A reluctant atheist?

I recently went to the cinema to watch Angels and demons. I enjoyed reading the book, which was a fantastic thriller, and enjoyed the movie, which is no less of a thriller than the book.

Cinematic emotions aside, I found it intriguing when Tom Hanks' character, Robert Langdon, gets asked by a priest "Do you believe in God, Mr. Langdon?"

His very diplomatic answer was "I am an academic... My mind tells me that I will never understand God." The priest then asks "And what does your heart say?" to which Langdon responds "My heart tells me I am not meant to...

In these days of personal domestic turmoil, my Angels and demons is stashed in a box out of reach so I could not inmmediately reference the dialog. But it seems that Langdon never uttered those words. Rather, it was CERN's scientist Vittoria Vetra who has a similar dialog in the book as you can see in this link. According to this article, Dan Brown is a believer which may be the reason his "atheist" characters are so reluctant to admit their lack of belief.

What Brown and the author of the article I am linking do not realize is that non-believers are many and are everywhere. As Richard Dawkins indicates in his http://www.outcampaign.org/ site "... atheists come in all shapes, sizes, colours and personalities. We are labourers and professionals. We are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and grandparents. We are human (we are primates) and we are good friends and good citizens. We are good people who have no need to cling to the supernatural."

Given the current state of affairs, I can understand why so many atheists can be so reluctant to admit their non-belief. We are demonized every week in church by the priesthoood and are, very unjustly, blamed for the crime and evil in our world.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, religion may be the real culprit.

I place a strong emphasis on good friends, good citizens and good people. And it looks like popular media is now begining to portrait atheists in a more favorable manner - check the popular TV series House and Bones, where the main characters are very strong atheists.

Like the Gay movement did many years ago, non-believers need to begin working on our image to change the perception that we eat babies for breakfast. We are good people. And we are many.

Join the Out Campaign. Or, if you are a believer, don't hold it against us.

Deepak Chopra is full of crap

Deepak Chopra. Picture from Wikipedia Commons

"To say that Nature displays intelligence doesn't make you a Christian fundamentalist. Einstein said as much, and a fascinating theory called the anthropic principle has been seriously considered by Stephen Hawking, among others."

Deepak Chopra.

"The anthropic principle is NOT about nature displaying intelligence. Don't use straw man arguments on me!"

The Chapin Skeptic.

I didn't say it first. In her fantastic 2006 monologue Letting go of God , Julia Sweeney explains her disappointment when she first goes after Chopra's ramblings about conciousness and quantum mechanics and later, after studying quantum mechanics she realizes that Chopra's elucubrations are highly improbable and she yells "Deepak Chopra is full of shit!"

And I have to agree. Reading Chopra's Wikipedia entry, he is an advocate, among other things, of something he calls quantum healing which somehow relates to healing through positive thoughts and quantum mechanics is thrown into the mix for good measure... I sure understand why miss Sweeney was so disappointed...

I tried to listen to an audio version of one of his books. No, scratch that, I listened to the full fracking thing! At that time I was halfway between agnosticism and supersticion so I was interested and even then, it seemed like a lot of nonsense. Basically, he was saying that in order to achieve something you somehow have to wait for it to show up or materialize or something. There wasn't any piece of usable advice I could find. It was all about sitting back, waiting and having faith.

Well, faith just doesn't work for me. Never has, never will. I believe in the results of hard work and knowledge plus training intelligently applied.

So, I concur, Julia. He is indeed full of crap.

Crap makes you money though... I may be missing some important source of revenue. Hmmm...

Listen to Julia. She is fantastic in that monologue!

Am I doing the Lord's work? or the Law of Unintended Consequences

The other day, D.J. Grothe, who evidently was spending a nice vacation with his beau, Thomas, in Mexico, posted an interesting tale of trying to do good and ending up with a big mess - a nice example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. For those not having access to D.J.'s Facebook, he and Thomas tried to feed some dogs and ended up causing a horrible dogfight, where one of the canines was probably killed by the others over the food that was offered.

Not in the same vein but also an example of unintended consequences, I got a nice e-mail from one of my readers/friends just yesterday.

My friend tells me that my blog as well as the links posted in it have helped him sort out his doubts and beliefs and now, as a rational christian, he is more secure of his faith in God. He says he has run the full gamut from believer to agnostic and is now safe and happy on his christian belief.

Well, I am puzzled but, truthfully, very happy for my friend.

As I have matured as a skeptic and agnostic, I have learned not to pick fights over religion or belief. I am "embedded" in a very conservative, catholic family and it is to my advantage not to get into arguments one way or another. If anything, seeing my (mostly political) family attend their various religious rituals and functions has pushed me further into agnosticism and I flirt with atheism all the time but I don't quarrel with their beliefs.

In fact, as I have mentioned before, I don't have a problem with people being religious. Organized religion tends to piss me off but people attending religious services and having their particular sets of beliefs, well, you can chalk that one up to freedom of speech, which I am 100% for.

And having read Dawkins and Harris, I have consciously decided not to be a militant atheist.

My initial purpose in writing this blog was to try and organize my ideas and philosophy into one coherent body. All the crazy things spinning in my head had to be given some kind of structure and the blog has helped me do that. In fact, going back over the initial postings, I see how my perspective has changed.

I continue to have fun with pastafarianism and will go on making fun of mormon's underwear or catholicism ritual cannibalism, not forgetting Corny's absolutely idiotic rantings. But I have come to feel secure in my ideas and content with other's beliefs... as long as they don't try to infringe on my personal space.

So, again, I was puzzled by my friend's e-mails but very happy that I was able to help. There is no doubt in my mind that the pursuit of happiness is one noble goal and part of that happiness is being secure and safe in your beliefs. If my writings help one way or another, well then, the golden rule is in action! And friends are always a blessing, however you want to interpret the word.

Thanks Ed!