Tolerance

Most people like the idea of tolerance.
The truth is that they only accept it in a very generic way.
To be tolerant, is to accept change, and to accept difference whenever it is upon us or just around us. Embracing change becomes a requirement for tolerance.

World peace is all about tolerance. It is about accepting different people, with different ways and different values to be themselves even when right in front of you.

Religion is about absolute certainty. Is about repeating the same words over and over, in a church or holding a rosary, forever and ever, until the end of time, even if that means defying logic or letting go of common sense. When it is all about faith, thinking about it does not matter:

Amnesty International has condemned the stoning of a 13-year-old girl in southern Somalia. The human rights organization claims the teenager was stoned to death after her father informed the authorities that she had been gang-raped. She was reportedly accused of adultery and the stoning, in front of a crowd of around 1,000, was her punishment. Reporter Jon Manel and Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International, discuss the influence of militant Islamist group Al Shabab, which has control of some areas in Somalia.

From this article.

Well... Gay marriage, abortion, public displays of affection, and an endless list of behaviors that people have, will obviously clash at some point with some religion's law that clearly states that no one can have such behavior. No one can be different. No one can be outside what such religion claims.

You can surely see where this is going as far as tolerance goes. World peace, for one, will have to wait a long time... If you don't believe me, ask the 13 year old girl mentioned above.

Tolerance and Muslim Faith

One day, someone in Denmark made some drawings of prophet Muhammed, of Islam. It was a cartoon about the muslim god. However, the reacting muslims looked more like this:

Muslims at the Danish Embassy in Britain,
preaching their views on tolerance,
according to their religion.

For these religious people in the picture above, it is ok to trust the invisible god they have never seen, and trust that his teachings are just fine: if anyone makes a drawing of my invisible god, or if they say something I believe to be an insult to him, I should slay them, butcher them, and make all Europe pay because demolition is on its way.

Religious faiths are not all the same. But when us as a society grant people the right to trust whatever thing they want (faith), even when no reason or facts are behind those beliefs, it is obvious that if enough time passes, beliefs like the ones on the pictures will eventually be part of our world, and forever passed from generation to generation...

If you think world peace is on its way, religion will make sure that day will never come. At least for as long as we allow people to draw cartoons about whatever they want, that is...

Responsibility and Blame - Part I

Religious people have a double standard when it comes to figuring out what their god(s) is responsible for.
When we are about to be held responsible for something, two things come into play:

• Knowledge of whatever we're being held accountable for;
• Power to affect whatever we're being held accountable for.

Let's imagine a parent and a toddler in a room.
The parent holds the child while considering putting him/her down to wander the room.
Before that happens, the parent spots broken glass all over the floor (or sparking wires, or whatever your favorite type of problem may be).

In this example, the possibilities would be:

• Protect the child by avoiding the glass (by cleaning it, or deciding that both should leave the room).
• Let the child walk and learn the room and hope for the best.

Let us assume that the parent goes with the second option, and lets the child walk around the room.
All will go well until the child gets hurt with the glass.

Who's responsible for this?

The answer is pretty obvious: The parent.
My claim is, knowledge and power affect guilt. Had the glass been hidden from the parent's view, but in reach of the child anyway, we would call it an accident (knowledge). Had the child been near an exploding window, the parent would have no power to avoid glass and it too would be deemed an accident (power).

An all knowing god, has the knowledge of all "glass". Even before "glass" is created. An all knowing god will know where the glass will be, and who will get hurt with it before it happens. Also, it will have all the power in the universe to change and/or solve any glass problem.

So when I look at this beautiful world but also full of glass, and hear religious people saying we're all god's children, who is to blame when some of us step on the glass that this parent (god) not only knew about, but created, and decided to put us and it in the same room for us to step on (power and knowledge)?

Omnipotent - Part IV - Motivation

The problems of Omnipotence - Part IV

Motivation can be all sorts of reasons, feelings, cravings, fears, desires, that all put together create this need that moves us towards achieving something.
Just like that thirst we have while we search for a drink and then disappears once we're done drinking. Or that sleepiness that goes away once we get tired of being in bed sleeping... Motivations go away once what they crave gets realized.

We live our lives in search of meaning, satisfaction, purpose and all other goals that the universe did not provide us with at birth. We compete with each other, at school, at work, for a better life. We live.
All that we do, is motivated by what we are not. The word "not" is the important word here. Our lack of power to be what we are not (richer, healthier, happier, whatever...) is what drives all of us.
What choices and options will a omnipotent god have?

