible that Daniel Razon didn’t include in his argument? Verses like: Numbers 31: 17-18, 1 Samuel 15:3 and Ezekiel 9: 4-7.

Tell me, are slaying infants, the elderly and women amount to goodness?

How about verses like Numbers 11: 1-2; 16:27-32, Lev. 10:1-2 and 2Kings 2: 23-24? Do they tell us of an onmi-benevolent deity that is full of mercy? Giving punishments that are shockingly harsh in comparison to the acts committed is not about mercy and justice.

Why do we need to kill innocent lambs, bulls and doves to appease a so-called good God? Surely an omni-benevolent deity does not need blood and death to calm his nerves.

There more of these found in the pages of the Old Testament which lead Thomas Paine to write, “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.” [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

How about the New Testament?
Sure the New Testament contains some good moral value…but again the whole plot of the book is about blood sacrifices. Again, why is blood and death necessary to mollify the wrath of an omni-benevolent God?

Also, there are some stories and parables that were told by Jesus that betray the concept of an omni-benevolent Father in heaven like that of Luke 19:27 and Matt. 15:22-28.

It is also interesting to note that Jesus believed that love could be commanded and that those who disagreed with him would be damned. He believed in compulsion to comply with his viewpoint. He also portrayed his Father in heaven as the instigator of a morality based on “promises and threats” – too far from Daniel Razon’s “Good God”.

In the light of the following issues, it seems that Daniel Razon and others like him have failed to prove that goodness is impossible without God. In fact it seems that goodness is independent from God.

Besides, since God’s goodness is prescribed by rewards…well it really doesn’t tell us exactly what is “good”. Goodness is good because it is good – not because of benefits or by force. People who do well solely for personal gain or to avoid personal harm are not about being “good” – it is self-interest.

There are other sources of being good…contrary to popular Christian belief. For example, there is what we call our “common moral decencies” which are deeply rooted in us for our survival as a species as Joseph Fletcher wrote based on his studies in 1979:

1.) Our highest good is survival of the human race – Our posterity has a moral claim on us for the consideration, both as to its safety and as to its biological improvement.

2.) Look at how the consequences will, on balance, effect the total human well being.

A rational person needs no God belief to understand that murder or lying is bad. It’s not because God opposes them, but because of the consequences these acts will produce in the human community. Morality as I have already said is deeply rooted in human experience for our survival.

“It has become a commonplace that, were Jesus to return today, he would be appalled at what is being done in his name…. We owe Jesus the honour of separating his genuinely original and radical ethics from the supernatural nonsense which he inevitably espoused as a man of his time…” — Richard Dawkins

Most, if not all, of the earliest Christians in ancient Rome were branded atheists because they frowned on the emperor cult and refused to recognize the Emperor as god, even as many of them were arrested, tortured and killed — so explained the documentary “Rivals of Jesus” shown in The National Geographic Channel. Indeed, these early Christians were atheists with respect to the Roman emperor/god. They were, shall we say, atheists for Jesus.

Similarly, today’s Christians (Catholics included) are atheists with respect to other gods, in the same manner that other religionists are to the Judeo-Christian god. Uniformly, we’re all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. And does anyone still pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Physicist Mano Singham wrote: “If one asks followers of one particular god why they do not believe in a different one, you will usually find that they argue much like atheists, citing the lack of evidence or reasons for belief. The difference is that they apply the rule only selectively, to rule out all other gods except their own preferred one, although there is no empirical difference between them.”

My take is that the plethora of gods ultimately makes a god-believer a theist and at the same time an atheist. If you’d not get schizoid with that…!

However, not a few religionists would argue that no matter what religion one belongs to, and even with the different name(s) for the god(s) he/she worships, these names universally refer to the same and only one God. Aha! the “only-one-God” with multiple bios and resumes? Like the three-hundred or three-persons-in-one? The latter sounds more like the sacheted Nescafe!

Additionally and not necessarily relevant, what explains the fact that Buddhism does not have a god? Would nothing or none be the same as the Abrahamic God?

Alas, we were all born without faith, without belief, without any clue whatsoever of the god-hypothesis. That’s pretty clear. It’s only when indoctrination started in varied stages of our life in various little and big ways did we begin to consciously or unconsciously adopt the faith in a non-existent god — either by having that faith slowly instilled in us or forcibly rammed down our throats.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I can’t remember in my childhood when Santa Claus and Christmas socks were first introduced to my gullible Christmas gift-excited mind; or the moment in our house when I first saw pictures and icons of Jesus’ face, as a baby in a nativity frame or as a half-naked man crucified, and somebody whispered to me saying “he’s the son of God.”

But I do remember viewing a TV program months after 9/11, wherein a little girl was asked who the man in the picture (Bin Laden) shown to her was. Without hesitation she quickly answered : Jesus Christ.

Pardon the kid, but you know the popular image of Jesus is so embedded in our minds that many geniuses could see him about anywhere: From formation of clouds to burnt marks of a toasted bread, from abstract designs of bathroom tiles and soiled urinals to worn out soles of flip-flops. Yet, a National Geographic documentary posited that Jesus may have looked like a dark-skinned, curly, beardless man resembling that of the Judas character in the rock opera/ film “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Which leads me to gutsily croon this Rice/Webber non-Christmas “carole”:

Every time I look at you I don’t understand,
Why you let the things you did get so out of hand,
You could have managed better if you had it planned,
Now why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?
If you’d come today you could have reached the whole nation,
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.

Well, Judas-looking or not, Jesus would have topped Google search hits if the net and Facebook were already in vogue when he was rumored to be walking on water or raising the dead in old Galilee or thereabouts. Conversely, if he were to show up in these parts in this post-Marcos era, he would be an admirable heroic human rights activist, and would possibly be listed as a victim of torture (read: crucified), and/or unfortunately gone desaparicido. Partly because Jesus possessed the radical ethics that Dawkins describes him to have!

Now, this question intrigued me the happy holidays through: If Jesus were to return today, would he be an atheist or agnostic, too? My gut feel: Yes, probably! You know he’s depicted in the bible to have knowledgeably debated with religious elders when he was still a kid. He was, at the very least, a maverick.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When I was still a pre-schooler, I had difficulty distinguishing Jose Rizal from Andres Bonifacio. It seemed I saw Rizal in Bonifacio and vice-versa. It was only when I was able to recognize the old (’70’s?) two-peso bill wherein, if memory serves, Bonifacio and Mabini shared “topbilling” on the banknote, and contrasting it to Rizal’s one-peso bill did I clearly define who was who. So you can say that money educates the ignorant about history, and also makes hero-worshippers out of pre-schoolers. And oh, how brilliant was that person who originally thought of deflecting money-worship toward other forms of fanaticism.

