Reason | The Armchair Antichrist

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Fortress of Faith

On May 6, 2010, In Evolution, Religion, Science, By The Armchair Antichrist

I don’t watch House and never plan on watching it, but Gregory House made a superb quote on the show. This gem of a quote is “if you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people”. It’s not that I think all religious people are inherently stupid or illogical, but that there is fundamentally within them a core part of them that does not respond to reason. This core consists of religious beliefs which are garrisoned in a region of their mind unassailable by any intrusion of reason or logic. These are beliefs which they can never let go in spite of piles and piles of evidence to the contrary. This is the work of faith.

However, sometimes reason and logic make a breakthrough. A small chunk of this fortress of faith is chipped away. There is the feeling that maybe what I believe is not 100% true. As a result, cognitive dissonance can occur which is the uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. For example, there is the dilemma in accepting evolution as an accurate explanation of the diversity of life on the planet and the belief that God created all of life uniquely. To get rid of this mental unease some sort of conflict resolution must be made.

For some the acceptance of evolution for example might progress into disbelief in God. For others it may result in abandoning evolution altogether and the strengthening of faith in God. And for others yet more there may be a more harmonious compromise. With the example of evolution I used earlier it may be the compromised belief that evolution was the mechanism which God used to exercise his will.

I am most in favour of the first type of resolution, obviously. But, the third one is still much more preferable than the second. At least in that case reason can reach their core. In fact, for those who can come to such a compromise there probably isn’t this impenetrable fortress of faith I have been talking about. They may one day become atheists too. But, I don’t really care if that happens. My wish is not for everybody in the world to become staunch, militant atheists. Rather, it is for people to become more logical and more willing to see things less absolutely.

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Tagged with: belief • cognitive • contradictory • dissonance • Evolution • god • gregory • house • logic • reason • religious

An Unlikely Convert

On April 1, 2010, In Anecdotes, Poems, By The Armchair Antichrist

I have finally found faith. It took a while, but I could no longer live in despair. I have always had this empty feeling, a yearning for more. This nihilism of values was eating away at me. And I wanted to feel complete. I wanted peace. Peace for my lacking soul.

I once thought that everything could be explained by reason and logic. I was wrong. There are some questions whose answers lie beyond this world. I came to this revelation when I found Jesus, or rather Jesus found me.

He spoke to me at 3:00AM a few nights back when I was finishing up two of my philosophy essays. My eyes were near bloodshot from staring at my computer screen for hours. But, I could see clearly. There was something wrong. The words from my essay were swirling around, blinking and flashing. Soon, they came together to form a pattern.

It started out as a picture of a baby. But, then it became animated and showed a progression of scenes of a boy growing up. I soon realized that this was me. As the animation progressed to the present Jesus came onto the screen. He told me that he has known me before I was born. In addition, he explained how the mental capacities I was designed with would prevent me from coming to faith on my own so that it was His duty to share His love with me personally.

He told me that He loved me and wanted to give everything He could offer me, but that only I could make the decision to receive it. To help me with my decision He showed me what my life would be if I accepted Him and what my life would be if I did not. The first animation was of a long and happy life with my future family and eventual ascension to heaven with Him. The other one was much different. It was as of an equally long, but very unhappy life with me living alone and later in a dark place in complete separation from Him. By then the decision was clear.

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Tagged with: christ • faith • heaven • jesus • logic • nihilism • peace • Philosophy • reason • soul

Deny God to Cope with Reality?

On March 10, 2010, In Heaven and Hell, Religious Arguments, Religious Stupidity, By The Armchair Antichrist

Have you seen this before?

Atheists try to make belief in God seem like something just to help people cope, but it is the exact opposite! They deny God to help them cope with the coming judgment.

You can find it on a number of Christian YouTube profiles. I don’t know why it is so popular because it is just so damn idiotic. It rings of the same bell as Satan going against God even though he knows that he exists and will destroy him. Similarly, this concept assumes that atheists believe in God and know that they will burn in hell for eternity for denying God.

This doesn’t make any sense firstly because by definition an atheist does not believe in God. Furthermore, it assumes that people with the knowledge that there are only two paths: one that leads to eternal life and happiness and another that leads to eternal suffering and damnation that people would actually choose the latter.

