Stupid, and proud of it

Rational thought and free inquiry vs. faith


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Stupid, and proud of it
by A. H. Ladan
18-Aug-2008
 

In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides.  -- Heinrich Heine

god is not Great
How Religion Poisons Everything
by Christopher Hitchens

REVIEW
Through centuries of living, learning, experimenting, experiencing, innovating and gaining vast knowledge, man has evolved to the next level. Today we are guided by our conscience and act with humanity; we no longer are bound by “one book”, rather we have many books to choose from for any aspect of our lives.

Hitchens writes: “Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind … and the soul. … Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago, … the devotions of today are the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.”

“We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. … religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.”

This book is about rational thought and free inquiry verses faith, fear and institutionalized totalitarianism of religion; it is about conventional religion based on belief in the supernatural versus humanism rooted in rationality and the laws of nature; and it is about freethinkers versus the closed mindedness of the faithful. It is about personal responsibility and choice versus the inevitability of destiny. It also asks whether god created man or man created god.

Hitchens writes: “… here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”

He writes: “God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods, and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization. … Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemer or gurus actually said or did. … the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. … the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude “belief” from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.”

“There is no need for us to gather every day, or seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, … we do not require any priests, or any hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man’s most useful innovations: the bound book). To us no spot on earth is or could be “holier” than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. … I now know enough about all religions to know that I would always be an infidel at all times in all places.”

Through out the history, religion has tried to block or discredit science and knowledge, and at times, it has caused pain, suffering and death of the faithful while retarding the forward march of the science in their midst.

Hitchens writes: “In 2005, in Nigeria … a group of Islamic religious figures issued a fatwa that declared the polio vaccine to be a conspiracy by the United States against the Muslim faith. The drops were designed, said the mullahs, to sterilize the true believers. Their intention and effect was genocidal. Within months, polio was back; …

the advice given by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez de Trujillo, the Vatican’s president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, carefully warning his audience that all condoms are secretly made with microscopic holes, through which the AIDS virus can pass? … Consider the damage such a dogma has caused. …

Bishop of Rio de Janeiro, Rafael Llano Cifuentes, told his congregation in a sermon that “the church is against condom use. Sexual relations between a man and a woman have to be natural. I have never seen a little dog using condom during sexual intercourse.” Senior clerical figures in several countries-Cardinal Obando y Bravo of Nicaragua, the archbishop of Nairobi in Kenya, Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala of Uganda-have all told their flocks that condoms transmit AIDS.”

“The attitude of religion to medicine, like the attitude of religion to science, is always necessarily problematic and very often necessarily hostile. … science and medicine, .. have a tendency to break religion’s monopoly, and have been fiercely resisted for that reason. … Plagues of antiquity were held to be punishment from the gods, which did much to strengthen the hold of the priesthood and much to encourage the burning of the infidels and heretics who were thought to be spreading disease by witchcraft or else poisoning the wells. … The human papillomavirus (HPV) has long been known as a sexually transmitted infection that, at its worst, can cause cervical cancer in woman. A vaccine is now available … not to cure this malady but to immunize women against it. But there are forces in the Bush administration who oppose the adoption of this measure on the grounds that it fails to discourage premarital sex. To accept the spread of cervical cancer in the name of god is no different, morally or intellectually, from sacrificing these women on a stone alter and thanking the deity for giving us the sexual impulse and then condemning it.”

In chapter seven of his book, titled Revelation: The Nightmare of the “Old” Testament, Hitchens deals with how god contacted unlettered individuals, randomly, in the Middle East to give them his divine instructions as unalterable laws!

On the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue), the tale told in the book of Exodus, Hitchens writes: “The first three are all variations of the same one, in which god insists on his own primacy and exclusivity, … including dire warning that the sins of fathers will be visited on their children “even unto the third and fourth generation.” Then the observance of a holy Sabbath day, “Honor thy father and thy mother”, Only then come the four famous “shall nots”, which flatly prohibit killing, adultery, theft, and false witness. Finally, there is a ban on covetousness, forbidding the desire for “thy neighbor’s house, manservant, maidservant, ox, ass, wife and other chattel.”

“It would be harder to find an easier proof that religion is man made. There is first, monarchial growling about respect and fear, accompanied by a stern reminder of omnipotence and limitless revenge, … then a sharp reminder to keep working and only to relax when absolutist says so. One can tell that this is man-made product … because it throws in “wife” along with other property, animal, human, and material, of the neighbor.”

I strongly recommend this book.

***

Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books; he was named number five on a list of the “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy

and Britain’s Prospect.

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faryarm

Science and Religion part 2

by faryarm on

Mehdi Khan...

Thanks for your logic...