No matter what you can think of as being one of god's needs, no one must ever forget that in god's all power, the power to instantly satisfy those needs exists, and no reason exists for that power not to be realized.

Take your lack of power, now turn yourself into an all powerful, omnipotent being, and what would you get for motivation? Think about it. What does an all powerful being need to crave for, that it does not already have? What is it waiting for? And why wait and waste time to begin with when you do not need to?
All these questions search for reasons, for answers. Oh wait, omnipotent beings do not have choices to go through, nor their reasons...

So if you were an all powerful being existing alone before anything else existed, knowing all outcomes of all your actions, with a needless perfect satisfied state of mind, and no reason to do anything, why create the universe? Totally pointless.

Once done with the power to do anything, there will be one thing always left to do: nothing.

Omnipotent - Part III - Choices

The problems of Omnipotence - Part III
We've seen here, how omnipotence can be a tricky concept.

When we walk a path and that path splits, a choice is presented to us. Do I turn left, or right? We do not have the power to go to both paths at the same time. You can walk both paths simultaneously only if your power is limitless, only if your are omnipotent.

If we can do everything, the power to perpetually enjoy a certain state of mind, to enjoy all my favorite states of mind, or even to create an infinite number of states of mind and enjoy them all at the same time, is possible. Being at perfect bliss is not an aspiration of an all powerful being, it is just something such beings always have, because there is nothing stopping them from having it - they are all powerful.
Again, nothing you can think of has "no" for an answer.

Given this, the word "choice" will lose meaning. When regular beings choose something, there is always a motive or a reason for choosing A instead of B. And even when the choice is random, there is usually a reason for that too: indifference, no time or patience to choose, etc...

Omnipotent beings will be presented with a dilemma: their choices never have a reason behind it, because they have absolute power. Why? They can change the choices they are about to have, change themselves not to need the choice, make themselves able to choose both, whatever... There is never a "no" to "can a Omnipotent being do this or that?".

If you can do everything, you don't choose anything. Choices are options that only limited beings need to go through. Example: "Should I stay single, or get married?". An all powerful being knows the lives of all married people and of all single people, from the past and the future (omniscience). Such being can know the pros/cons of all people of both groups and enjoy both at the same time. Better yet, without the cons.

So next time you hear someone say God did something this way instead of that way, and they give you an explanation as to why that choice was the way it was, remember how Omnipotent beings don't deal with choices. Choosing is a thing for us power limited mortals. And as for the reason or explanation given: Omnipotent beings are not limited by anything, so there are never reasons to go one way instead of another.

So what would motivate an all powerful being to do anything?

[Definition] Omnibenevolent

Omnibenevolence: unlimited or infinite benevolence.
(Benevolence: the quality of being kind and altruistic.)

If one is the universe's creator, and one is the God of any major religion, they are omniscient in that creation. God would know exactly what such creation is going to turn out to be, whatever the circumstances, whenever the circumstances. Given that perfect knowledge, the universe will still be created, and everything that will ever exist is going to be exactly the way the creator knew it would be. Such creator is omniscient.

Once God created the universe, everything in it is included in God's plan. I do not know if there was a plan to begin with, but knowing that God knows all, then everything will go according to that infinite knowledge, on in other words, according to the plan. Everything will be the way God knows and wants it to be, always.

Gods in major religions are seen as forgiving, merciful, compassionate, and kind in a infinite way. However, they chose to create evil, knew all, so they knew the consequences of that evil, and created beings that are evil, which is still included in God's initial plan., because all is included. If God knew all before creation and still created all this way, then that was the plan.
So why forgive what or who is happening according to plan (evil or not, that was the plan)?
Why punish whoever is happening according to plan? Is there anything or any one thing that has not or will not go according to God's plan messing up God's omniscience?

God's cannot be just, or merciful, or kind, or evil. All in the universe is just the way it is supposed to be from the start, because all omniscient beings knew it would be this way, and that is how they created everything.
Therefore, omnibenevolence is not a quality any omniscient god can have. At least not the ones that created hell and eternal punishments along with the universe (If they claim that quality, they're faking it!). Eternal punishments after death seems like a sentence given to someone that had messed up the plan of the universe's supreme being. Can that be possible?

