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 -
I am unconvinced. Sure the nurses were caught off guard.
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But this woman's thin frame and pelvic size along with any other relevant details remotely connected to this death needs to be collated with all other maternal deaths.
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Diet, blood type and remarkable history of exercise, falls or lack there of should be data for researchers to advise obstetric and gynecological workers for what to look for....14 hour labor is not unusual in first pregnancies......
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THE FUCKING DHEC Dept of Health and Environmental Control of SC forces abortion seeking women by one hour law to hold in their hands propaganda for fetal development with sparce information about pregnancy risks. It reads women do "die" in childbirth but no single reason why, not "ectopic" not "hemmorage" not "sepsis" nada zip zilch...... this is categorical proof that theocrats do not care for maternal health , just guilt about about dead embryonic iife
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on -
Rick: "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.
Rick, I wrote about that sad case and the country you're referring to is Nicaragua. The victim was 28 yr old Maria de Gonzales.
Even after her death, Joe Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI) praised the country's firm anti-abortion law — in the name of "pro-life" — when he visited the 100% Catholic Central American country a while back.
And I can tell you why such things never make the press: institutionalized discrimination against women as human beings fomented by Abrahamic monotheism, particularly Christianity and Islam. It is this sadistic variety of monotheism that has done more to normalize the deprivation of women's basic human rights than any other. And because women are seen as "less than", no one cares if women die — whether from a botched illegal abortion, an ectopic pregnancy, an age-related (under 15 or over 40) medically dangerous pregnancy, or from a "normal" and seemingly healthy childbirth. And you can thank the use of weaponized language in the Bible in its depiction of women for much of this normalization of abuse and cruelty specifically aimed towards one half of the human race.
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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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.
Rick, the same exact crap happened here in my state (Pennsylvania) about two years ago. An 18 year old rape victim was DENIED Plan B because of the pharmacist's precious FIrst Amendment rights to his "freedom of religion."
Now, for those who have money, a car and who don't live in small towns or rural areas, this is not as much of a big deal as it is for women and girls who live in areas like mine: Erie, Crawford, Warren, Elk,and Mercer Counties, PA (the northwest part of the state). There is NO Planned Parenthood for 90 miles in either direction from where I live. So poor women have NO place to go to get low-cost or even free reliable contraceptives. NONE of the pharmacies where I live carry the diaphragm or sponge — neither which I can use because they're too damn difficult to fuck around with trying to insert and in the case of rape, it's not like a rapist is gonna say, "OK lady, I'll let you put your contraceptive in and wait to rape you. Here, let me help you put that in."
The closest Planned Parenthoods are in neighborings states of NY and OH.
I risked unaffordable fines two weeks ago driving my 47 year old neighbor to the one in OH so she could get a referral to an abortion clinic in Cleveland that would treat her as a poor woman who is jobless, no money and uninsured. Had she remained pregnant, she would have died. Being over 40 and having no money or insurance, the ONLY reliable contraception she really could get is abstinence until after menopause, since she doesn't have thousands of dollars to pay for tubal ligation surgery. Even a Mirena IUD is out of reach at $700 a clip when you're poor, jobless, and uninsured.
Together, we braved a crowd of heckling angry white Xtian male "pro-lifers" waving their dead fetus placards yelling "murder" and "whore" and alternatively quoting Bible verses and yelling how much Jesus loves our babies at us and at all other women trying to enter the clinic that day. They took pictured of us, and of my uninspected truck. My neighbor calls me "Mrs Moses." Some in my town call me a saint, others call me a sinner, and some call me a crazy bitch. Maybe I am a little bit of all three. And maybe I have every right in the world to be.
I have since taken to fighting fire with fire: I have suggested in an email to Nancy Keenan at NARAL that we counter-demonstrate with placards showing graphic pics of women who suffered 3rd and 4th degree tears and episiotomies as a result of childbirth, and of fistula victims. Because the suffering and risks associated with pregnancy and birth are very much downplayed while the risks associated with medical abortion is over-hyped by these biased anti-woman cretins.
The rape victim in my state that the same thing over Plan B happened to lived in a rural county in south/central Pennsylvania: She was from Lebanon which is in Lancaster County, I think. Anyway, had she not had parents with a car and who were supportive to help her out, she would have been violated three times: once by the rapist, second by the pharmacist who REFUSED to sell the Plan B to her (this was after the FDA ruled that you don't need a script to get Plan B but you still can't get it totally over-the-counter like aspirin, either).