Anyway, my drift here is: To be a fan of popular celebrities or historical figures brings its own strategic reward. A fan values the admirable traits of the idol/role model and perhaps deliberately emulates his/her attributes, then most likely in the long evolutionary process, somehow those characteristics are replicated in meme-like fashion thereby enriching the human gene pool. Good to hear, thus, there are Catholic followers of Martin Luther King, non-Mason fans of Rizal, or Noranian admirers of Vilma.

But I maintain that atheist ‘fans’ of Jesus must not be confused with atheists for Jesus. You see, I’m no more than a mere Jesus fan now.

Worshipping these celebrities and historical figures as gods is altogether a delusional matter, as one Rizalista cult proves to be no ordinary fans club. Go figure that woman-member who was interviewed on TV about her interpretation of the “INRI” that’s associated with the crucified Christ: She emphatically lectured viewers that the “R” stands for “Rizal”. Arrrrr…!

As I was seeking for answers and looking for truths regarding life, I was disappointed and dismayed when I learned that some ‘truths’ are only illusions. I learned that each and every one of us has his/her own ‘truths’ which, if anyone dares to argue with, it would be a long and tiring argument for sure.

So let me tell you my story on why I became an atheist. This is my JOURNEY TO PARADISE.

I was born in a Christian family, in an environment among what they call the ‘righteous’ and the ‘chosen ones’. But I am an individual, unique, and I have my own thoughts to follow. I realized that I don’t have to follow my family’s traditions and beliefs.

For 12 years I was in a Catholic environment because my family is a devotee of Catholicism. But by the time I was able to understand this religion and belief thing, I started questioning every little detail on why people follow such traditions like the rituals done during Holy Week, the baptism of babies, the signing of the cross, the feast of the patron saints, etc., which are actually prohibited in the Bible, as far as I know.

But instead of answering my questions they just ignored me, so I started seeking for answers. A friend of mine in high school told me that if I wanted to seek for answers to my questions regarding religion and belief, I must read the Bible. And so I did. But instead of giving me answers it created more questions, until one day a neighbor came and preached about the gospel and the “Word of God” to me. She earnestly answered each and every question I had, and although I was a little skeptical of her answers, I accepted them. And because of my eagerness to really have the answers, I decided to become a born again Christian and to study more about the Word of God.

For two years I studied and adopted the beliefs of this sect I was in. I became “The Bible Man” in my family. Sometimes I argued with my mom with regards to what the Bible says about those who don’t follow what God had commanded. But that was until I realized that I was being a freak of this Jesus and his teachings.

I could no longer accept some of the lessons in science, sociology, and philosophy that I encountered in school because of this “have faith and never doubt” thing that I learned in the Bible. Fortunately, I realized I was being illogical and unreasonable at times. I realized that “truth is never told but realized”. And so I renounced my Christian faith and beliefs to grasp freethought for me to gain the real knowledge of life and the most logical and reasonable position that man can ever be.

Christianity had been my hindrance to progress and to knowing the reality and every answer to my questions. I may not know everything in life yet but what I know for sure is that there will be answers in the future. For everything here is explainable by science and logic – maybe not yet now but sooner or later we’ll have every answer that we longed to know and waited for so long. I may no longer be alive at that time, but I’m living right now for that future to come.

I no longer believe in any deity or supernatural things now that I have realized that it’s absurd to believe in such things that have no proofs of their existence. I live my life the way I want it, free from falsehood and absurdities.

But It doesn’t mean that I live a life of nothingness just because I don’t believe in a Sky-Daddy and didn’t follow what my family has taught me. I have my own thoughts and views regarding things, so no one can say I am a lifeless being. Every individual is as unique as his/her beliefs and so we can’t just say to anyone that he/she is wrong for what he/she believes, for we don’t know yet what is true.

And so if I say that God does not exist, you can’t say I am wrong just because you have things that “prove” your claim that God exists. No, God’s existence has been the long time argument of theists and atheists and yet no one has ever proven anything of it’s existence or non-existence. So I may be an agnostic as far as my position is concerned because I don’t know anything yet. But if God exists or not, I don’t care. At the least I know what I’m doing and what I’m supposed to do.

I am an Atheist. It has been one heck of a journey for me indeed. I may not have written all of it here, but this is the best thing that happened in my journey. And though my journey is not yet over, I’ll live for it now, to finish what I started, on this Journey to Paradise.

Nonsense No. 1 “It is a religion of the unbelievers of the existence of God (regardless of how they conceive God to be) that have different doctrines as to the origin of the thought that there is no God.
You are as deluded as those religious people are. “

A lot of Christians have accused atheism as a religion. I even saw a book that says atheism is a religion based on how religion is defined. However, is atheism a religion?

The Encyclopedia of Religion defines religion this way:
In summary, it may be said that almost every known culture involves the religious in the above sense of a depth dimension in cultural experiences at all levels — a push, whether ill-defined or conscious, toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience — varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture.

Daniel Dennett defines religions as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. That includes Buddhism and Jainism since both religions still believe in the existence of “devas” and demi-gods. The English word religion is clearly derived from the Latin word religio, as well as its cognates in other European languages, but the derivation of the Latin noun is uncertain. It is most commonly linked to one of two Latin verbs, religare (to bind or fasten) or relegere (to collect again, to go over again [as in reading]).

Friedrich Schleiermacher defined religion as a “feeling of absolute dependence” – absolute as contrasted to other relative feelings of dependence.

Lindbeck defines religion as, “a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought… it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments.”

Therefore, in reading these definitions, we can say that atheism is not a religion since it’s not about anything that is ultimate regarding ultimate concerns on someone’s life. The rule is quite simple: atheism is about not believing in a supernatural being which people call god or gods.

William Alston suggested that the presence of an unspecified number of any of the following characteristics would make a set of cultural practices a religion:
(1) Belief in supernatural beings (gods).
(2) A distinction between sacred and profane objects.
(3) Ritual acts focused on sacred objects.
(4) A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods.
(5) Characteristically religious feelings.
(6) Prayer and other forms of communication with gods.
(7) A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. . . .
(8) A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the world view.
(9) A social group bound together by the above.
(Alston 1967, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7. New York, 1967. pp. 141–142)

Now that we have some proper definition of what religion is, we can now start to determine if these Christians are right in declaring atheism as a religion.

Atheists do not believe in supernatural beings called “gods”and they do not consider any object as “sacred”. The term sacred in this paragraph means, “something declared or believed to be holy; devoted to a deity or some religious ceremony or use”.

They do not have any religious rituals. There are no consensuses in atheism regarding any moral code (some atheists believe on an objective morality while others believe in relative morality.) They do not have any religious feelings and they never do any prayers.

Atheism is not a worldview (a worldview is a comprehensive view of the world and human life). Atheists are not well organized, and lastly, they do not have any social groups that are bounded by everything that were mentioned above.