[Definition] Omnipresent

Omnipresence: is the property of being present everywhere.

There seems to be no present major religion with god(s) that are omnipresent but not omniscient. Given this assumption, what would the purpose of omnipresence be, after already being omniscient?

We go to places to interact with its contents. No one ever goes somewhere to do exactly what one can do where they already were to begin with. At least no one ever does that rationally.
We can read a book at home, but if we choose to read it outside, it is because the outside has something else to offer us, and so on...

If you are omniscient and know all, you are in the position of not needing interaction. Whatever that interaction was supposed to give you, you already have perfect knowledge of its outcome. Unless you plan on affecting the environment actively, why go there in the first place?
Knowing all (omniscience) is a concept that includes what being everywhere provides you with, because if you know all, you know the same (or more) as if you were everywhere.
The same way that being under water includes having your hands wet.
So why the trouble of being everywhere when you know everything at all times?

Unless you need to do something actively instead of passively watching, being everywhere at every time, forever and ever, and being omniscient at the same time seems pretty useless.

[Definition] Tradition

Tradition: an inherited pattern of thought or action.

In religious debates, a position that supports a religious based action or tradition, against a secular action, can turn into a conflict where only one side can win. Although it's not always about winning and losing, and compromising is most of the times possible, tradition is sometimes a concept that people believe to be of importance.

For some, a tradition holds an importance higher than an unknown or simply recent non-traditional behavior.

For example: tattoos.
In a lot of work places in our society, tattoos are not seen as tradition, and so people applying for sensitive positions are often discriminated based on having visible tattoos. Bank tellers, Presidents, most managerial positions, are usually some of the positions where the issue is most prevailing. It is as if all bad people in the world could be identified by having tattoos.
Most people allow themselves to have double standards. Sometimes without even noticing. For thousands of years, man has marked his body with paintings, carved it with scars, and all that became tradition in some cultures. Tattooing is tradition. But if you're applying for that very nice job, the standard changes and your tattoo is now bad.

Religion is also tradition.
So was burning people at the stake that were thought to be witches, or heretics, persecuting and forcefully converting people based on their religion (crusades, inquisition), hanging criminals in public places in the old west, and other barbaric acts once done and accepted by the population as traditional: that inherited pattern of thought or action, passed from generation to generation (for whatever reason).

Don't let this become tradition!

When something is just tradition, it is just that: something that has been done a lot. Nothing more, nothing less. Lots of bad things have been done in a traditional way, and so have good things. When a tradition is challenged, all we should do is think about it as if it had been created today.

Next time someone defends something based on tradition alone, or in other words, because it has always been so, demand a better answer. Doing wrong over and over does not make it right. Tradition can be changed, and when a bad one, changing it recycles our minds, our ethics, our values and ourselves. And when times and people change, so should their traditions.

Semantics

Semantics: The study of the relationship between words and their meanings.

After defining Theists as believers, Agnostics as "neutrals" (most of them), and Atheists as non believers, it will come a time when an atheist will hear that atheism cannot prove it is right with any more certainty than theism can. This post is not about proof.

As with any of these definitions, the focus falls on the belief at any given time, not its proof, or who's right or wrong. What these words describe is the opinion of the one labeling him/herself with any of these terms. Not how or why someone got to label themselves with one.

Let us take this statement: I believe gods do not exist with the same certainty that the sky is blue.
It sounds like an arrogant bold claim. But, the sky may not even have color, and it may be just reflecting radiation that my eyes perceive as being blue, and color becomes an abstract concept that my mind creates... well, and this is when we start playing with words: semantics.
In my experience, semantics has been one of the worst enemies of healthy religious dialog, it allows for interpretation of already ambiguous ideas, and such dilemas should be avoided.

Absolute Conviction vs Certain Conviction

My belief in religious disbelief is a conviction of mine. Not an absolute one, as stated on the very top of this blog. An absolute conviction is unchangeable. Mine is not. My conviction is certain only in the sense that nothing that I have observed or experienced, points in any other direction. It is not an absolute conviction. It is also only certain to me up until now, and probably for a long time to come. 100% of my perceptions, reason, and logical conclusions, point at atheism. If someday new facts and experiences come to light and my logic is challenged and proven wrong, I will change my belief.

But what does it mean to logically conclude? Is this semantics too, and if so, how do we avoid semantic dilemas? Where in Atheism should we stand? We'll see (or try!)...