photo by Ken Fager
I’m sick of assholes. I’d be less colorful in my language, but I also don’t think being censored necessarily leads to a better life. Maybe I should add that to my list.
I’ve penned a few quick tips for how to stop being an idiot who makes life unpleasant for yourself and those around you. Most of this is specifically directed at the atheist/theist community. If it applies to you, you probably won’t think it does, but someone out there might be picturing your face or username right about now, so it pays to give a few of these a whirl just to say you tried. Heck, it might just help us become a better society, and wouldn’t that be just peachy?
Schlosser, L. Z. (2003). Christian privilege: Breaking a sacred taboo. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 31(1), 44-51
You can download a PDF of this list here.
adaptation of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling by Tom Blackwell
J. Anderson Thomson is a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia. In a recent LA Times opinion post he expounds on the biological reasons we humans created the idea of God in the first place, and what role that belief serves psychologically.
I find these reasons for faith fascinating, and I see how they have been present in my own life.
Like our physiological DNA, the psychological mechanisms behind faith evolved over the eons through natural selection. They helped our ancestors work effectively in small groups and survive and reproduce, traits developed long before recorded history, from foundations deep in our mammalian, primate and African hunter-gatherer past.
For example, we are born with a powerful need for attachment, identified as long ago as the 1940s by psychiatrist John Bowlby and expanded on by psychologist Mary Ainsworth. Individual survival was enhanced by protectors, beginning with our mothers. Attachment is reinforced physiologically through brain chemistry, and we evolved and retain neural networks completely dedicated to it. We easily expand that inborn need for protectors to authority figures of any sort, including religious leaders and, more saliently, gods. God becomes a super parent, able to protect us and care for us even when our more corporeal support systems disappear, through death or distance.
Among the psychological adaptations related to religion are our need for reciprocity, our tendency to attribute unknown events to human agency, our capacity for romantic love, our fierce “out-group” hatreds and just as fierce loyalties to the in groups of kin and allies. Religion hijacks these traits.
In addition to these adaptations, humans have developed the remarkable ability to think about what goes on in other people’s minds and create and rehearse complex interactions with an unseen other. In our minds we can de-couple cognition from time, place and circumstance. We consider what someone else might do in our place; we project future scenarios; we replay past events. It’s an easy jump to say, conversing with the dead or to conjuring gods and praying to them.
I know (quite acutely, in fact) that I have a great need for attachment and a sense of another authority; I also possess a tendency to be intuitive or over-analytical about what someone else is thinking and feeling. I have certainly assigned motives and reasons to events that have no human agent.
All of these factors only encompass what I know consciously about myself and how faith has played a role in my life in the past. The chemistry of my brain and the more subtle evolutionary reasons for belief–well, those cannot be controlled. I can only use my reasoning and understanding to choose a different reaction when confronted with the concepts of a great “Other” or supernatural events.
“God” and faith are crafted to fulfill some of our needs and natural inclinations. They are presented to us as a catch-all solution to these inborn “problems.” Do you need love and someone to care for you? God will do it! Do you have a tendency to cling to a group and fear the “others?” Religion is perfect for you! Do you get that tingly feeling that someone is in the room with you when you meditate? That’s a god!
This, of course, doesn’t mean gods are real, but it does illustrate that we have a desire to answer questions and fulfill needs that come naturally to us. When we supply imaginary beings as the answer to the human condition, we’re doing ourselves and our descendants a disservice. It’s much more difficult to see the world objectively and accept the fact that we’re on our own, but it’s empowering and spurs on positive change in society. Why take personal responsibility when it’s much more comforting to know someone else is in charge of the rules who wants us to succeed? Because we will be a better, more altruistic society if we take charge of our actions and how they affect others.
We can be better as a species if we recognize religion as a man-made construct. We owe it to ourselves to at least consider the real roots of religious belief, so we can deal with life as it is, taking advantage of perhaps our mind’s greatest adaptation: our ability to use reason.
I agree!