Nonsense number 2: Doctrines.
According to these Christians, atheism has different doctrines regarding the origin of the thought that there is no God. Therefore, it is considered as a religion.

Perhaps they think that the word doctrine is synonymous in being religious. Maybe it is best that we first define the meaning of the word “doctrine”.

Simply put it, a doctrine is a belief (or system of beliefs) accepted as authoritative by some group or school. Most dictionaries record two related senses of the term doctrine: according to the first, it is the affirmation of a truth; according to the second, it is a teaching. As the statement of a truth, doctrine has a philosophical cast; as a teaching, it suggests something more practical.

As a statement of truth, philosophical discourse reveals more variation: according to the context, “the doctrine of the equality of man” may be taken either as a precise axiom belonging to a political theory, or as a practical maxim designed to guide political action.

Based on the definition, a doctrine does not automatically connote on being “religious”. For example, Marxism or we can call it the doctrine of Marxism is not religious. Religious doctrines (I think that is what these Christians are talking about) tend to be characterized by their practical intent rather than philosophical discourses.

Christianity uses the terms doctrine and dogma to designate the teachings through which salvation is offered to all those who hear and respond. In case you don’t know, dogmas are truth revealed by God (directly and formally), which is presented by the church for belief, as revealed by God, either through a solemn decision of the extraordinary magisterium (pope or council) or through the ordinary and general magisterium of the church (episcopacy). It must be accepted through faith.

Christian doctrines for example teach proper action for a believer to enter heaven (salvation). O.k.…here are some examples of Christian doctrines: The person of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the Trinity, sin and grace and the concept of Redemption.

So now, you know the difference between doctrine and religious doctrine.

Atheists use arguments in expressing their case against theism. Those are not “doctrines”. Arguments are sequence of statements such that some of them (the premises) purport to give reason to accept another of them, the conclusion. These may be certain facts or assertions offered as evidence that something is true. It is also defined as a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating a truth or falsehood.

Nonsense Number 3: Who is the original source of the thought that there is no God?
Answer: Diagoras

Philosophers do not consider Diagoras of Melos as “Father of Atheism” (and there is no such thing as a “Father of Atheism”.)

What we have are myths regarding Diagoras’ atheism. According to stories, Diagoras was a poet and a pious man like others; but then a colleague once stole an ode from him, escaped by taking an oath that he was innocent, and afterwards made a hit with the stolen work.

So Diagoras lost his faith in the gods and wrote a treatise under the title of apopyrgizontes logoi (literally, destructive considerations) in which he attacked the belief in the gods.

If we ask, however, what is known historically about Diagoras, we are told a different tale. There existed in Athens, engraved on a bronze tablet and set up on the Acropolis, a decree of the people offering a reward of one talent to him who should kill Diagoras of Melos, and of two talents to him who should bring him alive to Athens. The reason given was that he had ridiculed the Eleusinian Mysteries.

As seen here from the eleventh-century Arab Mubashshir, from the erudite Athenian Apollodorus (ca. 180–120 BCE.):

“When he [viz., Dhiyaghuras al-mariq, or “Diagoras the heretic, or apostate”] persisted in his hypocrisy [or “dissimulation”], his unbelief and his atheism, the ruler, the wise men [or philosophers, hukama] and leaders of Attica sought to kill him. The ruler Charias the Archon [Khariyus al-Arkun (415–4)] set a price on his head [literally: “spent money,” badhal] and commanded that it should be proclaimed among the people: “He who apprehends Diagoras from Melos [Maylun] and kills him will be rewarded with a large sum [badra, traditionally a leather bag containing 1,000 or 10,000 dirhams].”

Nonsense Number 4: On the issue of sin.

Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:10
As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;

Atheist is just afraid to admit their sins to God.

Like anyone else, an atheist is not a perfect person. We all commit mistakes. Remember that atheism is not about refusing to acknowledge that we err.

But because atheists do not believe in any god or gods, they do not accept the concept of sin just like they do not accept the concept of karma. The concept of sin is pointless to an atheist. Sin is defined as the transgression of God’s law. Since atheists don’t believe in God, the concept of sin is without meaning.

Nonsense Number 5: On the issue of evolution: If we evolved from Apes as science suggests, why do we still have apes?

This is the most common question if the believer is too ignorant with evolutionary biology, taxonomy and genetics, and I’m sure a lot of Filipinos are.
First, humans and other apes are descended from a common ancestor whose population split to become two (and more) lineages.

Second, Christians assume that the theory of evolution presuppose some inbuilt tendency for advancement or progress. There is nothing in evolution that automatically makes a population ‘better’ or ‘more advance’. Humans and apes came from a common ancestry line but they diverged and became different. But one group is not superior to the other group. That’s why we still have apes in Africa.

In today’s basic knowledge of heredity, we now know that there is no barrier keeping evolutionary change within specific limits. With the discovery of DNA, we find that all living things – from the tiniest bacteria to the giant sequoia trees, to cats, whales, lizards, sponge, apes and humans, all share the same DNA information. With some other factors such as geographical isolation, natural selection and time, it is not impossible for modern apes to evolve into something else.

Nonsense Number 6: It’s so obvious that Atheists are people who live an awful life. And so they blame God for it and try very hard to tell people that he doesn’t exist. Well God gave you freewill so do what you want. And I feel sorry for you that you have to blame God for your terrible life.

Is atheism the effect of a bad childhood, a failed marriage, an unhappy life, failures, etc. etc…? Well if that’s true then there must be more atheists in this world than God believers.

But seriously, belief or non-belief is not a factor that will affect someone’s life. In fact, there are even some religions that capitalize on human misery and guilt.

What makes believers link God to happiness is this: Every human naturally desires the good, the object of happiness. God is believed to be the ultimate, self-sustaining good. Therefore, humans seek God.

If I don’t believe in the existence of elves, that will not make my life unhappy. That’s the same with god belief. Not believing in a God doesn’t affect my life. If I believe in evolution, that will not make my life sad and miserable.

Happiness, contentment and peace of mind are up to you and no one else can do it for you. But speaking of atheism, it is not against happiness and love; it is against the idea that happiness and love can only be achieved in the afterlife – when you’re already dead.

In atheism there is no God to think for you, to guarantee your happiness and to save you. These are all the sole responsibility of human beings. If you want knowledge, you must think for yourself. If you want success, you must work. If you want happiness, you must strive to achieve it. For those who rely on a god, this is a terrifying prospect, but for an atheist, it is an exhilarating challenge. As David Ramsey Steele have said, “Atheism is like a clean water supply: very elementary and purely negative. It doesn’t tell us how to conduct our personal lives or how to organize our social order. But then despite first impressions, neither does theism.”

So if a God believer attempts to defeat atheism by using emotionalism he accomplishes nothing aside from revealing his disdain for an atheist’s ability to think.