There is no amount of sin that you religious people think atheists enjoy so much that can persuade us to choose hell. And implying that people choose to go to hell is just disgusting. So, religious people please get your concepts straight and try using some logic and reason before spouting out nonsense.

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Tagged with: atheist • christian • damnation • eternal • god • judgment • logic • reason • religious • satan • suffering • youtube

Purposeful Anger

On February 24, 2010, In Christianity, Religious Stupidity, By The Armchair Antichrist

How dare you judge atheists for being angry. We are angry for damn good reasons. We are angry because the Pope says that condoms spread HIV/AIDS. We are angry because you try to get religion taught in science classes. We are angry because you prevent same-sex marriage from being legal. We are angry because we are the most distrusted minority group for no apparent reason. We are angry because you proclaim that our lives are worthless and that we have no basis for morality just because we don’t believe in your God. Again, the tip of the iceberg metaphor applies here.

How about you attend to the arguments brought up rather than avoiding them because the content is the same regardless of the emotional force. Time and time again I get comments on this blog which are completely irrelevant to the post and going off some religious tangent. But, then again most of you loud mouth type religious people wouldn’t understand logic and reason if it nailed you to a cross.

The hypocrisy is painfully apparent when you judge it is perfectly fine when people convert to Christianity emotionally. Somehow it is so much more logical when emotionally vulnerable people convert compared to when people who have good reasons to not believe in God do just that. That’s not really too surprising when you think about how you need to indoctrinate children while their young to get them to believe.

Could you people for once get off your high horses and think for yourself rather than being told what to think? Just a thought.

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Tagged with: atheist • Christianity • convert • god • hypocrisy • indoctrinate • logic • Morality • pope • reason • religious • same sex marriage

No God, No Rules?

On February 8, 2010, In Morality, Philosophy, By The Armchair Antichrist

Sometimes when you ask a religious person what would happen if they did not believe in God they will say that they would have no reason to act moral anymore. There would be no more objective morality for them. Everything would become subjective and relative to personal whims and desires.

There would be no difference between murder and dropping a stone. So, without God they would have no problem with rape, murder, theft, arson, adultery and all the things which they previously considered sinful. At face value this is completely ridiculous claim.

But, it makes perfect sense through Feuerbach’s work which I have previosuly written about in You Are Your Own God. Since God is human nature externalized and objectified, the denial of such a God would be a denial of human nature. It would be a denial of our Reason, Will and Affection. That would be like the removal of the ego and superego from one’s psyche, leaving only the id behind. Like the brute we would be ruled by our desires.

I hope I have made more sense out of religious idiocy. And hopefully through reason I will be able to continue to correct their mistakes.

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Tagged with: adultery • affection • arson • brute • feuerbach • human nature • id • murder • objective morality • psyche • rape • reason • religious idiocy • superego • theft

Good Old Kant

On January 12, 2010, In Arguments against God, Nature of God, Philosophy, Religion, By The Armchair Antichrist

Although Kant believed in God (not the Christian one since he was very critical of Christianity) and tried to provide logical reasons to believe in God, this excerpt from his Critique of Pure Reason illustrates some of the problems with the God concept. Specifically, it helps shed some light onto all the meaningless talk about God being outside of time, space and so on.

“If we suppose an object of a non-sensible intuition to be given, we can indeed represent it through all the predicates which are implied in the presupposition that it has none of the characteristics proper to sensible intuitions; that it is has none of the characteristics proper to sensible intuition; that it is not extended or in space, that its duration is not a time, that no change (succession of determinations in time) is to be met in it, etc. But there is no proper knowledge if I thus merely indicate what the intuition of an object is not, without being to say what it is that is contained in the intuition. For I have not then shown that the object is even so much as possible, not being in a position to given any intuition corresponding to the concept, and being able to say that our intuition is not applicable to it. But what has chiefly to be noted is this, that to such a something [in general] not a single one of all the categories be applied. We could not, for instance, apply it to the concept of substance, meaning something which can exist as subject and never as predicate. For save in so far as empirical intuition provides the instance to which to apply it, I do not know whether there can be anything that corresponds to such a form of thought.”

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