Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie — An Atheist Defends Atheism
Initially, I was going to post this as a rebuttal to refute the letter written by Bruce Sheiman and any misconceptions that fence-sitters may develop after reading Mr. Sheiman's book, "An Atheist Defends Religion." Mr. Sheiman's letter to a reader is re-printed in another thread that was posted by Noisican under the Ethics and Morals forum. Since my rebuttal to Mr. Sheiman's position is too long for a reply post on that existing discussion, I believe it merits its own discussion.
Mr. Sheiman's position (in short) is that since religion offeres many people comfort, happiness, and a sense of purpose in life, then it is only right to defend religion as a social good. I find several things wrong with that.
First, in the most well-known religions since the time of the Neolithic Revolution during the time of Hammurabi's Codified Law, religion caused more suffering than it brought happiness and comfort. History and archeology shows us by the excavation of ancient sites and analysis of recovered grave goods alone that for everyone who received "comfort" from religion, many more did not.
From the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution up through the end of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and into the 19th century, women (half the human race) were frequently targeted for becoming fodder for religion — from ritual sacrifice to appease the gods/God, to extra punishments, torture and execution for violating gender-defined roles promoted and dictated by religion. Ruins of ancient ritual sites show us that victims of human sacrifice did not die nice, peaceful deaths. Many were unwilling. For them, the idea that religion brought them "comfort" or "happiness" is highly questionable. They were hewn down before the prime of their lives without getting much of the benefits that makes life worthwhile living.
In polytheistic religions in Meso-America as well as in ancient Europe and the regions known as the "Fertile Crescent", victims of human sacrifice were often violently killed in their youth. This does not even include all the atrocities and human rights violations that have occurred, and which are being occurred today, in the name of Abrahamic monotheism.
Additionally, religion always seemed to explain why some people were spared the cruelties of war and natural disasters, but not others, and this set a lot of people up for marginalization. It promoted an ideology that God (or the gods) favored this or that group, but not others. It's downright despicable when you think about it.
It's selfish and inconsiderate to say, "God spared me/my family" in a natural disaster. What kind of message does that send to others who weren't so fortunate? That they or their loved ones weren't "worthy" enough of God's favor to be spared? Or how about, "God was on my child's team's side" at high school sports events. What about the parents of the children on the other school's team? Why wasn't God on their team's side?
It is more than insulting to hear these kind of statements. But it is even more of an insult to my intelligence to be told that this is all somehow OK just because some people are benefiting from religion, because such "benefits" frequently are not without expense or loss suffered by too many others. Women are still being told today across the US and other nations in the world that any extra suffering they're forced to bear as a consequence of divine decree from god will be made right in the afterlife. A preoccupation with the afterlife dismisses the importance of enjoying the one life you've got right now, and the importance of social responsibility to doing your part to make life suck just a little bit less for yourself and everyone else while you're here.
It is the weighing of benefits v. costs that must be examined honestly and painfully before making any apologia for religion as an overall social good.
As a fellow author, I respect Mr. Sheiman's honest endeavor to produce a book of compelling introspection. But his is not a position I can agree with. As one author to another, I would recommend reading his book but I would also have to recommend reading mine, Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie, which is the antithesis to his noble effort.
As an atheist, and especially as a woman, I take greater comfort knowing that there are other like-minded men and women — from young to old — who recognize the importance of purging harmful dogma from societal influence. A preoccupation with an afterlife diminishes the value placed on the quality of life in THIS one. I would find greater comfort knowing that as a woman, it wasn't my predestined lot in life to have to suffer extra punishment, pain, misery, and injustice with the justification that I'll get my reward in some afterlife. So yeah, having harmful religious influences criticized and estopped from making so many people suffer in this life — knowing that in the end I'll be "worm food" — is a greater comfort for me than any false hopes and empty promises offered by religion ever could be.
Mr. Sheiman's position (in short) is that since religion offeres many people comfort, happiness, and a sense of purpose in life, then it is only right to defend religion as a social good. I find several things wrong with that.