I would have No problem with others' "freedom of religion" if they weren't effecting the laws and politics such that my basic human and civil right to freedom from childbirth chattel slavery was not sacrificed in the name of their right to "freedom of religion."
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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if people really care about women, they will get up before dawn and drive to the nearest abortion clinic each Saturday and go shout in the faces of tampon terrorists that they are the new KKK, intimidating black women to stay pregnant calling "abortion is black genocide" .....
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call them any gawdamn name you care to spit in their faces....shame these scum back into their churches and confessionals.... read Hosea 13:16 to them, all the pro-violent abortion passages like 2 kings 15 : 16 and EZekiel 23:20 and Numbers Ch 6..... they usually leave after 9 or ten o'clock so get there early before 7
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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Doone: "Please read about the Legalist Emperors of China and the Stoic Emperors of the Roman Empire for examples of Atheistic lead societies that had slavery and deplorable treatment of women."
Doone: I know this was from your post answering LCC. But there is something I noticed that I need to point out to you. The Stoic Emperors of the Roman Empire were not presiding over an atheist society. Rome, ever since its fledgling start as a kingdom during the pre-Republic era, was polytheistic. It remained polytheistic up through the Iron Age and well into the century before the European Dark Ages, before Constantine I made Christianity the official state religion of the "new Roman god."
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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You two must think I am stupid. Obviously, the society was not atheistic but it was guided for many years by Emperors with a philosophy tending towards atheism. In other words, when it was under the Stoic Emperors it was society that had slavery and was not so nice to women and somewhat atheistic (at least at the top). I cannot wait to get your book and write a nice review of it on Amazon.
Thank you for your personal value judgment...and for a wrong one at that. Because I never said nor implied that you were stupid.
I was merely pointing out that the way you worded it, it came across like you were trying to make a case for ancient Rome going through an atheist society period of sorts and that may cause confusion for other readers following this discussion. I happen to be very well-versed in ancient Roman history too, BTW.
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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you confessed, I only begged that you not be stupidly going on and on without a single credible bit of proof for your specious claims....Ever since Julius Caesar, every Roman Emperor was called a god and some even believed they were gods. Even the Greeks who give us our word Atheism made Socrates drink hemolock because of his Atheism. No single Emperor was a stoic. And that is not Atheism per se. I have a better idea for your incompetence, apply the Peter Principle. I'll call Sean Hannity and book you as our new Champion Atheist Advocate. Obviously JHS and I are both so wrong and you are so perfectly correct. Be sure to memorize the 10 per cent wrong parts of her book. You honor me sooooooo much to introduce to the world how you have cured my decades of foolishness and falling asleep in anthropology class when the ten per cent of all those tribes were acknowledged by all scholars as Atheist tribes. You sir, must write your book and not with hold from the world your infallible insights. I dare not presume to behold your brilliance and expertise, please teach me more about Rome!
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Permalink Reply by Reggie on -
This discussion could be a little less contentious. Don't you all think?
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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agreed Reggie, our doone has what ever he wants from me
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Permalink Reply by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on
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I agree Reggie. I am not comfortable with people calling other posters "idiots" or "stupid", and I am not at all thrilled with presumptuous accusations being leveled against me for what I may or may not be thinking.
Disagreeing with an opinion, or challenging a point in a civil manner should not be impossible for a group that, in general, comprises the more educated and intelligent of the species.
I never implied anyone here was stupid and it really pisses me off that anyone would put words in my mouth like that. I don't "do" ad hominem because I don't like it done to me.
I thought the whole point of having a site like this for atheists and agnostics was so that knowledge, experiences, and insight and reasoning through things could be shared without a discussion degenerating into a cyber poo-flinging fest.
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Permalink Reply by Reggie on
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I thought the whole point of having a site like this for atheists and agnostics was so that knowledge, experiences, and insight and reasoning through things could be shared without a discussion degenerating into a cyber poo-flinging fest.
It is one of the points for having a site like this. But we are all still primates and can't escape our poo-flinging proclivities completely.
I'd like to make the polite suggestion that we all let bygones be bygones and discontinue this discussion now that the stench of poo has been detected. No sense in provoking each other further.
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Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on
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please forgive my zeal, I just got kicked off Atheist Nexus for posting a very mild response to Felch Grogan posting that Sarah Palin had semen in her mouth....
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I wrote that fellatio without a condom is a good way to contract HIV and hepatitis .... I was expelled just a few hours later, Grogan's photos of Palin remain posted.....
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.... again please forgive me for feeling TESTY with shoot from the hip remarks of anyone...
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I do write what I feel and think
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