People are constantly building monuments to their own ignorance. If you don’t believe me, go walk around any town in the US of A (and in many other countries, I might add), and there they stand. Grand, sculptured, engraved monuments that stand for ignorance and superstition.
Of course, the religious don’t call them ignorance monuments, they call them churches. Or mosques. Or temples. But make no mistake, monuments to wild ass guessing is what they are. Lasting monuments of a people that were ignorant enough that a bronze age myth seems a plausible explanation.
This is no different than the ancient temples, or runes, or Chinese terra cotta armies we excavate today. We know why they were building these structures, and it was because they believed something silly. Something ridiculous.
But there is a difference between those ancient religious markers and the ones being built today. Today’s builders have no excuse for their ignorance. And this makes it even worse. We can forgive a viking for not knowing what causes the sun to move, or failing to understand weather patterns. But today’s builders have no such excuse.
The technology of today would have looked looked like magic a mere 15 years ago, and that technology would have looked like magic 30 years before that. Science and the knowledge of nature has completely transformed our lives, and that knowledge of how it works, and how we know what we know, is available anywhere in the world to almost anyone. And yet with the proof of science and reality literally in their hands, they can’t help but besmirch the scientists and pioneers in deference to their failed beliefs and erect monuments to let us all know just how ignorant and illogical they are.
There is no excuse.
The Spartan Atheist
The Spartan Atheist 
Totally agree. GROG
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and it is also much easier to build on and believe in what came before, regardless of what it might have represented.
When you don’t have hard science to draw on. amd when you don’t have in-yo’-face proof of events, then yeah, you trust in a god and weave stories about chariots in the sky and holes in the heavens to let the light shine through, but to continue to believe that way long after such things have been disproven is really really scary. It turns into ignorance in the face of fact because people are afraid to let go of that nice papier mache dream of a heaven and angels and harps. Or whatever.
I refuse to get into arguments with those kinds of folks now, it just wears me out. They will believe what they need to believe. So do I.
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It is still slightly shocking to me what people believe in the 21st century. We’ve sorta figured these things out, ya know?
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The delusion of resurrection and an eternal soul. The scam of monotheism! GROG
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True!
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And, perhaps, no more actionable to onlookers than the telemarketer, or Dr. Oz (of the unfortunate name) who sells Garcinia Cambogier to help you lose miraculous amount of fat, for only $39.95 a bottle…but, to be fair, most people figure it out sooner or later and go back to popcorn and fudge, and few of them are so in-yo-face as evangelists, but the concept is identical.
And if you believe in the miracle of pills to help you lose weight, or prayer to help you over the rough spots, well, whatever works, I guess, even if it doesn’t.
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Ah, yes. The old snake oil salesman. Scams aplenty and the greatest one is yet be acknowledged. GROG
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it’s a scam, it’s a scary thing to watch, but they are as firmly rooted in their beliefs, delusional or not, as we are in ours. Delusional or not. As I said more than once, when we die, we’ll find out. One of us is right.
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Or we could investigate this now, use the process of science, and then we dont have to wait to die to figure things out.
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Delusion, an idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder. (Google)
Does that statement not fit a theist like a glove or what?
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It’s an interesting question: can we separate the aesthetic marvels of a Gothic church — or a Bach mass, or cantata, for that matter — from the ideas that inspired them? In other words: can we “de-secularize” them?
Some churches in my country are empty and being sold off to developers. I don’t quite know how I feel about this, except that, hopefully, such buildings can still serve a utilitarian purpose.
I’m against new mosques being built — why, when there’s plenty of churches going unused? — but to oppose such things incurs the charge of bigotry. I don’t mind being called a bigot, but I’m first an aesthete, and I hate seeing the skyline being ruined, whether it’s minarets or ugly apartments, or anything else.
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Richard Dawkins said something to the effect that many great works of the past were religious because that was where the employment was. Further, we will never know what a Beethoven piece on the wonders of the natural universe would have sounded like, but undoubtedly would have been impressive.
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Also, in past eras all music, art, and painting was expected to reflect religion, either in theme or content or whatever satisified the king or the Bishops. And since most if not all art of any sort only flourished with the support and patronage of the Kings…
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Exactly! Not any more special than all other religions…
https://aladyofreason.wordpress.com/
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Have you noticed the largest monuments are for the biggest suckers?
Every time I hear someone say something or give a sign to the sky as though a god exists I feel like saying “you are a stupid @%&$!“ Of course I control myself, but I am seriously astounded at how many idiots believe these children’s fairy stories.
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Lol! We should study “relative gullibleness” and monument size. See if the Catholics and Mormons really are the biggest suckers! Lol!