First, in the most well-known religions since the time of the Neolithic Revolution during the time of Hammurabi's Codified Law, religion caused more suffering than it brought happiness and comfort. History and archeology shows us by the excavation of ancient sites and analysis of recovered grave goods alone that for everyone who received "comfort" from religion, many more did not.
From the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution up through the end of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and into the 19th century, women (half the human race) were frequently targeted for becoming fodder for religion — from ritual sacrifice to appease the gods/God, to extra punishments, torture and execution for violating gender-defined roles promoted and dictated by religion. Ruins of ancient ritual sites show us that victims of human sacrifice did not die nice, peaceful deaths. Many were unwilling. For them, the idea that religion brought them "comfort" or "happiness" is highly questionable. They were hewn down before the prime of their lives without getting much of the benefits that makes life worthwhile living.
In polytheistic religions in Meso-America as well as in ancient Europe and the regions known as the "Fertile Crescent", victims of human sacrifice were often violently killed in their youth. This does not even include all the atrocities and human rights violations that have occurred, and which are being occurred today, in the name of Abrahamic monotheism.
Additionally, religion always seemed to explain why some people were spared the cruelties of war and natural disasters, but not others, and this set a lot of people up for marginalization. It promoted an ideology that God (or the gods) favored this or that group, but not others. It's downright despicable when you think about it.
It's selfish and inconsiderate to say, "God spared me/my family" in a natural disaster. What kind of message does that send to others who weren't so fortunate? That they or their loved ones weren't "worthy" enough of God's favor to be spared? Or how about, "God was on my child's team's side" at high school sports events. What about the parents of the children on the other school's team? Why wasn't God on their team's side?
It is more than insulting to hear these kind of statements. But it is even more of an insult to my intelligence to be told that this is all somehow OK just because some people are benefiting from religion, because such "benefits" frequently are not without expense or loss suffered by too many others. Women are still being told today across the US and other nations in the world that any extra suffering they're forced to bear as a consequence of divine decree from god will be made right in the afterlife. A preoccupation with the afterlife dismisses the importance of enjoying the one life you've got right now, and the importance of social responsibility to doing your part to make life suck just a little bit less for yourself and everyone else while you're here.
It is the weighing of benefits v. costs that must be examined honestly and painfully before making any apologia for religion as an overall social good.
As a fellow author, I respect Mr. Sheiman's honest endeavor to produce a book of compelling introspection. But his is not a position I can agree with. As one author to another, I would recommend reading his book but I would also have to recommend reading mine, Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie, which is the antithesis to his noble effort.
As an atheist, and especially as a woman, I take greater comfort knowing that there are other like-minded men and women — from young to old — who recognize the importance of purging harmful dogma from societal influence. A preoccupation with an afterlife diminishes the value placed on the quality of life in THIS one. I would find greater comfort knowing that as a woman, it wasn't my predestined lot in life to have to suffer extra punishment, pain, misery, and injustice with the justification that I'll get my reward in some afterlife. So yeah, having harmful religious influences criticized and estopped from making so many people suffer in this life — knowing that in the end I'll be "worm food" — is a greater comfort for me than any false hopes and empty promises offered by religion ever could be.
Tags: afterlife, comfort, human, justice, philosophy, reality, religion, rights, social, theism, More…
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on -
abolition of slavery is liberating the bodies of people,
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religion is a mindset of internal chains only the individual can break,
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I have not contradicted my self one bit, .....
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what desperate obsession do you have with trying to win a debate point on my words?.....
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I wrote what I think, you write what you can type......
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religion is not a tumor you can cut out of a brain or a book content that you can burn every copy of on this planet.....
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think about what you've written, you pretend that there are emerging Atheist societies and then you seem to want that as proof that slavery could exist there when it finally becomes 100 per cent Atheist?.....
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..... go drink a beer and take a deep breath boy
....