Nonsense Number 7: You don’t believe in God, so you believe in nothing.
Atheism is without belief in a god or gods, NOT ‘without belief’. Contrary to popular (theist) belief, an atheist can believe in almost anything. Atheists only agree with fellow atheists in the issue against theism. Other than that it’s every man for himself.

Some atheists are communists while others defend capitalism. Some are against religion while others are neutral on the issue. Some are relativists, humanists, objectivists, feminists, compatibilists…all those “ists” and “isms” on the list!

There are honest atheists, thieves, neurotic atheists philanthropists, nationalists, psychotics, rapists or “tatlo dyes” (dime a dozen) atheists.

We have some friendly atheists, grumpy old atheists who call other atheists as “morons”. We have gay atheists and atheists suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The only thing incompatible with atheism is theism.

Nonsense Number 8: Obviously, there must be a Prime Mover since something cannot start from nothing? Just like in Newton’s Law of Inertia, nothing can move unless there is an outside force that will move that thing.

Newton’s first law of motion is that property of matter which manifests itself as a resistance to any change in the motion of a body. Thus when no external force is acting, a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion continues moving in a straight line with uniform speed.

So I really don’t know why this Christian used this law as an example to illustrate the Prime Mover. There’s nothing in Newton’s first law that says a body always starts at rest. It said that if there is no external force, matter will continue moving. If the object is at rest it will stay at rest until an external force acts on it.

So how will you prove to me that everything in this universe started at rest? Atoms are always moving, aren’t they? Remember that the Newtonian laws are valid only for all mechanical problems not involving speeds comparable to the speed of light and not involving atomic or subatomic particles.

Nonsense Number 9: Something started from nothing.

Why is nothing always a default position? Nothing is nothing…if “nothing” has something on it to start with, then that is not “nothing”. What is the property of “nothing”? Is it hard to imagine that there has always been something? That we don’t have to begin with nothing? Energy for example is something that wasn’t created. Maybe everything started at that. Believers believe that something started with something and this ‘something’ is God. Then, why is there God rather than nothing?

In today’s modern cosmology and physics, something is more natural than ‘nothing’.

But suppose we accept that nothing is the natural state of affairs. Is it impossible that something came from nothing? There are a lot of examples that simple systems of particles are unstable and undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures. Since ‘nothing’ is quite simple, it is very unstable. So it is very normal for ‘nothing’ to undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something without any supernatural agent, as Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek suggested.

Nonsense number 10: Atheism is a worldview.

According to Christian apologist Razi Zacharias, atheism is a worldview (See: Can Man Live Without God p. 17). But what is a worldview anyway?

Personally speaking I think a worldview is how you see the world. It is the concoction of a person’s philosophy, ideas, ideology, knowledge, understanding and conviction in describing the universe. Others think that it’s how a person perceives reality. Whatever way a person describes it, generally speaking a worldview is how a person interprets his universe.

Sigmund Freud defines it as … an intellectual construction which solves all the problems of our existence uniformly on the basis of one overriding hypothesis, which, accordingly, leaves no question unanswered and in which everything that interests us finds its fixed place.

James W. Sire, defines world view as
… a set of presuppositions … which we hold … about the makeup of our world.

So to put it together, a worldview is the set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of reality that ground and influence a person’s perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing. Simple isn’t it?

Worldview includes the following:
• epistemology: beliefs about the nature and sources of knowledge;
• metaphysics: beliefs about the ultimate nature of Reality;
• cosmology: beliefs about the origins and nature of the universe, life, and especially Man;
• teleology: beliefs about the meaning and purpose of the universe, its inanimate elements, and its inhabitants;
• theology: beliefs about the existence and nature of God;
• anthropology: beliefs about the nature and purpose of Man in general, and oneself in particular;
• axiology: beliefs about the nature of value, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong.
(From Hunter Mead’s Types and Problems of Philosophy)

We already have an idea of what a worldview is; now we’re going to see if atheism fits the bill.

According to Christian philosopher Ronald Nash, a worldview consists of five major topics: God, reality, knowledge, morality and humankind. Now does atheism entails any belief about epistemology, ethics or humankind? No it doesn’t. The problem lies when a god-believer thinks that any worldview that has atheism in it is an “atheistic world view”. When a believer thinks a certain philosophy or rationalization excludes his god he automatically places the whole thing in a can and places a large label on it which spells “ATHEISM”. That’s because most religious believers err in believing that worldview and doctrine are synonymous, and they really consider atheism as Satan’s doctrine. A good example of this is the Theory of Evolution. Most believers consider evolution is atheistic because it is deemed to be a materialist’s version of how life was created without God (which is unfortunately incorrect since evolution is about the development of life, not the creation of life). Yet there are some believers who are quite comfortable with evolution (mostly the Roman Catholics).

Now let us elaborate the issues. On the issue of ethics – atheism does not logically necessitate any theory of ethics. In that department, any atheist can believe any theory of ethics he thinks is correct. As they always say, an atheist can even develop his personal moral code. He can be a nihilist, a relativist, an objectivist, or a mixture of all of those “ists” in the dictionary for all he cares, as long as such theory doesn’t conform to any theological interpretation. Also atheists vary in the belief of morality. Some non-believers like Sam Harris and Paul Kurtz believe in absolute morals while there are atheists out there who believe in relative morality.

It is also the same with the sense of meaning (teleology). I personally believe that an individual creates his own meaning in life. That is my own belief…but it doesn’t reflect my atheism. Not every atheist that I know agrees to that, and they even say that my outlook in life is more of a Satanist than an atheist. For some, the meaning of life depends on how society perceives it, yet we are atheists.

Another good example is philosophy. Majority of Filipino atheists are Marxists. They are also into dialectic materialism. But there are also atheists who are into Utilitarianism. We also have existentialists (they say majority of those into existentialism are members of UPAC – U.P. Atheist Circle) atheists and those into Wittgenstein’s “Ordinary Language Philosophy”. Shucks! I have even met a non-believer who is totally into some kind of irrational version of rationalism. Speaking of metaphysics, atheists also seem to be diverse in this concern. There are materialist atheists, spiritual atheists, ethical atheists, rationalist atheists, objectivist atheists, and so on. There are even some who declare themselves as Christian atheists! (Hmmmm…sounds like an oxy-moron? Whatever…) Personally, I am a little Hegelian when it comes to the Theory of Knowledge. But atheism has nothing to do with my epistemology. I just like how Hegel dismantles Kant’s “ding-an-sich”. When it comes to the philosophical explanation of morality, I believe it came from reason just like Immanuel Kant.

In the issue of truth, some atheists are defending the correspondence theory of truth while others are still into John Dewey’s pragmatism. Hmmmm are there agnostic atheists?

