Just Atheists

by Jaime

I recently posted about free will on my personal blog which is more of a place for me to post my random thoughts and cool things I come across throughout the day. But, I also thought it was an appropriate topic for a conversation here.

I believe that free will does not exist. That’s not to say that we don’t make decisions. But based on the appearance, at least, that we live in a cause and effect universe, I believe it follows that our actions are an effect of a particular cause. The lack of free will is not the same thing as predestiny, however. I’m not saying that all of our actions are planned out from the beginning, just that the actions we take are based on the information our brains have at that time. A recent article from ScienceNOW Daily News talks about a study done that shows from brain imaging that brain patterns showed a decision before the subject is conscious of the decision. You can read the article here.

by Brian

Generally I try not to be a complainer but this one really got to me:

Atheist activist Rob Sherman was testifying before the Illinois legislature regarding the issue of state funding for church building rehabilitation when Rep. Monique Davis (D - Chicago) tore into him for his atheism. Among other shocking comments, she said, “[I]t’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!” And later ordered, “Get out of that seat! You have no right to be here!” Fortunately, Mr. Sherman refused to yield. Listen for yourself here.

Sometimes I feel like I’m being dramatic when I mention the generally negative attitude the public has about atheists. But when a relatively high-profile politician can say these kinds of things without a firestorm of criticism and hardly a peep from the press I have to wonder if it’s even worse than I thought.

Special thanks to the Council for Secular Humanism for the lead.

by Daren J

Theists frequently ask me, “why be a moral person if there is no punishment in the afterlife?” Well, there are lots of reasons. 1) I will not be as successful in life if others cannot trust me, and if all I ever do is look after myself, then people will not trust me. This applies to lying, stealing, and harming others generally. 2) I do not believe that I can be “absolved” of my wrongdoing through either a shaman’s magic (confession) nor through the ritual drinking of human/god blood (communion). That means I need to try and be as good and kind as possible every time I act because there are no do-overs.

I am troubled by the implication from some theists; they imply that if they stopped believing in a god, then they would become some kind of immoral and egocentric criminal. It is not the threat of eternal punishment that motivates me to do good deeds, it is for the mutual benefit of us all.

I find the latter to be a more positive outlook, for sure.

by Brian

No, not “Death to Atheists” - “Death as interpreted by an atheist,” silly!

Religious people frequently question me about death when they discover that I am an atheist. A common question is, “What happens when we die?” My frank answer is, “Nothing. We just cease existing.” The question presupposes the existence of a soul - a concept I reject. Instead I believe that what we know as a “soul” is actually an extremely complex network of natural inclinations and environmental influences. In short, this life is all we get.

Many faithful see this as a very bleak way to view our lives. Without the rewards of the afterlife, they say, our lives on earth have no value or meaning. They often view my rejection of a belief in an afterlife as a cynical and nihilistic view which robs humankind of our best qualities. They could not be more wrong. And, in fact, I feel that my view elevates the value of human life beyond the capacity of a religious view.

The finite nature of our lives compels me to believe that each life is unique, valuable, and irreplaceable. When a person dies she is gone and we will never get her back. The consequence of this belief is that I love the people around me very deeply because I recognize how precious they are and how fortunate I am to experience their lives - they could be gone from me so quickly.

To be sure, the idea that we will see our loved ones in the afterlife is comforting. But my belief in our temporariness is a constant reminder that I can never take my loved ones for granted in this life.

by Brian

Okay, let me start by saying that I am not a parent and am probably not even remotely qualified to address this subject. I suspect I’m setting myself up for some severe criticism, but here goes!

If you know very many atheist parents you have probably heard at least one of them say something like this: “I don’t want to impose my beliefs on my child so I just don’t talk about it. My child can make her own conclusions.” I have generally found this position to be reasonable and even prudent until very recently. And this is where I go out on the limb:

You’ve probably heard the public service announcement which says something like, “If you don’t talk to your kids about drugs, someone else will,” at which point a thuggish looking man steps up and makes an offer. The thrust of the PSA is that parents who do not discuss the dangers of drugs and how to deal with offers of drugs fail to prepare their children to make good decisions about drugs. Can the same be said about religion? By avoiding the topic of religion do we cede that facet of their lives to the door-to-door evangelists of the future?

I do not mean to imply that we should teach our children to believe that religion is inherently evil and that atheism is the ultimate truth. Firstly, most of us don’t believe in such an overly-simplistic view of religion. Secondly, it would rob the child of the same nuanced critical thinking skills we were trying to teach her in the first place. But the reality is that a classmate may ask your child to join her at a church retreat. To what extent and in what ways do you prepare her to deal with the things she will hear there?

by Daren J

I promised to answer the question of whether an objectively wrong action (such as murder) would still be wrong if the human race no longer existed - say it is the year 100,000 CE, and the human species, along with 97% of all other living species, are wiped out from a massive caldera eruption in North America. Mass extinctions of this scale appear in the fossil record approximately every 250 million years or so, and we’re about due statistically. [I believe the mass extinction of 65 million years ago that killed the dinosaurs was less than 50% extinction, but I digress]. There are no humans now living, so is “murder” objectively wrong? The short answer is “yes,” the long answer is very complicated.