I take it that you do not wish to actually be my friend here ...since I sent my request many many days ago..... I've been to Tampa many times and hoped I might again someday when I sent the request
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so do not type that we are friends until you can admit your errors....
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I'll be happy to examine your evidence of a reall pro-slavery anti-woman Atheist society somewhere, but we both already know you are huffing
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on -
Ralph McRae: “...Besides making philosophical justifications for torturing prisoners, Sam Harris’s main claim to fame is that he was probably the first of these new atheist spokesmen to get attention for promoting an attitude of hostility towards religious moderates as enablers of fundamentalists...”
But the fact remains that in one sense, Sam Harris has a valid point regarding enabling. Many religious moderates are, however unwittingly, supporting religious bullies like “The Family” and others in high places each time they donate in the collection plate because the churches then turn over a significant portion of that money to PACS and lobbyists who finance the campaign coffers of Christian misogynists and their apologists who, in the name of “freedom of religion” and “the sanctity of life”, are destroying the lives, health, wellbeing, hopes and dreams and happiness of this nation’s women and girls.
A few moderate Christians are not aware of this, but many more ARE and they don’t care! The only time it will matter to them is when it’s their wife/daughter/sister/mother that needs an abortion but won’t be able to get one thanks to all the backdoor prohibitions this nation’s Congressmen have put on it.
Case in point: My 47 year old jobless, and uninsured neighbour whose pregnancy would have killed her had I not driven her 90 miles in my truck (w/ an expired inspection sticker, risking unaffordable fines for me) to the nearest facility that would treat her as a poor uninsured woman with no money and no car so she could get the care she needed that saved her life.
To put it bluntly, moderate Christians are enabling fascist misogynist fundie despots every time they vote for Congressmen like Stupak, Pitts, and Brownback (who are also anti-contraception as well as anti-abortion) and every time they put money in the collection plate. And the real crime is that they are being lied to as to what the funds are for and where their hard-earned money is really going. Well, I can tell you where it’s going.
It’s going to subsidize, one way or another, the plethora of “faith-based initiatives” that are not helping the poor, but instead are helping to put guys like Stupak, Pitts, Brownback, etc., in Congress — and for paying lobbyists like the Archbishop who went into Nancy Pelosi’s office and basically threatened to shut down every Catholic charity serving this country’s poor unless she went along with the Christian misogynist program of accepting discriminatory language and applicable execution of laws that affect the health and lives of millions across the nation.
Ralph McRae: “I can’t see any way of describing that intersection, other than fundamentalists — since moderates, by most understandings I have read, accept the principle of separation of church and state.”
I can: it’s called indifference. And it’s called “follow the money” and “follow the liars.” Liars like Rick Warren, Bruce Ware, Albert Mohler, Robert Rector, and countless more, including those with feminine faces like Beverly LaHaye, Mary Pride, Martha Peace, and Nancy Campbell (to name a few).
But the main issue surrounding this intersection is indifference...And hypocrisy.
Ask Larry Carter Center, a volunteer clinic escort. He and countless others can tell you first-hand about anti-choice Christians who have picketed Planned Parenthoods and kept them from opening facilities by major protesting, and harassed women entering clinics in need of an abortion. But when the dice of life threw them a “snake-eyes”, and they needed to get an abortion, or emergency contraceptives after a rape, it was an altogether different matter!
But my 47 year old neighbour could suffer and die for all a lot of these “moderates” cared.
Most “moderate” Christians are just as anti-choice and misogynistic as their fundie contemporaries because they see women as “less than”, as beasts of burden to be subordinated in value to that of the potential foetuses we can carry which they believe are babies that their god wants women to bear (often without adequate pain relief, too!).
And many of these “moderate” religionists only know what they are told, what they are presented by those who are denying women access to all forms of reliable contraception (including taxpayer-funded sterilization) in the name of being good “pro-life” Christians. See?