In the concept of cosmology…wow! Here a lot of atheists seem to ride on different boats! Majority believes in a scientific explanation…or should I say a more natural explanation of origins. Yet you will be surprised that there are non-believers who believe in Zacharias Sitchin’s “12 planets”. You know…that theory that say we were created by intelligent alien life forms from Planet Nebiru! Oh yeah! There are also those who believe that the universe is just a part of other universes – or should I say, multiverse.

And who says all atheists are the same in matters of theology? We say that Buddhists are atheist in some sense…just because they don’t believe in an anthropomorphic, personal god. But how about when it comes to other god-concepts? Some Filipino atheists declare themselves as pantheists or deists. Some even say they are atheists because they don’t believe in the Bible. Speaking of god and religion, atheists also differ on the issue of religion and science vs. religion. To some atheists, we must destroy religion, yet there are atheists who are passive on the subject. Some atheists believe religion and science must not mix together yet others believe in NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magistrate).

Now how can I picture this? Hmmmmmm….ok, I can exemplify worldview and atheism to a fruit salad (Yummy…since we are nearing Christmas season). Anyway, let’s say a banana is a part…an ingredient of a delicious fruit salad, yet a banana is not a fruit salad. That’s the same with atheism. Atheism is about not believing in a god or gods – right? It may be an influence to some of the subjects that complete a worldview, but that doesn’t make a whole worldview. It may be a part of an explanation of why an atheist is an objectivist, a rationalist or a relativist. But that doesn’t make atheism a complete justification why he considers that the world operates that way. A worldview must contain the whole element to make it coherent and livable.

When I was young I always watched this cartoon about Dick Dastardly and his dog Muttley. I think the title was “Stop that Pigeon”. In one of its episodes, Dick hired a guru named “Swami” to help them capture the pigeon. What really happened was a disaster. Speaking of swamis and gurus, these guys always try their best to project themselves as wise men especially in the issues of spiritualism, a spiritual leader that can be asked for different spiritual questions. Well…that was what I thought.

Enter Mr. Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (whew! That was a long name…) also known as Jagat Guru or Mr. Cris Buttler. Like other known guru, Mr. Guru is a master of cocktail drinks, eagerly combining Christian and Hindu mythology to create a new exhilarating swig of a new cult, mixing Jesus and Krishna to create another intoxicant eagerly consumed by a drunken believer. Well personally I really don’t give a damn about this cult leader…until I have read one of his literature.

In a booklet sold in local bookstore entitled Dead Friend, YOU ARE NOT GOD (Copyright by SCIENCE OF IDENTITY INSTITUTE), Mr. Guru tackled the impersonalist philosophy. They are those people who think that we are god or a part of this god or that god forgot he is god or whatever – I really don’t care too much of this impersonalist’s claims. What strikes me the most in this booklet is that Mr. Guru started to include atheism in his subject. He and his cohorts accused atheism as impersonalism in disguise.

Now here’s what I feel. I think yoga, chants and idleness disguised as meditation were already overused by other cult authors so Mr. Guru started to think of another tactic to sell his cocktail cult and that is by talking about topics that are too alien to him. That’s why he started to use atheism as an issue to sell his guru booklets.

Let us look at his claims – According to Mr. Guru, “…The impersonalist philosophy leads to atheism and materialism.” Now how on Earth can a person who thinks he is god become an atheist? An atheist is a person that doesn’t believe in a god –PERIOD! If a person doesn’t believe in a god that doesn’t mean he imagines himself as a god. If a person thinks he is god then technically god exists – which is he, and therefore he is now a theist.

In Jagat Guru’s explanation ( page 28) he said that “to equate the living entity with God is to deny the existence of God. For there to be a master, there must be a servant. If you equate the servant to the master, the master is no longer a master. To equate the soul with the Supreme Soul is to say there is no Supreme Soul.” But the explanation doesn’t justify the reason why impersonalism becomes atheism. In the first place, if the person thinks he is the Supreme Soul, the concept of Supreme Soul does not cease to exist; it just changes. An impersonalist merely changed the property of the Supreme Soul. An atheist doesn’t believe in the existence of the so-called supreme soul. That is very elementary, Mr. Guru. Haven’t you thought about that?

Guru continues: “…atheism denies the glories of the Supreme Lord (Page 28).” Again how can we deny something that doesn’t exist? If we use the word “deny” that means this so-called supreme lord has always existed. The problem is that Mr Guru cannot even tell me what lord he is talking about: Jesus is Lord, Krishna is Lord, gambling lord, drug lord, Lord Darth Vader, Lord of the Rings? What? Before you claim that someone is being denied, you have to establish its existence first.

Mr. Guru thinks that atheism will lead to materialism and talk about “super materialism.” Now what the hell is this “super materialism”? Another of Mr. Guru’s concoctions I suppose. We see how Mr. Guru tries to talk about things he really doesn’t understand. Well, if his booklet is aimed for those uninformed nincompoops out there then I will close my case. But when you try selling your garbage in bookstores then there’s a chance it can be found by the learned few.

A materialist can be an atheist but not all atheists are materialists. A materialist (or physicalist) is a person that believes matter is the only source of reality; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. But the concept of reality is still debatable even with fellow atheists. I have seen and talked to other atheists who have strong tendencies towards rationalism. So there are some atheists out there who are rationalists, and rationalism is the exact opposite of what materialism stands for. Materialism is not about being selfish. It has nothing to do about believing that you are god. A materialist doesn’t believe he is in the center of the universe or that he created everyone. No, that is not materialism. He just doesn’t believe in the existence of the “meta-physical”. Materialism and atheism will not cause the destruction of our civilized society as what Mr. Jagat Guru claims (page 34). That is a very long shot. Just look at traditional Buddhism. Is this Jagat Guru’s tactics, to scare the wits of his readers using their ignorance in order for them to believe his so-called “truths”? Sa totoo lang, some organized religions have cause a lot of destruction and death to the civilized world. Well terrorism and ethnic violence are religion-fueled hatred.

So here’s the fact. Cult gurus are like a snake-oil salesmen. They feed you half-truths and prearranged lies to sell their spurious merchandise. So what do they deserve? Well as Dick Dastardly said, they are just phony little swamis with lumps all over their little bodies.

In this post I will be dealing with the ISKCON’s misinterpretation and smear on atheism from their article, “The History and Analysis of Atheism”.

1. The nature of atheism is degrading: its practice leads to bondage and suffering (duhkha) because of an attachment to matter, which degrades (entropy). Matter cannot be a source of anything higher – order, development, or life (which cannot appear by chance).

2. Happiness through atheism is impossible, as it is not in harmony with the nature of person, society, universe, and God (dharma).

The following statements have nothing to do with the nature of atheism. Atheism is about not believing in the existence of gods or a god. Slanderous remarks don’t answer the atheist’s questions concerning the existence of a supernatural deity.

