If there is no God, there is no right or wrong.

Only nature.

So says a fundie.

They say the damnedest things, don't they? But let's take a look at this idea, shall we?

For starters, I'm an atheist. I do not believe that any god exists. I have yet to see proof of such. Because I don't believe that God exists, I don't believe in right and wrong. Murder, rape, theft, and eating babies are just fine by me. It's OK in the animal kingdom, so it's OK for people too. Right?

Of course not.

The reality is that I actually do have a concept of right and wrong. Fundies would say that I do because God gave me one. Wrote it on my heart or some nonsense. And because I have a sense of right and wrong, I know that God exists. Sounds a bit like circular reasoning to me. I'm not buying it. If you bought it, I suggest you take it back. According to some of the things I read in the Bible, this God makes folks like Hitler and Stalin look like amateurs. Why anyone would agree that they are made in his image is beyond me. I'll get to those things in the Bible later. Let's talk about where right and wrong really comes from.

I'm going to focus on the big wrongs, things that are usually touted as absolutely wrong. Murder, rape, theft, and deceit. Seems like every time I get in an argument about morality with a fundie the question of one of those always comes up.

"Is Murder wrong?"
"ummmm, yeah!"
"Absolutely wrong?"
"I think most people will agree that murder is wrong."
"So you do believe in absolutes!"

Yeah and it just goes from there. So why is murder wrong? Animals kill members of their own species and humans are animals, right? Yes, humans are animals, but we are an animal that understands that murder is not conductive to the survival of our species. It doesn't really fit in to how humans organise themselves into societies. Same goes for those other wrongs - rape, theft, and deceit. Throughout thousands of years of human evolution, these concepts have become part of our nature. We need to be told murder is wrong about as much as we need to be told to hold our breath when our heads are underwater.

There's a bit more though. Weird thing about humans, we can feel what it's like, to an extent, to be another human. We can project our feelings on to another of our kind. We can understand the feelings of another of our kind. Those things being said, if I, as a human, understand that something is harmful to me, then I understand that it is harmful to another of my kind. I wouldn't want anything harmful done to me, therefore I shouldn't do harmful things to others of my kind. Harmful things tend not to be good for survival. If an animal understands anything, it understands what it needs for it and it's species to survive. Our needs as humans are a little different from what other animals need so we tend not to do exactly as the animals do. This is why we don't eat our babies. This is why males of our kind do not regularly gang rape females of our kind.

It is nature, our nature as human beings, that dictates right and wrong, not the nature of how other animals behave. God does not make right and wrong. We do.

And if you are still looking to God for your moral absolutes, maybe you can learn a thing to a few from this video -



So what say you? Did you really need the Bible to know that murder is bad, or did it just make sense without you being told anything about it?

A few muslims are terrorists, so let's burn a Quran!

Let's not.

Before I get started on what I know is going to be a long rant, take a look at these links-

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68592

http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Burn-A-Koran-Day/134718123226530?v=wall

Yeah, I know the first one is a forum post that links to the second, but there are quite a few people there that are all for this. If I were not currently banned from that forum, I'd post a link to this if not just post the whole thing there. If anyone would like to do that on my behalf, I'd be pretty cool with it. I'd like to get some comments from those that support burning the Quran or any other book. You know, have like a discussion?

I'm very against this. I know not all Muslims are terrorists. The people behind what happened on 9/11/2001 were, but they only represent a relative few that are extremist fanatics. Nearly all Muslims I have encountered are pretty nice. Aside from that I am against book burnings in general. Nearly all books serve either a purpose of education or entertainment. I think it's completely asinine to to burn a book because you don't like it or don't agree with it. Burning a religious text carries a bit of added weight as that text hols a pretty special meaning to those who are members of the religion that is attached to that text. Burning a holy text is purely an act of hate and ignorance.

From the Facebook link -

On September 11th, 2010, from 6pm - 9pm, we will burn the Koran on the property of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!

Did I read that right? In remembrance? That alone is something I've got a pretty big issue with. There's a lot better things one can do in remembrance of those that died that day than commit a blatant act of hate. It's total disrespect! Why not have a big group prayer for those that died, their families they left behind and the soldiers still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? I don't believe in praying as I am an atheist, but I do understand that most people that belong to one religion or another do. That's at least respectful. Or how about some big charity fund raiser for the families of the victims? Or send care packages to the soldiers? Or just do something positive and respectful?

But there's other problems I have. As I said, not all Muslims are terrorists. Islam is the second largest religion and accounts for 23% of the worlds population, about 1.57 billion people. At least that's what Wikipedia tells me. It's only a relative few, pretty much their equivalent to militant fundamentalist Christians, that do commit terrorist acts. It seems rather asinine to burn Qurans over a few when many of them are not bad people at all. It would be like burning KJV's because the members of Westboro Baptist Church are total fucking douchebags. In other words, committing a hateful act toward a large group is just ridiculous when only a few are the problem.