And they’re fooled by a shitload of religious “New Speak” along the way. Now, this is not by accident. The whole agenda from soup to nuts behind the conservative Christian patriarchy movement (which includes Catholics and Mormons) is to legitimize abuse of women and girls (and gays, and others, too) — all in the name of “divine right” and with the Constitutional protection of “freedom of religion.”
To clarify what I mean by religious “New Speak”: hardliners promote a change in the definition of words — like the word “abuse” — to diminish and trivialize human rights violations committed in the name of “freedom of religion.”
No matter how you look at it, you cannot get equality or equal rights out of the Bible. It’s a doctrine that begins with the premise that a perfect, all-knowing, ever-present “loving” god created the world just for man to take dominion over, and everything was just honky-dory until woman introduced sin and death into the world. Christians believe in the Bible, so they believe this part of it too. And it is this belief in this part that is the most responsible for indifference to the suffering of women and girls because of religiously inspired legitimized human rights violations. Think about it.
Normalizing cruelty and discrimination (and enslavement) of women and girls is how abuse is justified and legitimized.
Consider these statements:
1) Cancer patients do not have the right to safe and effective pain control because pain is a natural consequence of cancer and cancer is a naturally occurring human condition.
2) Those in burn units who are directly responsible for their injuries have no right to effective pain relief or compassion. If they don’t like that choice they shouldn’t have burned themselves.
3) Encourage surgical patients to forego pain relief both during and post surgery. Instead, have a staff member providing one-on-one encouragement not to have effective pain relief. Patients should be encouraged to think of their suffering as ‘a good pain’, to ‘work with the pain’ and to embrace ‘an altered sense of consciousness’. Infer that anyone who wants pain relief is a weak minded failure. Encourage competitive suffering with post surgery get-togethers.
4) Hospital policy should ensure that all palliative care patients ask at least twice before their request for pain relief is considered. If death is imminent consider denying the request.
5) Trauma sustained during torture results in damaged bodies and damaged psyches. Depositing a large sum of money in their bank account will make them forget all about it.
6) Psychiatric studies show that pre-rape courses reduce the terror women feel during and after rape.
In a civilized society these statements would beggar belief, and with good cause. They are offensive, insensitive and cruel.
Now consider the same ideas and policies regarding the care of pregnant women during birth:
1) Maternity patients do not have the right to safe and effective pain control because pain is a natural consequence of childbirth and childbirth is a naturally occurring womanly condition.
2) Those women who get pregnant should not expect choice in delivery options, nor should they expect pain relief or compassion. If they don’t like that they should have kept their legs shut.
3) Encourage obstetrical patients to forego pain relief during and after childbirth. Instead, have a staff member providing one-on-one encouragement not to have effective pain relief. Patients should be encouraged to think of their suffering as ‘a good pain’, ‘to work with the pain’ and ‘to embrace an altered state of consciousness’. Infer that anyone who expects effective pain relief is a weak-minded failure. Encourage competitive suffering with post birth get-togethers.
4) Hospital policy should ensure that all obstetrical patients ask at least twice before their request for pain relief is considered. If birth is imminent consider denying the request.
5) Trauma sustained during childbirth results in damaged bodies and damaged psyches. As soon as you put her baby in her arms she will forget all about it.
6) Psychiatric studies show that pre-natal courses reduce the terror women feel during and after childbirth.
These statements should beggar belief but they actually reflect obstetrical attitudes for the past several decades and, in many obstetrical circles (the US included), they are still widely accepted. Such attitudes maintain a deplorable status quo. They prevent advancement. Systemic discrimination always involves the attitude that a certain sub-group of the population is not deserving of humane treatment. They are considered inferior. What is considered unacceptable for other humans is considered acceptable for the group being discriminated against. This is true for any form of systemic discrimination, whether it is based on race, ethnicity and, in this case, gender. Underlying all obstetrical bias is misogyny.
We can thank the influence in all aspects of life that the Bible wields for much of this. Because it is in the very first book, in the story of the “original sin”, that women are predestined to have to suffer pain (along with possible permanent disability and death) in childbirth in order to be redeemed for “loosing sin unto the world.” After centuries of this barbaric belief in this sick book written by sick men about a sick god, such beliefs become codified into laws and policies...even in the medical field.