Unlike the average Hare Krishna cult member, the atheist has a sense of `his relative importance’ in the great chain of Nature – and he doesn’t need to use drugs like LSD to feel it. Happiness can be achieved even if you don’t believe in a supernatural higher up. He is not ruled by guilt and suffering to enjoy his life. Well…suffering and sacrifice are really part of religious life.

3. Atheism is a belief system.
A belief system consists of a mandatory philosophical system. Atheism does not have a mandatory philosophical system. In a layman’s language, a mandatory philosophical system means a philosophy in which a person lives.

Well…I am an atheist but the atheist who sits next to me may have a different view regarding morality. Some believe in an objective morality (See Michael Martin and Sam Harris regarding objective morality) while other atheists believe in a relative morality. Some atheists are communists, while others are objectivists. Some atheist abhors religion while others do not. There is no definite connection on what atheists believe…except they do not believe that gods exists.

4. Offensive atheism” and “defensive atheism”
There is no such thing as “offensive” and “defensive” atheism.

5. By definition, atheism is the world-view that denies the existence of God. To be more specific, traditional atheism (or offensive atheism) positively affirms that there never was, is not now, and never will be a God in or beyond the world.

A worldview is a particular philosophy of life; a concept of the world held by an individual or a group. Since atheism is not a philosophy then we can say that atheism is not a world-view. It may be a part of a certain worldview but atheism per se doesn’t constitute the whole picture.

A worldview is also defined as the set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of reality that ground and influence one’s perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing. Atheism doesn’t constitute a set of beliefs but rather it is just non-belief.

6. The atheist cannot logically prove God’s nonexistence. And here’s why: to know that a transcendent God does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience). To attain this knowledge would require simultaneous access to all parts of the world and beyond (omnipresence). Therefore, to be certain of the atheist’s claim one would have to possess godlike characteristics. Obviously, mankind’s limited nature precludes these special abilities. The offensive atheist’s dogmatic claim is therefore unjustifiable. As logician Mortimer Adler has pointed out, the atheist’s attempt to prove a universal negative is a self-defeating proposition.

The problem with this article is that it doesn’t have any idea what atheism is. Come on…to disbelieve something does not entail a person to be omniscient. In addition, in contrast to the article, we always prove negatives…we do it all the time. If I say that there are only bananas in my lunch box, I also prove that there are no apples in my lunch box. Remember, every positive statement implies negative statements.

There are two ways to prove the non-existence of something…like god or gods: i.) if it leads to a logical contradiction and ii.) by carefully seeing and looking.

Example: A mananaggal (vicera sucker) does not exist. Can I prove it? Sure, I can. We can prove it because of its impossibility. There are no known living thing that can fly by separating its lower torso and survive. Right? Moreover, we know that aerodynamically speaking, the body of a human being cannot fly using giant bat-wings.

Flying carpets do not exist because it is aerodynamically impossible.

Logically speaking, a perpetual motion machine cannot exist. There are no married bachelors and a four-sided triangle does not exist.

Negative existential proposition, a proposition that denies the existence of something, is impossible to be proven.

That is according to Alder as promoted by the ISKCON article. However, there are ways to do it…and I bet the author of the ISKCON article has not discovered it yet…

As suggested by Adler in his book Truth in Religion, “articles of faith” are propositions that cannot be proved but can be “disproved by the proof of propositions that are their logical contraries or contradictories. For example, the belief of the Mormons that Joseph Smith received the golden tablets from God is an “article of faith” since it cannot be proven.

However, as said by Adler, it can be disproved by a contradictory. According to the Judeo-Christian Bible, there is only one God. The same claim can also be seen from the Muslim camp. Well that means the Christian God and the Islamic God cannot exist simultaneously. Thus, both religions are making a positive existential claim and both are making an implicit negative claim that gods contrary to their god do not exist.

The “nail in the head” of Adler’s claim that negative existential propositions cannot be proven is the fact that the claim that “negative existential proposition cannot be proven” is itself a negative existential proposition!

This point can be forcefully emphasized by asking the atheist if he has ever visited the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The library presently contains over 70 million items (books, magazines, journals, etc.). Hundreds of thousands of these were written by scholars and specialists in the various academic fields. Then ask the following questions: “What percentage of the collective knowledge recorded in the volumes in this library would you say are within your own pool of knowledge and experience?” The atheist will likely respond, “I don’t know. I guess a fraction of one percent.” You can then ask: “Do you think it is logically possible that God may exist in the 99.9 percent that is outside your pool of knowledge and experience?” Even if the atheist refuses to admit the possibility, you have made your point and he knows it.

This is quite very easy. The atheist could also simply ask the Hare Krishna cult member, “Do you think it is logically possible that God may not exist in the 99.9 percent that is outside your pool of knowledge and experience?”

If the theist is going to claim that all propositions having any kind of deductive relationship to “god exists” are outside of what we know, then that is his burden of proof to show he is right.

7. Many atheists consider the problem of evil an airtight proof that God does not exist. They often say something like: “I know there is no God because if He exists, He never would have allowed all those atrocities in history to happen.”

A good approach to an argument like this is to say something to this effect: “Since you brought up this issue, the burden lies on you to prove that evil actually exists in the world. So let me ask you: by what criteria do you judge some things to be evil and other things not to be evil?

The best way here is to define evil. What is evil? In a simple layman’s term, evil is that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune. Evil is morally objectionable behavior… Oh I forgot, ISKCON doesn’t believe in morality… (“But, in the highest sense, there can be neither good nor evil” – Bhagavad-Gita, 140).

To deny the existence of evil or to claim that evil is an illusion does not make the problem of evil go away. An illusion of evil is still evil, therefore, if there is an illusion of evil, there is evil.

Remember that one can only know that all is an illusion against the backdrop of reality. Example, a mirage can be considered an illusion based on the effect of hot air in atmospheric refraction. The hot air in the atmospheric refraction is real. So if evil is an illusion then where did the illusion originate? How did the illusion originate, and how is it passed down to successive generations? Why does everyone experience it from his or her first moment of consciousness? Pain or evil is part of the human experience and is encountered by all. What happened in Hurracane Katrina, on 9/11 and on the tsunami that killed thousand in South Asia are not illusions.

A simple torment of a toothache is not imaginary. The experience is real and the damage (cavities) is present. These are not subjective hallucinations. Dentists do not extract figments of the imagination.

Then point out to him that it is impossible to distinguish evil from good unless one has an infinite reference point which is absolutely good.

The infinite reference point for distinguishing good from evil can only be found in the person of God, for God alone can exhaust the definition of “absolutely good.” If God does not exist, then there are no moral absolutes by which one can judge something (or someone) as being evil. More specifically, if God does not exist, there is no ultimate basis to judge the crimes. Seen in this light, the reality of evil actually requires the existence of God, rather than disproving it.