The Long Answer: Because humans experience the flow of time in a specific direction, known as the “arrow of time” which flows from what we call the past to the future we conceive of things of having not existed yet (as in the children I have not yet fathered) and the things that no longer exist (such as Tyrannosaurus Rex) but perhaps this is a peculiarity of how we, as temporal humans, understand the universe. Bear with me; time is actually a dimension of the universe, and viewing everything through the way in which we experience time may be failure of imagination. For example, we know that other theoretical dimensions exist, and that it is theoretically possible for a physical four, or five dimensional cube (called a “hypercube”) to be observed in our three dimensional universe. We as three dimensional creatures have a tendency to see our perception of the physical as the “real” universe. However, we may simply be limited by our physical reality - the “real” universe appears to be far more complex with perhaps billions of symmetric and asymmetric dimensions.

Here is my point: the asymmetry of time’s arrow cannot change either what has or what will be. Thus, once it was objectively wrong to murder at any point along time’s arrow, that fact simply exists, regardless of whether it is being actively perceived by a creature at a particular point along the arrow. The same holds for what has not yet occurred to our senses. When pterodactyls ruled the skies, human murder was still wrong. The pterodactyl experienced our same arrow of time, and just because it was limited to experiencing time in the same asymmetric way doesn’t mean that occurrences along the arrow “later” aren’t just as real simply because the creature hasn’t yet experienced them.

This of course does not mean that the dino understands murder, or is bound by the human objectivity of it. As I’ve said, it is only objective in human cognition. Yet, the fact that it exists at all makes it exist, period.

“Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems….” George Eliot

I reject religion as a yardstick to measure ideas. Doing so looks at the issues backwards – human behavior explains religion, not vice versa. However, for my first post I thought I should explain where I stand on religion so that I do not have to constantly address the relevance of religion on any given topic. To be sure, religion has been given a free pass on issues of ethics and morality. The assertions of the religious and the claim they stake on ethics and morality deserve vigorous challenge. However, to do so here would present a never-ending distraction from our primary objective – discussion of ethics from the perspective of an atheist.

So does religious thought play any role in the formation of human ethics? As a human invention, religious thought cannot guide us to an understanding of human behavior. In fact, religion actually hampers this understanding. At best religion is a cop-out which allows a person to rely on blind acceptance of religious teachings rather than truly scrutinizing her or his beliefs. At worst it is a distraction which complicates honest examination of ethics and morality by injecting overly-simplistic and inconsistent ideals into the process.

My goal is to look past the smoke screen which religion places between us and our understanding of the world to identify the real sources of human behavior. This has been done before by thinkers far more intelligent than I! However, I write not as a thinker but as an average Joe who is genuinely interested in these issues. I invite you to join me (and criticize me!) as I explore these issues and their effectiveness in giving meaning to our lives.

Welcome to JustAtheists.com – a blog where atheists tackle ethics, philosophy, law, and what it means to be human.

About the Blog
This blog will tackle various issues facing the atheist from the mundane (Why do I follow the speed limit?) to the extraordinary (Do our lives have any meaning?). The ideas presented on this blog may not always be mind-blowing or ground breaking; rather, this blog is merely our humble attempt to pinpoint the boundaries of ethics and the motivations for human behavior. We encourage our readers to challenge our assertions and offer their own perspectives.

We hope to give our readers resources, food for thought, and a sounding board for ethics, philosophy, law, and what it means to be human.

About the Bloggers

Brian J. Sabel
Brian is a co-founder and director of the Iowa Secularists. He is also a certified Humanist Celebrant. Brian is a law student at the University of Iowa. He lives in Iowa City with his wife and fellow blogger, Jaime.

Daren J.
Daren studied philosophy and political science at Grand View College where he also served as an adjunct Philosophy Professor. Daren holds a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Drake University. He is serving as a U.S. Army Magistrate in the 2nd U.S. Trial Judiciary. When not called to active duty, Daren serves as one of only two parole judges for the state of Iowa. Daren is the General Counsel to and serves on the Board of Directors for the Iowa Secularists.

Jaime L. Sabel
Jaime is a co-founder and President of the Iowa Secularists. She also serves on the board for Camp Quest of Minnesota and has been involved with Iowa City Darwin Day and Iowa Citizens for Science. Jaime is a scientist and has worked in the fields of developmental biology and genetics and is now branching into immunology. She lives in Iowa City with her husband, Brian.

About the Name
The name JustAtheists.com has a triple meaning drawing from three definitions of the word “just”: We are atheists who are honorable and fair in our dealings and actions; merely atheists; and exclusively atheists (in that the bloggers are not of other worldviews).