Lots of excellent stuff about religious stupidity from David Horton in Australia.

"And I marvel again at the creationists and their stupidity which has such strong foundations in infinite ignorance."
-- David Horton

"From May 1859, the origin of the Origin of Species, it was impossible for an intelligent person to be religious."
-- David Horton

"Why, in a world chock full of facts, would you choose to base your life on something which is fact free?"
-- David Horton

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Green and Atheist: The Incompatibility of Religion and Environmentalism

By David Horton

We all know there are all kinds of things that religion is incompatible with — democracy, science, social equity, rational debate, blind justice. But it is sometimes thought that being an environmentalist is compatible with religious belief. That you could divorce irrational beliefs about imaginary friends, the subordinate role of women, and the importance of neoconservative government from rational concerns about the state of the planet. Sorry, can’t be done.

To be a greenie concerned about the future of the planet, you have to, well, be concerned about the future of the planet. Religious people, even putting aside the Left Behind loonies, aren’t really concerned, because they have an imaginary friend who will look after them if they are good and pray hard and wear the right clothes and don’t cut their hair. Only atheists understand, deep down, that there is no divine Lone Ranger out there coming to the rescue; that if we don’t save our own planet, no one else will. It is odd that the Libertarians among the religious, so big on self-reliance for individuals and communities, don’t apply that principle to the Earth as a whole.

And religious people wear blinkers that prevent them from being greenies. To be a greenie means to wholeheartedly embrace the concept that we are part of the natural world; that we are just one species among tens of millions that have evolved over billions of years (one of the more abundant species, sure, and one of the most destructive, but there are certainly no special arrangements applying uniquely to our species); and that we are very closely related to many of those species, quite closely to many others, and related to all of them to some degree. Greenies really understand the proposition that all these species are in it together, that we are all cousins, that we all come from a common ancestor, and that all have either a complete right to exist or no right to exist, not some of one and some of another.

To be a greenie means to be fully aware of the complexity of ecology. The intricate web of life ties together the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in China with a hurricane in Florida; keeps the Amazon rainforest and the African desert functioning; is affected by an oil spill off the coast of Louisiana or acidity on the Great Barrier Reef; provides fertile soil and clean water and clear skies, free of charge; is best helped by those who understand that these ecosystems have evolved naturally over tens of thousands of years, not by those who think the Garden of Eden was a real place and that the Biblical Flood was a real event. Unless you really feel, in your bones, that you are part of the grandeur of life, as dependent on functioning ecology as an ant or an eagle; unless you really feel the wind and the sun and the smell of marshland or grassland rather than driving in your air-conditioned car from your air-conditioned house to your air-conditioned megachurch, blissfully unaware of being part of nature, blissfully believing that you are somehow above all that, that you have shucked off your animal nature because you clutch an old book that says something about your species being created on a different day and being given dominion over the others; unless you really feel part of the natural world, then you can’t really help.

Except perhaps to help fend off some of your brethren who believe that hurricanes are God’s punishment for sin; that if we choose to cut down every last tree, it will bring on the End Times; that oil spills don’t matter. Maybe you can run interference while atheists get on with trying to save the planet.

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A curious thing about creationists. I try to study the minds of these strange people, who still, 150 years after Alfred Wallace, retain the primitive mindset of the eighteenth century when people thought that animal species, including the naked ape, had been created, each in its own place, by a finger-pointing white-bearded figure in the sky. It is as if we still had, living among us, people who believed in phlogiston, or humors, or the heart as the seat of emotions; a glimpse back into a distant past of primitive ideas about the world around us.

So I study them, much as a time traveler visiting the Dark Ages might, or a traveler to the deepest Amazon finding a previously uncontacted tribe.

And in the case of creationists, these strange throwbacks living still among us, I try to see the world through their eyes, wonder what strange shadows that imperfect organ is throwing on to the retina of these good simple people as they struggle to come to grips with the realities of several hundred years of scientific advances.

Here is one for you. What do creationists see when they look in the evolutionary mirror? What do they see when they look at Chimpanzee or Gorilla? Do they see both as just another mammal, like Cat or Dog, Kangaroo or Opossum, Platypus or Echidna? Do they not see the close resemblances to us in the face, the expressions, the hands and feet, the body, the behavior, the movement, the social groups, the young? Do they not say, well, my cousin is a hairy man, but he is still my cousin? Do they not say there but for the grace of Darwin go we? That these close cousins just traveled a different path from an obviously identical starting point?

And looking at the faces of their cousins, are they not inspired to investigate further, find that the resemblance is not just skin deep but extends through brain and skeleton and into the most fundamental unit of evolution the DNA?

I mean it is one thing to believe that the old silverback in the sky created beasts of burden and sheep and cattle, obviously different to, and, from an anthropocentric view, inferior to, humans, as part of his reward of dominion over all as long as you didn’t eat of the “tree of evolutionary knowledge” scheme. But the bronze age sheepherders typing out the Old Testament on a piece of goatskin didn’t know about the great apes, or even the monkeys, which did not live around what the desert nomads thought of as the centre of the universe but which we now call the Middle East, a kind of evolutionary backwater with barely enough species known to fill a boat.

If there had been a band of gorillas living by the Dead Sea, or a band of chimpanzees living on the Mount of Olives, do you think one of the sheepherders might have modified the relevant bit of his creation mythology to read, “And then Yahweh created the great apes, and he took a rib from a chimpanzee and it became the first human”?

With that kind of mythology, one of Darwin’s early ancestors, say living in Ancient Athens, might well have been inspired to discover the reality of evolution long before Alfred Wallace. And in that case, would the primitive members of the Texas School Board still be demanding that creationism be taught? How long does it take for the blindingly obvious to be accepted?

-- David Horton

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Atheists, walk this way

By David Horton

Going through airport security recently I was pulled up when the scanners spotted a can of shaving cream in my bag. Out of the queue, unpack bag, find shaving cream among all your other personal hygiene items as people keep a wary eye on you as a possible terrorist.

And I felt like saying - “Hey, I’m an atheist, I’m off to the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, atheists don’t blow up planes or anything else.”

And then, in my spot a money making venture a mile away (eye on being part of next year’s Forbes list of excessively rich people) mode I thought - how about flights for atheists only? Special treatment, no need for scanning luggage and body and handing over phones and being embarrassed by shaving cream, just walk this way Mr Atheist sir. Flights could be cheaper without all that security, and certainly quicker.

I reckon a lot more atheists would come out of the closet too. Come forward to claim yet another benefit of living the superstition-free life.

And so, just as special benefits for non-smokers encourage the giving up of the filthy nicotine habit, so special benefits for atheists would encourage the giving up of the filthy religion habit.

And eventually (after hell freezes over) all of us could avoid the embarrassment and delay currently caused by the potential, at any time, for some religious person to go bat-shit crazy.