Photo by Asterio Tecson
According to a long-term poll by the General Social Survey, those who support homosexuals and gay marriage are now in the majority of the American population for the first time!
The question they asked? “Are sexual relations between two adults of the same sex always, almost always, sometimes, or never wrong?” Only in the 2010 results did the numbers show a change from “always wrong” to “not wrong at all.”
May I just say it’s about damn time!
In a blog post detailing these findings, the comments got off to a glorious start. Here’s a response from “Barbara” who makes so many bigoted, homophobic statements I don’t even know where to start!
Chuck, you’re wrong if you think that everyone is going to come to accept your homosexuality and lifestyle as “normal”. It is not. If you really wanted to be accepted as normal, groups of you would do everything in your power to end the disgusting parades, but there is no call to end them, they are evidently loved by homosexuals. If you seriously want to act like the typical neighbor next door, aren’t you seriously embarrassed about them, or are you not allowed to speak the truth? If you think I would ever allow little children to watch them, you’re way off base. Sorry, but they show you as you are, and your “group” is not normal. The American Psychiatric Association calls depression and anxiety, which everyone has had at some time of their lives, labelled as mental illnesses. But your group has pressured them to accept as “normal” people who participate in parades naked or half-naked, men dressed as women, homosexuals acting out the sex act on a parade float in front of huge crowds, etc as “normal”, and do you really think that’s how the individual psychiatrists themselves think?
Everyone that I know does think that you should not be allowed to marry and definitely should not be allowed to adopt. Polls of Americans show that they do not agree with the states allowing homosexuals to marry, and if they’re asked if they should be allowed to adopt, they would hear a resounding NO. Just because your group is able to donate a lot of money and apply a lot of political pressure to get the laws passed that you want, does not mean that that the average American, and especially Christian Americans, agree with the law. Those laws would be undone in a minute if possible.
For those pollsters who are brave enough to go against the violent vehemence of your crowd, the polls show that your “marriages” are nothing but a sham. The vast majority of them are “open” marriages, with no intention of staying true to each other. It is not a lie that, on the average, homosexuals have extremely high numbers of partners compared to heterosexual men. I really doubt that you and your friends are willing to be truthful about this. Sorry, but this country’s interstate highways are notorious for having homosexuals in the restrooms just waiting for other random homosexual men, not caring in the least if they even see their faces, not caring in the least if they know them, they just want their sex. We all know about the homosexual baths, etc, and that’s why AIDS spread so quickly among homosexuals. The percentage of AIDS among heterosexual men in the US never approached the rate of AIDS among homosexuals. You may try and cover it up and sugar coat it, but it is a sick perversion that GOD says is an abomination. If you think we will all cave in to political correctness and ignore the truth, you’re wrong. It’s a shame that most people don’t bother researching anything, they just go along with whatever is the popular thought of the day. But I will always stand with God’s Word. In addition, being happily accepted as “normal” couples is not merely all that homosexuals want. They already have California law requiring that gay history will be covered in the student’s textbooks. They may not be able to give you the name of the first President, but they’ll have to learn the history of a group of people who want acceptance of their sin. I’m not sorry for how I feel. God’s way is always the right way. It’s sad but true, that I’m willing to go to my death for my faith in my Lord, but you’re willing to go to eternal condemnation for what pleases you sexually. Your eternal life is much more important, I’m praying you will repent.
It doesn’t make any difference in the world if my opinion is someday in the minority. I will always do my best to follow the Lord. Don’t you call it an agenda when you’re not happy enough with laws protecting your jobs, you then want laws allowing you to marry, you have laws to adopt, the next step now being taken is to teach little 3 and 4 year olds the history of the gay movement? And then what will follow, allowing kids of all ages to express their sexuality, so that the homosexuals can be with young boys? When will it end? Sorry, but I hardly see the political action groups dissolving. It’s not surprising that I’ve yet to see homosexuals saying how much they love the Lord and how the Lord has made a difference in their lives.
Sigh.
Olin Thang on 
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