Secular ethics does not require god belief. The problem here lies that the article’s “infinite reference point” is a god who is said to be “an absolute”. In atheism, there is no need for an “infinite reference point” to distinguish good and evil. Good and bad actions are objectively based on the biological nature of human beings and are definable in absolute terms. Those objective standards are independent of any opinions or creeds.

It’s really this simple: Without living beings with needs, there can be no good or evil. Without the presence of more than one such living being, there can be no rules of conduct. Morality, then, emerges from humanity precisely because it exists to serve humanity.

Therefore, any chosen action that purposely benefits the human organism or society is morally good and any chosen action that purposely harms the human organism and society is morally bad.

8. Many sophisticated atheists today are fully aware of the philosophical pitfalls connected to offensive or dogmatic atheism. Prominent atheists such as Gordon Stein and Carl Sagan have admitted that God’s existence cannot be disproved. This has led such atheists to advocate skeptical “defensive atheism”. Defensive atheism asserts that while God’s existence cannot be logically or empirically disproved, it is nevertheless unproven. Atheists of this variety have actually redefined atheism to mean “an absence of belief in God” rather than “a denial of God’s existence”. For this more moderate type of atheism, the concept of “God” is like that of a unicorn, leprechaun, or elf. While they cannot be disproved, they remain unproven. Defensive atheism’s unbelief is grounded in the rejection of the proofs for God’s existence, and/or the belief that the concept of God lacks logical consistency.

Atheists can logically disprove the existence of a god. One known method is called The Argument of Incoherence (AKA Incompatible Properties Argument). The argument attempts to derive contradictions in the concept of God.

How about empirically disprove the existence of god? The argument from Physical Minds is a nice argument on the impossibility of a disembodied mind without the association of a material brain.

According to Gordon Stein, “Obviously, if theism is a belief in a God and atheism is a lack of a belief in a God, no third position or middle ground is possible. A person can either believe or not believe in a God.” (Gordon Stein, “The Meaning of Atheism and Agnosticism,” in G. Stein, editor, An anthology of atheism and rationalism, with introduction (Prometheus Books: Buffalo NY 1980).

Now here’s a quote on what Carl Sagan thinks about God, “The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”

So when did Dr. Sagan and Gordon Stein say that god’s existence couldn’t be disproved? I don’t know…maybe it was an illusion of the ISCKON article.

Oh and by the way, atheists don’t re-invent the meaning of the word atheism as this ISCKON article allege. Atheism is not a denial of the theist’s claims; it’s skepticism of the theist’s claim.

9. Atheism cannot adequately explain the existence of the world.

Neither do theists.

10. An atheistic world is ultimately random, disorderly, transitive, and volatile. It is therefore incapable of providing the necessary preconditions to account for the laws of science, the universal laws of logic, and the human need for absolute moral standards. In short, it cannot account for the meaningful realities we encounter in life.
The theistic world-view, however, can explain these transcendental aspects of life. The uniformity of nature stems from God’s orderly design of the universe. The laws of logic are a reflection of the way God Himself thinks, and would have us to think as well.

A so-called transcendental aspect of life is an illusion. Supernatural and spiritual explanations only act as a temporary break from inquiries that enter the human mind. Speculations regarding transcendental aspects are empty. There are really no answers to something that is claimed to be beyond natural.

Now we’re going to talk about those claims presented by the article “History and Analysis of Atheism” on the existence of a god.

According to the said article, the Nyaya (logic) Vedic philosophical system offers three proofs of the existence of God. They are the following:

1. Existence of order in nature and man (teleological argument)

2. Existence of different conditions for different living beings (different karma of individuals must come from higher intelligence)

3. Existence of revealed scriptures, which speak about the same topics and one God

Ok…so now let’s take this one at a time. First the article says that the existence of order in nature and man is a some sort of a teleological argument. It establishes intelligent design but it is not clear how many beings were involved in creating the order and if they were supreme or not.

OK…OK so according to this we really do not have any idea in the numbers of beings or if the beings that created everything were supreme or not. But may I add, if we can’t be sure what kind of beings are involved, then how can we be sure if a god or gods were responsible in the first place?

How can you refute atheism with this?
It seems statement #1 falls short in proving the existence of a god.

In addition, as discovered by modern physics, our universe neither is fine-tuned nor is it designed for human life. Yes, we know that the universe seems to have certain order as the ISKCON article asserts, but we should also keep in mind that there are a lot of disorder and chaos in the universe. The empty vastness of this universe for humans to explore speaks against the ISKCON claim.

Second, ISKCON uses the Law of Karma and reincarnation as proof of God’s existence. It implies that the existence of different conditions for different living beings because of the karmic law is a proof that there is a higher intelligence somewhere out there.

So what is Karma?

Etymologically speaking, the word “karma” is based on the Sanskrit verbal root kr, meaning “act, do, bring about,” the idea being that one makes something by doing something; one creates by acting. According to this doctrine, every human being gets the fruits of his actions either in the present or in some future life. Whatever a human being is in his present life is the result of his own actions in the past life or lives. Buddhism and Jainism also use this doctrine yet as we already know, both religions don’t worship a personal god.

So does the Law of Karma prove the existence of a god? It doesn’t. Before ISKCON can utilize statement number two as a valid proof of the existence of a god, they must first prove the existence of the following: immortal soul, afterlife and past lives.

As Carvaka has already stated, the law of karma merely serves the rationale of legitimizing the unjust varna-vyavastha by making the Shudras and the “untouchables” submissively acknowledge their degrading position as a “result of their own deeds” in imaginary past lives, and by assuring them “better” birth in “next life” if they faithfully perform their varna-dharma in their present lives.

How about reincarnation?

According to most Hindus, Hinduism fulfills the following conditions and so is perfectly in harmony with modern science:
1. It must accept all proven scientific facts as true.
2. It must reject any view which is contradicted by science.
3. Its beliefs must be based on observation, logic and experience.
( Ref. Hinduism for Beginners, Srirama Ramanuja Achari p. 5 )

Unless of course ISKCON is not Hinduism, then they must also be in the same principle. Now…let’s see if reincarnation is true then it must be logical, coherent and it must not contradict science, observation and experience. Yet:

a. If reincarnation is correct, society should be improving. After all, we have had hundreds, even thousands, of chances to improve our past lives, then we should already have improved it and then there should be some evidence of it.

b. If sufferings in this life are the result of evils done in a previous life, then there would have to be an infinite regress of previous lives. However, an infinite regress in time is not possible since absolute infinites do not exist.

c. Reincarnation depends on the premise that an individual had a highly developed sense of self-consciousness before birth, to receive and store information for later recall. It is a scientific fact that this ability does not develop until one is about eighteen months of age.

d. How about human population? If everyone alive today once inhabited a previous human body, how can the population, let’s say of India, be explained? Today India has a population of 1,129,866,000. So where have all those souls come from?