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Often people’s gods just seem to be projections of their own egos. They endow them with human qualities, and then magnify those qualities up to a scale that’s powerful, but not incomprehensible. So churches are monuments built to their own egos. They are glorifying themselves, and their tribe. When they say “praise the lord” they are really saying “praise us.”
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Thanks for your insighful addition, Ubi.
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Certainly the religious feel “entitled”, a symptom of narcissistic schizotypalism, or just self hypnosis! It is a do-it-yourself effort make God fit personal prferrences! GROG
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Maybe accept the architecture for what it is, or was, turn them into museums, or tourist attractions like the Sistine Chapel, and marvel at the people who built them, how, but not why.
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Hitchens has says it very well when he praises the Parthenon, a structure that he admired greatly, without believing in the religiosity that built it. GROG.
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Exactly. You can appreciate what is, without getting an ulcer over why…
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Literature and art, of all ages, are the high points of man, to me. I. Reading an excellent book “The Darkening Age” by Catherine Nixey..The Christian destruction of the Classical World. I’m only part way in it, but the destruction of Roman art and literature plus earlier ages, as well, by Christians was horrific and such a loss of history and the creative aspects of man. Religion is the single most destructive force that has existed in humanity to date. I highly recommend this book.
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Not only the most destructive, also the most devicive . They create their own enemies so they have some to fight. GROG
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The entire library at Alexandria…. Stupid religions.
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Yes…you can hardly fathom that loss..utter stupidity
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Man has always managed to destroy or banish those things he doesn’t understand, because what we don’t understand somehow threatens our own sense of self. If we don’t “get it” we don’t want it.
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This kind of lack of understanding explains why people get their knickers in a wad over “Satanic Games”. cards in general, books that contain magic or fantasy (have they ever truly LOOKED at the bible? It’s FULLA magic, ghosts, miraculous events, on and on and on), any flight of fancy in writing, and all writing is a flight of fancy, when it comes right down to the wire…and I keep thinking, what are these people afraid of?
Those Polish priests burnt books about magical events, have they ever stopped to consider the MASS? At one point the priest pretends to convert the body and blood of Christ into wine and an edible biscuit that the nuns baked up to be especially sticky on the roof of the mouth. And Catholics pretend to believe it.
::shakes head. Goes back to Terry Pratchett::
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If you guys were getting together every week and you decided to build a building to meet in, and you decorated with all kinds of atheist trivia, would you consider that a monument to what you believe?
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oh such a question. I’d not personally consider it a monument, most especially because I don’t feel atheists need to be reminded or ‘uplifted’ by externals. We are what we are, on the inside. Trivia is sort of a reminder of something, the way pictures of movie stars are, to a movie buff.
I’m trying to imagine what ‘atheist trivia” would be…
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? Atheist trivia? Lol! Randy, there is only one question in that deck. Its hardly enough to build an institution around.
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I will admit it sounded like a trick question, with an “aha gotcha” hiding behind the curtains. But truly I cannot image what atheist trivia would even BE…we are all so terrtibly individual in our differences, and so alike in our lack of belief that about the only thing a meeting of atheists would agree on is , “yep, me too.” and then we’d all drag out the scrabble boards and the monopoly games…
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Atheist trivia? You mean, like, posters of Richard Dawkins in dreamy soft-focus, and wacky coffee mugs — “You don’t have to be a hell-bound, baby-eating heathen to non-worship around here, but it helps” — strewn about the kitchen?
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Lol! We all bow on the floor and say “no Santa, god, or easter bunny!” Lol!
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oh no. Not the Easter Bunny. How else does one get permission to consume entirely too much chocolate for no real reason??
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When your head is full of ancient ideologies, traditions and doctrines such as confident and arrogant religious people, they cannot comprehend that living a normal life without having rituals, prayers and grovelling to appease a powerful invisible creator is possible.
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They also — without getting too off-topic — can’t get their heads around the idea of any kind of ethical belief/basis without some kind of deity telling us right from wrong. Witness the current comedy of confusion among the Branyans and Mel Wilds, as if –somehow– without their piddling god, atheists and non-believers have no moral compass; we can only ape the Christianity we don’t believe in anyway, as some kind of parody of their moral guidance system. As if.
All part of a desperate revisionism, to try and persuade the pew-stooges that Christianity was some sort of tabula rasa; suddenly –praise Jesus! — we now had the answers to life’s big ethical dilemmas: a perfect, unchanging “objective” morality, gifted from YHWH. “Read it and weep, atheists!”
Yeah, right. Go fornicate with yourself, fundies. We get along well enough without your empty monuments and obsolete, failed moral codes.