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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this very last paragraph defines the critical core questions.... are we a nurturant species where males and females cooperate to rear and teach their young family survival or are we a species compelled to form competing irrational cultures of violence and rapacity? Are alleged deities to be examined for character traits explicit in alleged holy books? Or shall these obscene pornographic evil books go unchallenged and be facades for bad gov't policies? Good Job Feminist Atheists. Keep telling the truth and motivate our peers to join the fight for kindness and sanity.
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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I apologize for the gargantuan sized sentence, Ralph. It was a bit too long. I appreciate that you took the time to read my posts here and respond to the points I've raised.
I find the problem to be very complex. There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution, instead there are many solutions. And as you say, they cannot and do not necessarily work together well at the same time but must be employed as the situation dictcates.
As you have read in my lengthy posts (which could have made another book all by themselves), the main problem I have with religion, and with many religionists, is a blinding indifference to the harm their religion and their church/synagogue/mosque donations pose for those whom Abrahamic monotheism and it's doctrine, the Bible, has harmed the most.
I know people who believe in Bigfoot and UFO abductions with as much fervor as Christians believe in God/the Bible as inviolable truths. Like religionists, the believers in UFO's and Bigfoot operate on belief without proof. But the difference is that the Bigfoot/UFO believers do not center their belief system on legitimized misogyny, deprivation of human and civil rights, and ritual murder as punishment for "sin" or for the status crime of being female (or gay, or a non-believer). That's why I tend to cut the Bigfoot/UFO fanatics a lot more slack than I cut Christians and Muslims.
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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I openly call for restoring our garden earth, build heaven together here instead of waiting to die for some supernatural Eden.....
none the less, too many xians are afraid of being friends with Atheists.....McCarthyism is not rampant as it once was, but it remains part and parcel of the divide and conquer lexicon.......
Sam Harris instructed many Atheists not to use the "A" word as if that will fix it? I think political defeatism and fatalism is what really is holding us back......
worker solidarity for green jobs and universal health care that is not for profit is the only way to go, life and death, clean air and clean water is the most pressing issue for all,
.......
terrorists who are not xian just grabs headlines..........xian terrorists at the clinics are getting a pass from cops and courts, they don't want to make martyrs and media stars of them all, so until one shoots a doctor or bombs a clinic, they are all getting a free crime zone scream and assault anyone with no penalties......
..... If only the Nazi pope would confess to fallibility and make abortion a sacrament....
.....then all that religious crap energy could be directed to weekly if not daily demands for clean energy and green jobs
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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Sadly, this is the doctrine that serves as the center of their entire belief system:
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Permalink Reply by Rick on
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Sadly I don't remember the country. But it is in Central or South America. They outlawed all abortions. All. Even when a women's life is in danger.
Well as it happened a women needed one to live. I forget the details but the women needed one. She couldn't get one. No doctor would touch her. If they did they lost their license to practice medicine.
It took that poor women over 8 hours to die.
Eight hours.
They women scream and cried out in pain. She begged for help.
Even her mother begged for someone to help her.
Even her husband begged for someone to help her.
But no one did.
Funny how things like this get very very very little press.
I wonder why?
A few years ago in north Texas, a 21 year old female student was raped.
She went to the cops and reported it.
The Department of Justice reports that 90% of the women raped never report it.
This girl was of the brave 10%.
So the doctor who she saw asked if she would like some medication to stop any pregnancy caused by the rape.
She said, "Yes."
So she goes along with a social worker to the local Walgreens.
The pharmacist reads the prescription and refuses to fill it due to his religious beliefs.
This clown is not a doctor.
This guy fills prescriptions.
So, denied the perscription because of "his religious beliefs" they had to go to another pahrmacy.
Just imagin how this poor child felt?
After being raped.