Here is an entertaning clip

 

faryarm 


faryarm

Science and Religion part 2

by faryarm on

Mehdi Khan...

Thanks for your logic...

Here is an entertaning clip

 

faryarm 


Mehdi

Why are all anti-religion writings so un-scientific?

by Mehdi on

It is a mystery to me that any anti-religion writing that I have seen so far are so extremely un-scientific. In fact they all can be properly categorized as hocus-pocus. Yet they supposedly talk about science vs religion!

They all seem to have certain points in common. They never define words they are using. They refer to "religion" and lump all religions of the world together and shoot them altogether as a package. This is extreme un-scientific approach. They talk about concepts such as God or divinity and they just use the "word" and without any scientific argument dismiss it all. In fact their approach is far more authoritarian than any religious group I know! They never even define what they mean by science and it is very unlikely that they know what "scientific" even means. I think most of such writers feel that if someone with a PhD said something or if something was published in a university, then that thing would automatically be scientific fact! Not so at all. Today practically any garbage is published in these papers and majority have no scientific value at all! In fact recently some student played a practical joke and "published" a "very scientific" paper which was all nonsense but they had used words that made it seem like they were talking about something scientific. That paper received rave reviews from the professors and the faculty until those students came out and admitted that the paper was just gibberish and meant nothing!

If these guys have one single complain about some religions, it is that those religions are authoritarian. In other words, the high priest says something and everybody else has to blindly follow, without really having any understanding of it. But such authoritarian systems are not unique to religions. In fact the new wave of this is now coming out of institutions of supposedly science. Now we have people who we should follow because they have a PhD - and not because we know what they are talking about! We go to a doctor because we have a cold and he has "divine" knowledge of how to get rid of our cold. But he cannot explain to us how he knows that! Nobody in the field of medicine has discovered the real cause of a common cold, yet they are the authority on that! In fact they have laws that prevents anyone else to say anything about why someone catches a cold or how he could get rid of it. You could be sent to jail for "practicing medicine without a license." This is NO DIFFERENT than the old priest who would burn witches - individuals who claimed they knew things about life or something but were not part of the authoritarian established priesthood.

So what's the difference? Science can be exploited for greed just as easily as religion could. So are we simply changing the vehicle of exploitation? Are we just happy that this time it is not religion that is ripping us off but something new we falsely call science? Is that all?

Of course these "scientific" people also completely refuse to admit that the important questions that philosophy and religion tried to answer are STILL un-answered and science has failed miserably to answer them. Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is right and what is wrong? What is the purpose of existence? None of this is even mentioned by science - or, are "answered" by marketing material instead of real science.

I wish for a real scientific approach. Is that too much to ask?


faryarm

The emancipation of women, A religious contribution.

by faryarm on


Not many Iranians know that the very emancipation of a woman was  a Persian lady in the Nineteenth Century; She is known as Tahirih Quratul-Ayn. She was strangled to death for her new beliefs by Nasiridn Shah

see //iranian.com/Women/2004/August/JK/index.html 

 

Two Wings of a Bird: The Equality of Women and Men

The emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between the sexes, is essential to human progress and the transformation of society. Inequality retards not only the advancement of women but the progress of civilization itself. The persistent denial of equality to one-half of the world's population is an affront to human dignity. It promotes destructive attitudes and habits in men and women that pass from the family to the work place, to political life, and, ultimately, to international relations. On no grounds, moral, biological, or traditional, can inequality be justified. The moral and psychological climate necessary to enable our nation to establish social justice and to contribute to global peace will be created only when women attain full partnership with men in all fields of endeavor. 

 FULL TEXT

//www.bahai.us/node/123


faryarm

Religions revealed progressively...

by faryarm on

Firstly,

The subjects you are discussing and need answers for, require you to look at a much wider angle; because, respectfully you may not be aware of the Substance of Spiritual Revolution that happened n our own backyard. A revolution that directly addresses current social issues, such as Racism, equality of sexes, extremes of poverty and wealth, global security and establishment of a just society.

Without having to "preach" We simply can not begin to discuss the merits of religious thought without the unfettered knowledge of the most current contribution by Religion, as a moral and spiritual force; in this case the Bahai Teachings.

Your statement;"There are three major religions with three books and none of them are useful to mankind and none of them offer any civilized characteristics that can be considered as positive contributions to civilization. All three considered women less than men."

..does not take into account that each religion is supposed to have a limited period of influence ; that Religions have been revealed progressively according to the conditions and exigencies of the time..so it is not fair to judge what was brought for another time and place 

For example:


..."Needs change, and the needs of yesterday are not the needs of today; laws that were fitting when mankind was young would not be fitting now. Progress decrees that the form of religion revealed for an earlier stage of man’s development cannot suit the later stages too. Under the tuition of each of the Great Educators humanity advances, so that the next Manifestation of God comes to men prepared to hear what before was hidden.

