Atheism - AHB

About a year or so ago I watched a trailer for the film "Zeitgeist", which is a deeply anti-institutional film shot in a faux-documentary style. My interest with this film was not so much geared toward the political overtones, but rather with the religious message. Around this same time I became interested with the religion-themed writings of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Betrand Russell. I do not consider myself an atheist (and even many atheist author do not consider themselves to be such because of logical reasons), but I've long since given up on pursuing spirituality in a structured sense. Part of the reason for this is because I spent an inordinate amount of my childhood trying to live out doctrines that no longer mean anything to me. My feeling is that if god's representative people on earth are not worth following, he/she probably isn't either. Anyway, it is interesting how trendy atheism is starting to be in certain circles. I think the fact that so few people regard themselves as pure atheists shows that our society is still skeptical at best (or worst depending on your perspective). Ever since people started misquoting Karl Marx's "religion is the opium of the masses" there has been a kind of seductiveness to the atheist position. Sometimes people just want to be considered a minority. It is still clear that Christianity is the dominant belief in American society - I think a homosexual muslim would have a better chance of ascending to the presidency than an atheist, but there is some pretty strong undercurrents moving through society. And I think the passing of the baby boomer generation will only continue that trend.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this blog. I just think that there are a lot of interesting perspectives going around today, and some of them deserve a look.


This is a recent quote from the L.A. Times that I found interesting: "In the end, even these specifics don’t intrigue me as much as this fact: Zero-sum arguments about faith and faithlessness just go round and round, generating heat and no light. It’s better to return to real knowledge and fundamental questions. Rather than arguing over the existence of God, rather than playing believer-nonbeliever gotcha, we learn a whole lot more if we just keep asking ourselves—in as many new ways as possible—why it is that so many of us feel compelled to pray."

Here's another quote by Sam Harris that really represents the growing thinking of many:

"If there are objective truths about human well-being—if kindness, for instance, is generally more conducive to happiness than cruelty is—then there seems little doubt that science will one day be able to make strong and precise claims about which of our behaviors and uses of attention are morally good, which are neutral, and which are bad. At time when only 28 percent of Americans will admit the truth of evolution, while 58 percent imagine that a belief in God is necessary for morality, it is truism to say that our culture is not prepared to think critically about the changes to come."