And about burning the Quran. It's a religious text. Just a book to anyone else, but to a Muslim it's pretty special. Burning it is only going to make the terrorist fanatics fell justified in their actions and at least annoy the rest. Not to mention make those doing the burning and anyone even remotely associated look bad. Great move there folks, you are doing America a real solid. If any reading this is planning on participating in burning Qurans, before you do, think about how you would feel if it was your holy text that someone was burning.

Another thought on this, where are they going to get the Qurans from? If they are going to acquire them legitimately, well that's a lot of sales of Qurans. The people publishing them and the bookstores I'm sure will appreciate your money. Heck it may even look like a lot of people just converted to Islam. And if they are acquired not so legitimately? Well isn't there something in the Bible that says "Thou shalt not steal"? Hmmm Exodus 20:15, Matthew 19:18, Romans 13:9. And it's usually in the front of the Bible with the rest of the 10 Commandments. So if you are not purchasing your Quran before you burn it and you believe what the Bible says, you are going to Hell. Why not give that money to a charity? You know, do something positive with it? A Quran costs between $8 and $40. You could feed or clothe some people with that. Heck if a large enough group gave that each, they could probly put a child of one of the victims through college, if not a few. Just another thought.

Another thing to those that are planning on burning a Quran. Have you read it? If you are going to buy it, you might as well read it before tossing it in to the fire. If anything so you really know what you are burning and why you are burning it. You might learn something. I suggest you not burn it. Read it and keep it as a reference. It may come in handy in a theological debate with a Muslim. It's why I keep a Bible handy as well as having BibleGateway.com bookmarked. This quote from Sun Tzu's Art of War comes to mind.

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

Not that I consider Muslims or Christians to be enemies of mine, but I do get into debates with them, mostly the latter. Getting back to the point, burning any text without reading and understanding it is just ignorant.

In closing and to sum it up, anyone that is participating in a Quran burning is only exposing their hate, ignorance, disrespect and just being a total douchebag. I feel like for the most part I'm preaching to the choir here, but if I change someone's mind or cause them to think, well them my time wasn't completely wasted. At least I got it off my chest.

Internet is pissing me off, rant #3 - Message Boards

This may be shocking, but something I spend a great deal of my time on actually does piss me off. Really, it's not the boards that piss me off, just certain people on them. There are certain people in this world that can really ruin one's time on a message board. Seems like every board has them too.

First we will start with a short list of boards I regularly post on as of late -

http://www.theologyonline.com/
http://www.dakkadakka.com/
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/
http://www.krankhaus.net/
http://www.crossplay.net/

And that last one I haven't been to in a long time and should really go back to. There's cool people on there.

Anyway, what I'm not going to talk about here is spammers and trolls, they are almost welcome to what I am bring up that really needs to be rounded up and made into Soylent Green.

Spelling and grammer nazis! I fucking hate these people. If you are unfamiliar, these people make that English teacher you had in high school that nobody liked seem pretty normal. These are the kind of people that if you dare make a spelling or grammatical error while having a discussion with them, they will turn the discussion toward that error. They will completely ignore what ever the subject is of the argument because you made a typo, then make a big deal of said typo. I don't know about you, but I thought I was posting on a message board, not writing my college thesis. Who gives a shit if I misplaced a letter or two? Go fuck yourself!

And these fucking moderators and admins that are biased in one way or another and don't have the balls to admit it. You know how annoying it is when to see someone get away with something you just got banned for? This pisses me off to no end. It gets more annoying when I come back from a ban, bring it to the attention of the mods (and everyone else) that they are biased or at least playing favorites and it becomes an immediate banning. WTF? This is actually something I appreciate about TheologyOnline. I know it may seem a bit crazy for me to actually enjoy going to a discussion forum about religion and politics that's run by a group of fundamentalist Christian right wing conservative zealots, but they admit they are biased. They won't deny it. I do have a little respect for them because of that.

People that resort to name-calling when they can't debate really piss me off. What it basically tells me is that you have completely given up and you are too full of yourself to even entertain the idea that I just might be right. Get over it, get over yourself. If you can't handle yourself in an intellectual debate, please do not waste my, or anyone else's, time if it's going to result in cheap insults and name-calling. Go fuck yourself with something white hot and made out of metal.

And you people that whine to the mods and admins. Or worse yet you people that start a thread whining about someone you don't like. Or because someone made fun of something you like. Or because there's people on the forum that doesn't agree with you. You people really need to grow the fuck up and get a life. Whine to somebody that cares. Which is nobody. So shut the fuck up.

Finally, people that post on message boards while drunk or high and talk about how drunk or high they are need to be loaded into a wood chipper. Really. It's just fucking annoying. If all you are saying is "look at me! I'm drunk!" Get a fucking life. You are announcing to an entire community that you are a pathetic loser getting drunk or high alone in front of a computer. Stop it. Nobody cares. It's not as cute and funny as you think it is. Especially you people that advertise that you are high. I'm thinking I should seriously weasel the real name and address out of one of these idiot and call their local police on them. Now that would be funny.

I think I've bashed 90% of message board users at this point. Have a nice day. I think I may have a thing or 2 more to rant about.