   It is as though man ascended through the classes of a school; each successive teacher imparts more truths to the child and when he has digested these he is ready to move to the next class. The lesson is suited to the child’s stage of progress; there would be no advantage in giving a sixth-form lesson to a first-form pupil, rather the too great demand on the undeveloped soul would cause it to wither and die. So also the teaching of the Great educators is mercifully adapted to the stage of development reached by mankind..."


see also

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_revelation

You asked for examples of any contribution ; here is one contribution of Islam to Science.. here is an excerpt from "some answered Questions" published in 1901.

  //reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAQ/saq-7.html 


In such a country, (Arabia) and amidst such barbarous tribes, an illiterate Man produced a book in which, in a perfect and eloquent style, He explained the divine attributes and 23 perfections, the prophethood of the Messengers of God, the divine laws, and some scientific facts. Thus, you know that before the observations of modern times—that is to say, during the first centuries and down to the fifteenth century of the Christian era—all the mathematicians of the world agreed that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun moved. The famous astronomer who was the protagonist of the new theory discovered the movement of the earth and the immobility of the sun. 5 Until his time all the astronomers and philosophers of the world followed the Ptolemaic system, and whoever said anything against it was considered ignorant. Though Pythagoras, and Plato during the latter part of his life, adopted the theory that the annual movement of the sun around the zodiac does not proceed from the sun, but rather from the movement of the earth around the sun, this theory had been entirely forgotten, and the Ptolemaic system was accepted by all mathematicians. But there are some verses revealed in the Qur’án contrary to the theory of the Ptolemaic system. One of them is “The sun moves in a fixed place,” which shows the fixity of the sun, and its movement around an axis. 6 Again, in another verse, “And each star moves in its own heaven.” 7 Thus is explained the movement of the sun, of the moon, of the earth, and of other bodies. When the Qur’án appeared, all the mathematicians ridiculed these statements and attributed the theory to ignorance. Even the doctors of Islám, when they saw that these verses were contrary to the accepted Ptolemaic system, were obliged to explain them away. It was not until after the fifteenth century of the Christian era, nearly nine hundred years after Muḥammad, that a famous astronomer made new observations and important discoveries by the aid of the telescope, which he had 24 invented. 8 The rotation of the earth, the fixity of the sun, and also its movement around an axis, were discovered. It became evident that the verses of the Qur’án agreed with existing facts, and that the Ptolemaic system was imaginary. In short, many Oriental peoples have been reared for thirteen centuries under the shadow of the religion of Muḥammad. During the Middle Ages, while Europe was in the lowest depths of barbarism, the Arab peoples were superior to the other nations of the earth in learning, in the arts, mathematics, civilization, government and other sciences. The Enlightener and Educator of these Arab tribes, and the Founder of the civilization and perfections of humanity among these different races, was an illiterate Man, Muḥammad. Was this illustrious Man a thorough Educator or not? A just judgment is necessary.." full text.  //reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAQ/saq-7.html  

 



default

All three major religions considered women less than men.

by :-) (not verified) on

Faryarm, you said "Hitchens's outright rejection of religion and God is rather shortsighted; as he chooses as examples only the corruption of "religion", and not its positive contribution to civilization."

This kind of wording regarding religions such as “Not its positive contribution to civilization” is pure playing with people's emotional compassions.

There are three major religions with three books and none of them are useful to mankind and none of them offer any civilized characteristics that can be considered as positive contributions to civilization. All three considered women less than men.

If you disagree, just list few contributions from each. List not preach lengthy paragraphs.


default

Emancipation?!

by Theosopher (not verified) on

The solution/answer is nonexistent. The problem is one of “suffering” and how it is processed in human history. How affliction does manifest as Reality unfolds in various forms and how adversity is being materialized under different shapes in various stages of human life.  We can not  ‘see’ the Program since we are ‘in’ it acting inadvertently under the disguises of  various characters . The Program does not permit  us to stand  ‘out’ of it.

The problem is NOT suffering for a ‘noble cause’, an ‘evolution' of the mind or a  what not 'lofty' spiritual purpose. The problem of religion is in a way the problem of thought, of ideology. Ideologies are manufactured to emancipate us from suffering yet they  often entrap us more into it!  As they ‘evolve’ human affliction changes ‘form’, but  in essence the impact remains intact albeit the minute variances: human misery increases in a larger scale.  Look at the modern age, despite the many progresses  of science  for the sake of  human comfort  in some parts of the world,  the world wars , genocides, poverty and deprivations have augmented in a global scale. All ideologies (including religions) are designed and implemented ‘by’ the Program itself.

