Why care?

I often get asked, usually by my friends, "Why do you care so much about what other people believe in? Why be so aggressive about changing people's minds about subjective topics?"

Richard Dawkins addresses this question fairly well in The God Delusion and this particular question is a focus point of every Sam Harris lecture. But because this question is usually a question of personal opinion I thought I would explain the reason why I am so adamant about fighting religious dogma.

When I was a child, I would have referred to myself as a Christian. Later I became an agnostic. A year ago I firmly believed I was an atheist. Several months ago, I escalated my status to antitheist. The reason for this last escalation was a direct result of the reasons below. I'll describe them in point-form, in no particular order other than the order in which I happened to think of them.

1. Education. Although I fully support diversity, as Sam Harris says, we should not respect people's beliefs, but rather evaluate their reasons. If someone's reasons for believing in something are good enough, I'll have no choice but to believe what they do. The reason why I use the word 'reasons' instead of 'evidence' or 'proof' is because certain things might simply not have substantial 'evidence'. Therefore, a more tolerant approach is required. For instance, it's (at this point in time) impossible to prove that The Big Bang really happened, but I have reasons to believe that it did because just about everything we observe in the universe supports the theory. At this time, it's the most plausible and simplest theory (and I am an avid supported of Occam's Razor). Until a better alternative comes up, we have no choice but to believe that this is really how the universe originated. Believing in an alternate theory, is rather silly.

This is to say, I am not against the idea of reducing everyone's beliefs to those of my own. My goal in life is not to instate some sort of global mass-conversion where everyone will start believing in the same things I do. Not that it would be possible, anyway. My goal in turning antitheist is to give people reasons for believing in what I do, and let them make up their own minds. The problem is that most people are quite simply uneducated, or don't ask the right questions. A lot of people simply don't care about certain issues which they take for granted. Issues that could mean life and death for others, eg. abortion, gay marriage, blood transfusion, etc...

So quite simply put, the first reason for being antitheist is simply to generate a flow of information in the world and inform and educate others about possible (and in this case, better) alternatives to religious practices and a frame of mind based upon faith.

2. Prevention of miseducation. This one is closely related to the first point, but I think it deserves a separate mention because it's incredibly important and because this is the one that gets me the most upset.

There are countless cases of religious activists pushing certain agendas and spreading misinformation to large populations. From the Creation Museum to Abstinence-only Sex Education, there are cases when being tolerant of other people's beliefs becomes stupidity and ignorance. At this point, we have to draw the line and get off our butts and do something. It's one thing to teach people (especially children) theories that are highly plausible yet not confirmed, but it's a whole other thing teaching people theories that are just plain untrue.

We know that the Earth is far older than several thousand years old. We know this without a shred of doubt. Teaching children (who don't know better) that the Earth is a few thousand years old and was created in 'several days' is, as Dawkins implies - child abuse. Teaching teenagers not to have sex is just plain stupid. They'll still have sex, but if you don't teach them about safe sex, they might (and often do) have serious complications from the act. These are preventable problems that arise due to religious dogma and ignorance.

There is a point when you need to take a stance and take some responsibility into your own hands. If a religious group trying to open a Creation Museum in your city, being agnostic and passive is the wrong thing to do. You may not immediately see the problem with it, but the problem is not a short-term problem. It's a problem that will result in the long-term and will probably haunt your children.

Although, short-term problems exist too, and also require special attention. A good short-term problem is that of Christian Science, see an older post I made about it below for more information. Basically, instead of taking people to the hospital when they're sick, some Christians believe it's up to God to heal their loved ones. The result is that the person usually dies. In the rare case that the sickness goes away - they call it a miracle.

3. Dismissal of organized religion. This is another goal that all rational people should have. As I stated above, I support diversity, but I don't support the politicization of organized religion. Religion must be kept separate from politics, but the more a religion becomes organized - the more it pushes its way into politics and therefore causes problems for the rest of us. Keeping religion and its associated acts a private organization is at the top of my list of goals. The government should not provide ANY monetary or other forms of support for ANY religious organization, movement or activity. I am not saying this because I'm an antitheist, I'm saying this because I'm a constitutionalist. I wouldn't want the government supporting any atheist organizations either. That seems wrong to me. People's beliefs are their own, until they start to interfere with other people. The reason why atheism is so different, is because it doesn't interfere with other people's beliefs and relies 'mostly' on science.

Giving religion power causes such catastrophes as gay marriage bans, abortion bans, stem-cell research bans, etc... Things that do not affect the religious zealots banning them, but that affect everyone else. Stem-cell research saves lives. I can't seem to come up with any examples of funded religious organizations that save lives in an unbiased way. Dawkins goes into detail about this in the God Delusion so I won't say more about it here. Go read his book.

4. The Bible as a portal. Although I have many Christian friends who are not religious fanatics and are genuinely good people, they read the Bible too. And because the Bible is open to interpretation, certain people interpret it differently.

Clever religious activists at this point might say something about people who have used Darwin's Origin of Species as a justification for genocide and discrimination. But that's completely absurd. The main difference is that Darwin doesn't leave anything to interpretation. We know exactly what he is talking about, and people who misinterpret the book and use it for other purposes other than learning about the concept of natural selection and evolutionary biology, are entirely to blame for their actions. The Bible isn't like that, unfortunately.

The reason why the Bible is different, and we have reasons to blame it for numerous violent conflicts, is because we don't know what the correct interpretation is. We don't know if the passages inside it are true (well, for certain things we do, but not for others). It's completely irresponsible for us to teach anything out of this book, using any interpretation. Not to say that the Bible doesn't have good lessons and good messages, but we need to teach these lessons independent of Jesus, Heaven, the Apocalypse and the whole shebang. We can't pick and choose which passages we like and which we don't. The book should be tossed into that dark corner of the library that's used merely as a collection of historical artifacts.

But let's not stop at the Bible. Let's throw the Qu'ran and the Torah in there as well. And that Scientology book as well, whatever it's called.

5. Because they'll do it to you first. The reason why it's sometimes (not always) necessary to be hostile towards religious fanatics is because they're already being hostile towards you. Although, it's best to resolve conflicts peacefully, sometimes religious people simply won't listen. I'm not talking about using violence. I do not support waging war, but sometimes you need to take aggressive action in order to fight off crazy religious people. There's just no way around it, be it political or judicial.

Living in Canada (as I do), it's a little hard to understand just how much discrimination there is against atheists. This isn't going to be solved by agnostics. It's going to be solved by antitheists who take things seriously and raise awareness and generate publicity (and request political interference if necessary).

I know I'm making religion sound incredibly bad and evil. It's usually not. Most people, of various beliefs are good people. But some people have these dogmas, usually as a result of their parents' teachings. It's just the way it happens and it's nobody's fault. We just need to wake up and make sure that our children aren't brought up with the same fallacies about the world.