I can be good without God... not.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) recently posted billboards that look like this,

I know... Dylan is such an ass-wipe.

Or he's religious.

At least, that seems to be the opinion of a nearby church in Columbus Ohio. The billboard is on their property (I suppose under lease), and they asked the advertising company to take the ad down.

But let's think about this. Can Dylan be good without God?

Since the church asked to have the billboard removed, then they must disagree with it. Technically speaking, the logical negative of the statement is

Either Dylans is not good, OR he believes in God.

And that's an inclusive OR, so it includes the case where Dylan is a jerk AND he believes in God. Maybe that's what they had in mind.

Do they know something about Dylan that we don't? Perhaps they have insider information that shows Dylan is actually a real butt-head. Or maybe they found out that he's a closet Christian.

In any case, it goes to show that being an atheist is not seen as an asset in today's society. But that's prejudice.

More likely, the church is hoping to keep its members from being enlightened.

My first sermon

On Sunday morning, I gave a 20-minute talk during the service of the First Unitarian Congregation of Waterloo. My talk was entitled "Beliefs on Trial". My main point was that we cannot trust our own subjective impressions. There are many cognitive traps that we fall into, and they can lead us to believe in things that just aren't true. I gave a number of examples, including optical illusions, confirmation bias, and change blindness. Here is a video I showed, courtesy of Prof. Richard Wiseman.



The people there were very nice, and I really enjoyed myself. If I were a church person, THIS is the congregation I would belong to.

It's kind of a strange thing... many of the members are atheists and agnostics. And yet the service starts out with "Call to Worship". Begging the question, worship who?!

My sense is that this kind of church is meant for those who have rejected the other supernatural forms of religion (ie. ones that explicitly worship a supernatural God). But not going to church left a hole, so the Unitarian church is a way to have the community of a church, but without the guilt, hell and blind faith of most religions.

I thought my talk went well, and many nice folks approached me afterward saying that they enjoyed it. I appreciate that.

I had some interesting discussions after the service. In particular, I ended up talking to a woman who said she was a physician and a therapist. We talked about beliefs and how science does not know everything. True enough. But when the conversation turned to homeopathy, it came out that she is a believer. I said that there is no known mechanism for water memory. She retorted that "water memory" was just a place-holder description for an as-of-yet undiscovered phenomenon. That may be true. But there's still no evidence that it does anything. She seemed convinced that homeopathy works. But I reminded her of the main point of my talk, that it's easy for us to fall into the psychological traps and believe in the untrue. I was happy that someone else in the conversation saw things from my perspective.

Motivational posters for atheists

There's a whole gallery of them. These are my favourites

Atheists for Jesus!

One of my favourite blogs is Pharyngula. It's written by P.Z. Myers, a very vocal atheist. One of the ad banners caught my eye. It was for the web site theDIFFERENCEisJESUS.com. Here is the screen capture.


Priceless.

Going to Hell

I haven't always been an atheist. There was a time when I was young when I cried myself to sleep because I was so scared about going to Hell. Belief in Hell is, by definition, theist. Not certain where I got such an impression of Hell, but I have a hunch. My family joined the Velvet Hills Baptist Church. In fact, my dad helped build the... umm, building. The preachers visited the Sunday-school classes and told us their stories. Great story-tellers; they were extremely impassioned.

On Sunday mornings, my dad used to have the TV or radio tuned into religious shows while he was milling around, working on the house; so one would think my dad a religious man.

I don't think I ever bought into that view of my dad. One day my mom told me that my dad didn't believe in God. I think I found that difficult to comprehend, but I'm glad that seed was planted. That singular event might have opened my mind just a crack to the possibility.

You see, somewhere along the line I switched. I stopped believing in God.

The rock-opera Jesus Christ Superstar has always been a fixture in my family. My parents used to play the soundtrack on our stereo. Later, we owned the video and watched it many times. That movie left me with the impression that Jesus was probably just a cool guy. Except for the end of the movie, where the song "Jesus Christ Superstar" goes rather Broadway, there is nothing in the movie that suggest Jesus was the son of God. No miracles, divine intervention... nothing. In my view, it told the story of a sociological phenomenon.

At some point, I learned about the theory of evolution. I guess it was grade 10 when I first heard about it. It was a feeble introduction in science class; we watched a video that I don't think I really understood. No class discussion. I'm not sure if our teacher didn't believe in it, or if was too much of a hot-button topic to be worth dwelling on. Regardless, over the next 10 years or so, I would come to respect that theory a great deal. To me, it's one of the most profound ideas ever conceived.

I also recall thinking that if there really was a god, he'd be OK with the way I live my life. I am nice to people, and give a lot of thought to the way the world works.

Today, I'm pretty public about the fact that I am atheist. The only caveat is that I am technically agnostic. I am a scientist in the sense that I believe we should look to explain our world through natural causes, not super-natural causes. The God hypothesis is unfalsifiable in that there is no natural observation that can disprove the existence of God. So, that's why I hope that if there is a God, he's understanding about people like me.