The  problem/question is this: How could we escape from a Program which entails absolutely all aspects of our existence including (the illusion of) free will, and yet from which it is ‘logically’ impossible to escape?


faryarm

Thinker and Thought...

by faryarm on


faryarm

Religion can be both Light and Darkness

by faryarm on

Hitchens's outright rejection of religion and God is rather shortsighted; as he chooses as examples only the corruption of "religion", and not its positive contribution to civilization.

It is from our own country ,Iran whose regime is still even today a bastion of intolerance and everything wrong with "religion", that Baha'u'llah warned humanity about religion as Light and Darkness; An interested, inquiring mind can not ignore the source that nourishes the spiritual need in people.

Instead of condemning religion, perhaps Hitchens should  place blame on those middlle men who claim to be the interpreting authority between Man and his  maker: who have been the cause of wars , hatred and divisons between religions.



"Bahá’u’lláh’s severest condemnation is reserved for the barriers which, throughout history, organized religion has erected between humanity and the Revelations of God. Dogmas, inspired by popular superstition and perfected by misspent intelligence, have repeatedly been imposed on a Divine process whose purpose has at all times been spiritual and moral. Laws of social interaction, revealed for the purpose of consolidating community life, have been made the basis for structures of arcane doctrine and practice which have burdened the masses whose benefit they were supposed to serve. Even the exercise of intellect, the chief tool possessed by the human race, has been deliberately hampered, producing an eventual breakdown in the dialogue between faith and science upon which civilized life depends.

The consequence of this sorry record is the worldwide disrepute into which religion has fallen. Worse, organized religion has become itself a most virulent cause of hatred and warfare among the peoples of the world. “Religious fanaticism and hatred,” Bahá’u’lláh warned over a century ago, “are a world- devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone, deliver mankind from this desolating affliction.”85

Those whom God will hold responsible for this tragedy, Bahá’u’lláh says, are humanity's religious leaders, who have presumed to speak for Him throughout history. Their attempts to make the Word of God a private preserve, and its exposition a means for personal aggrandizement, have been the greatest single handicap against which the advancement of civilization has struggled. In the pursuit of their ends, many of them have not hesitated to raise their hands against the Messengers of God themselves, at their advent:

Leaders of religion, in every age, have hindered their people from attaining the shores of eternal salvation, inasmuch as they held the reins of authority in their mighty grasp. Some for the lust of leadership, others through want of knowledge and understanding, have been the cause of the deprivation of the people. By their sanction and authority, every Prophet of God hath drunk from the chalice of sacrifice...86

In an address to the clergy of all faiths, Bahá’u’lláh warns of the responsibility which they have so carelessly assumed in history:

Ye are even as a spring. If it be changed, so will the streams that branch out from it be changed. Fear God, and be numbered with the godly. In like manner, if the heart of man be corrupted, his limbs will also be corrupted. And similarly, if the root of a tree be corrupted, its branches, and its offshoots, and its leaves, and its fruits, will be corrupted. 87

These same statements, revealed at a time when religious orthodoxy was one of the major powers throughout the world, declared that this power had effectively ended, and that the ecclesiastical caste has no further social role in world history: “O concourse of divines! Ye shall not henceforward behold yourselves possessed of any power...”88 To a particularly vindictive opponent among the Muslim clergy, Bahá’u’lláh said: “Thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountaintop. Soon will it fade away as decreed by God, the All-Possessing, the Most High. Thy glory and the glory of such as are like thee have been taken away...”89

It is not the organization of religious activity which these statements address, but the misuse of such resources. Bahá’u’lláh's writings are generous in their appreciation not only of the great contribution which organized religion has brought to civilization, but also of the benefits which the world has derived from the self-sacrifice and love of humanity that have characterized clergymen and religious orders of all faiths:

Those divines ... who are truly adorned with the ornament of knowledge and of a goodly character are, verily, as a head to the body of the world, and as eyes to the nations....90

Rather, the challenge to all people, believers and unbelievers, clergy and laymen alike, is to recognize the consequences now being visited upon the world as the result of the universal corruption of the religious impulse. In the prevailing alienation of humanity from God over the past century, a relationship on which the fabric of moral life itself depends has broken down. Natural faculties of the rational soul, vital to the development and maintenance of human values, have become universally discounted:

The vitality of men’s belief in God is dying out in every land; nothing short of His wholesome medicine can ever restore it. The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society; what else but the Elixir of His potent Revelation can cleanse and revive it?... The Word of God, alone, can claim the distinction of being endowed with the capacity required for so great and far-reaching a change.91"