Now, we’re going to talk about revealed scriptures.
I was wondering why ISKCON thinks that all religious scriptures speak about the same topics and one God.

Anyway…

According to the article, the scriptures say that the existence of God can be inferred neither from sense perception (pratyaksa) nor from logic (anumana) but it can be understood from the revealed scriptures (sabda): “Supreme Truth is neither established nor refuted by logical argument.” (Vedanta-sutra 2.1.11 paraphrased).

Let’s see…according to this premise, “Supreme Truth is neither established nor refuted by logical argument.” So the premise is neither true nor false (which makes it a logical statement). SO? Then by reason and logic, we already know that “Supreme Truth is neither established nor refuted by logical argument”. Did you get it?

The above statement from the Vedanta-sutra 2.1.11 is self-defeating. Logic and reason surely lead to an inescapable conclusion. If the so-called “Supreme Truth” is not established by logic or logical arguments then it becomes balderdash. There is no ounce of truth in a child’s singsong.

Now on the claim on scriptures, does the Gita (Bhagavad-Gita) talk about the same God of the Christian Bible? Well the answer is really a big NO. In the first place, the Hindu god in the Gita is very much different from the Christian God. The Christian God is a personal type, not the same pantheistic, monist gods of the Hindu. In a more detailed sense, Krishna is a god who is both personal and impersonal, and can also manifest as an invisible form of energy (spirit, soul, etc.), as well as in the physical through idols, animals, and humans. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, is always distinct from His creation. The God of the Bible is One God, manifested three ways (as in three persons, The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit) while Krishna is the supreme personality behind the Hindu Triad of Brahma, Visnu, and Shiva, a triad of different gods.

ISKCON believes “We are not our bodies, but eternal spirit souls, parts and parcels of God.”
I think this was also in their scripture. However, Christian scripture is quite different. Christians know that they are created in the “image of God”. They are not part of God’s essence, rather, God is the Creator, and they are his creatures.

According to Hindu myth, Krishna is the 8th incarnation of Vishnu, but Jesus Christ is the only incarnation of God according to the Christian scripture.

The Christian God is not an incarnation of Krishna or Krishna’s son. The Christian Bible doesn’t teach an illusionary world or an illusionary evil. It doesn’t teach salvation through yoga. The Krishna devotee is taught that he can escape the age of Kali (present age) by transcending with his chanting, and thinking only of Krishna while Christians are taught that in order to be saved one must have faith and believe.

So you see in claim number 3 that it seems the God of the Bible and the God of ISKON are two different gods. It only gives us more problems than proofs of the existence of one God.

Theodicy (or “process theology”): theo – God, dike – (Greek) righteous God is either not all-good or not all-powerful because He is unable to stop the evil – Himself subjected to natural laws. Universe is uncreated…ekkkkkk! Wrong answer.

Before going further let me correct some terms in that ISKCON article. Theodicy is not the same as “process theology”. (Gosh, what kind of a dictionary did the author of this ISKCON article use?)

Process Theology is an idea that says God evolves. It is any theology strongly influenced by the theistic metaphysics of Whitehead or Hartshorne that takes process or change as basic characteristics of all actual beings, including God. Theodicy (from Greek theos, ‘God’, and dike, ‘justice’) on the other hand is the a defense of the justice or goodness of God in the face of doubts or objections arising from the phenomena of evil in the world.

There is no variety of atheism that is called anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism means the representation of objects (especially a god) as having human form or traits. This is more conveniently used by believers than non-believers.

According to Finis Dake (you know the Dake’s Bible?)…Anthropomorphism is the ascription of human body parts, attributes, and passion to God. Furthermore it said, “God is a being (Hebrews 1:1-3). It is wrong to think that God has no body parts or passion like human beings. And it is a fallacy to think that God is a universal mind, conscience, love, goodness and power filling all space and matter.” (p. 280 Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible)

That’s not atheism.

I think ISKCON has a problem with other theists and not with atheists.

Xenophanes of Colophon, the pre-Socratic philosopher, wrote: “But if oxen and horses and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies of their gods in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses.” – The statement was addressed to believers and it is not about atheism. Xenophanes criticized the Homerian concept of anthropomorphic gods. Homer’s gods, He complained, had all the immoral and disgraceful traits of flawed human beings and should hardly be the object of veneration. Xenophanes held some vague concept of a single deity that was ‘in no way like men in shape or in thought’ but rather ‘causing all things by the thought of his mind’. Therefore, he is not an atheist.

Xenophanes’ argument does not disprove the existence of gods. It only disproves anthropomorphism. Now if believers tend to reason out that individual perception is the cause of why people tend to worship different gods…then god belief is relative. Mountains painted by different artists still contain their basic nature (being a mountain). The problem of using this apology is that when people perceive a god…well one god may be very different from what others are worshiping (example: the Islamic god is quite different from the Christian triune god.).

So if you can’t beat an atheist, then what will you have to do?

Well…they can always say that you (the atheist) have no business sticking your nose in my theistic belief!

According to the ISKCON article, “If, say, in the field of biology, one affirms or denies the claim of a biologist, then one thereby claims to have a knowledge of biology. Similarly, to affirm or deny the claim of a historian is to claim knowledge of history, and one’s own right, thereby, to evaluate historical assertions. Exactly in the same way, TO AFFIRM OR DENY RELIGIOUS CLAIMS IS TO CLAIM FOR ONESELF A KNOWLEDGE OF RELIGIOUS MATTERS.”

Whoa!

Remember that an atheist is a non-believer. Therefore, that means the atheist does not claim any knowledge. It’s the believer’s job to claim knowledge. An atheist just doesn’t believe what this knowledgeable theist is talking about!

The problem arises when this so-called knowledgeable believer is talking about claptraps and is trying very hard to convince other people to join his band. That’s where religious skepticism comes in.

Hey! I’m not an economics major. But it’s my right to know what’s happening with my nation’s money. I didn’t take medicine, but I still look for second opinion from other doctors and I might even know if you’re a quack or not! I never studied pharmacy yet I can still know if these food supplements work or not. That is also the same with religious claims. I have the right to affirm or deny ISKCON claims by doing research…And you don’t need to have a degree in theology for that. You see…you do not study 4 years of theology class before entering a church. The doors of these churches are always open for new recruits. That is also the same with cults.

By the way, if the statement of ISKCON is true, well…they have to become a Buddhist to AFFIRM or DENY Buddha’s teaching about being without a soul. They have to become a follower of Carvaka to AFFIRM OR DENY its teachings AND they have to become atheists first to AFFIRM OR DENY the proposition that god does not exist.

Remember…according to them, your salvation depends on this.

In part 3, I will be dealing on more ISKCON’s misunderstandings and smears about atheism.