After having to be face unknown strangers when she filed the complaint.
Having it put in the public record she was raped.
If there is a trial then she has to face that aspect as well.
Then there is the defense attorney who will put her on the stand and just grill her and attempt to show that she actually wanted to man to rape her. Remember, the defense attorney represents the defendant and will try their darnedest to get them off.
So she will be torn to shreds by the defense lawyer.
And be justed by the jury as well.
More humiliation.
If there is a conviction then there will be an appeal. If the conviction is overturned then there will have to be another trial.
More humiliation.
So now she and the social worker had to go to another pharmacy to get it filled.
They did and it was filled.
So as a result the pharmacist who refused to fill it lost his job.
So what happens?
The pharmacists is made to look like the victim in all this.
Not the 21 year old girl who was raped.
No. She was not the victim at all in this case.
Just the poor pharmacist and his "religous" beliefs.
My responce to all that: B*LL SH*T!
I'd have yanked his license and made sure he never ever worked in that field again.
But that's just me.
Oh he found another job with another national pharmacy chain that didn't sell such things.
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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can not read the code green, do not see any white countries,,,, one of the most heroic women is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she seeks to liberate women from circumcision and rape/ownership of women,,,her filmaker friend paid with his life at the hands of a muslim terrorist, too freely roaming the streets of Holland and America
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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thank you Rick, there was another case in El Salvador of an 8 year old girl raped and pregnant and the fucking pedophile priests fought long and hard to keep her pregnant, an entire political system in turmoil over that religious domination, the "uncle" hiding in another country who raped her was not fully prosecuted and the father of the girl was put under suspicions as well as the mother both eager to get a swift abortion, this was seen as some sort of destruction of evidence wish....I think it was 24 weeks before the girl finally got her abortion....
,,,,
...... If us "manginas" could get pregnant, the abortion proceedure would be glorified with song, incense, sacramental wine and cleansing for re-purification!....
..... instead women are always put under the charge of "slut" and " showing their tits in tight sweaters" and all that shit while what one single man is described as deserving rape?
...... Ten per cent of all sex abuse is perpetrated against boys or men.....the Vatican on down to cover up priests all make preserving the clergy more important than making the children whole raped by insanely ordered "celibate" priests, bishops, arch bishops and cardinals.
.....
The current Nazi pope was in charge of the coverup for decades....
.... and he was in Berlin when 9 priests all in a row were showing Hitler Youth just how to give the Sieg Heil salute. .....
This same follower of Catholic Adolph Hitler, though his mother was Jewish, this Ratsinger gangster for the Vatican alias Benedict of some unholy number belongs in prison for causing the deaths of millions of people with his predecessors who veto United Nations distribution of condoms.....
If only we could label the Knights of Columbus equal to the SS brown shirts of Hitler, the immediate death, torture and enslavement of natives since 1492 is so genocidal that I can never look at a crucifix and not want to say to a believer just how evil the Vatican and Divine Right King/Queenships were and still are
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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FYI: pregnancy and childbirth is riskier than a medical abortion, but this fact is twisted and manipulated by biased people bent on diminishing the effects of pregnancy and birth on women as part of their means of normalizing discrimination and the cruelty of compulsory childbirth.
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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so was an exhaustive autopsy done to really find out why the hemmoraging? Could previous ultrasound "tapes" reveal some defect in the uterus or placental attachment? If this is not studied thoroughly, more women will die. We need to prevent maternal death and stop pretending contra-indicated pregnancy must be ignored. An egg to fetus is nothing compared to the life of this woman and if this jerk father had the baby boy circumcized, I have no sympathy for his loss because science must come first, not grief and mindless torture of baby boys too. This woman must not die in vain.
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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It was simply unexpected, unforeseeable hemmorhaging. It happens. As does death in childbirth from embolism. There was no indication that the woman was having problems after delivering. It happened very sudden adn caught the nurses and doctors off guard completely. This has happened before. And it's because of Un-Intelligent Design.
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