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what puzzles me is why they all feel so threatened by non-believers? Is it fear? Are they afraid we are closer to reality than they are, and it worries them…? The disturbing thing is, if there were no Deity for them, someone would invent one.
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Perhaps it’s because they lack something in their lives and somewhere along the way, Jesus came along and said, “Hey! I can fix that! Just worship me and my dad and you’ll feel all better.” So they did … and (they think) they do.
For them, it’s incomprehensible that there are people in this world who don’t have this need/lack — so they believe it’s their innate duty to help us! (Aren’t we so lucky?)
I’m feel certain this answers your question. 😈
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It’s,,, I dunno, existential, or something. Maybe any ideology with delusions of grandeur simply can’t bear the existence of any alternative, or”competing” one? The strain of believing such dissonant core tenets as Virgin Births and Resurrections, and “sin” and “evil”. and so on, drives evangelicals a little batty, ‘cos you have to try and get other people to accept it, too, and give those beliefs validation.
If doubters and mockers like us exist, that throws into question evangelical identity,, and blah blah blah. It’s too involved to get into…
It does my head in. All I know is: you can’t give power to these people. They’ve demonstrated they can’t be trusted with it.
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Why, that makes perfect sense. and yes, lucky. Because we can just move quietly away, guiltfree and unsaved.
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I tend to think the adults that are roped into a religious order\cult are somewhat sceptical of a God until the indoctrination process takes them into the emotional and supernatural dominions.
Understand first of all how many people in the world follow the Christian God and how many people who are not religious and doubtful about God’s existence but believe in the supernatural world regarding ghosts, demons, tarot cards, fortune tellers, Leprechauns and the false crap on YouTube.
Many new recruits will therefore already have some believe that a supernatural God existing is possible and of course the mushy love of all and the sacrifice of his son may have the emotional tears flowing, if not of course the threat of hell may bring them into their fold, but eventually the brain starts a chemical change with repetitious information of a belief system on a regular basis that cannot be verified. This is indoctrination and some recruits may eventually end up like these subservient slaves to an ideological Supernatural being like many we know of in blog land today.
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Yes, skepticism about gods doesn’t inoculate everyone against all manner of other strange beliefs, like astrology, or some of the ones you mention. Matt Dillahunty has quite a good take apropos of this: something like “I want to believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible.”
Sometimes I can almost understand the primal appeal and comfort that faith must have for its adherents — like Linus in Peanuts with his security blanket — but even so, that’s still not a justifiable reason for believing obviously falsifiable things like YEC, and miracles.
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You summed it up perfectly — “eventually the brain starts a chemical change with repetitious information of a belief system on a regular basis.”
No doubt this “chemical change” is what we’re dealing with when discussing the fallacies of Christianity. Not an easy thing to overcome as many of us have discovered. But since it came about through repetition, perhaps our efforts will eventually do the same. 🤞
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And this Linus Blanket effect is exactly the same as the dependency women (and more men than anyone would believe) feel toward their abusive spouses–they make excuses for them, they do anything they can to placate the demon inside, they suffer serious pain, both psychic and real, and sometimes die in the process.
And this is exactly what many Christians do, to defend the abusive god they worship. you cannot argue an abused spouse out of that kind of relationship, even though you can make it more attrractive on ‘the other side’–but neither can you argue a devoted believer out of a relationship with their version of God.
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I’ve previously compared god to an alcoholic, and his flock to abandoned children. Its a great analogy I believe.
https://thespartanatheist.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/the-patron-god-of-abandonment/
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well, they do say God is all things to all people, and I’d guess we’ve covered some of them quite thoroughly. =)
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Like you say Judy “God is all things to all people” God is the conception of an individual’s mind, the character and ideals of God is interpreted and decided by each and every believer, and even the Bible passages mean something different to each worshipper as does the age of the Earth, evolutionary facts and the many other scientific realities adjusted solely to feed their ideologies and not to satisfy reality. You only have to read the dripping nonsense written by the theist bloggers we recognise who are consumed inside their religious bubbles, to understand this.
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The ones with the loudest voices win. We all have inner voices that direct our own personal traffic, but too many people don’t trust their own directions, and learn to rely on someone else to tell them what to think, what to believe. It’s part of that herd instinct that served us so well a bazillion years ago, and I suspect back then group thought (call it telepathy, whatever) kept them together as a group for hunting, for traveling. It’s awfully hard to sneak up on a grazing mastodon when someone is shouting directions. =)
But these days those with the loudest, most seductive voices have learned to corral that group and keep it all facing in the same direction. This is mind control at its ugliest and most widespread. Religion gives people a map to follow, and rules about straying off the edges, dire consequences writ large. If you don’t quite trust your own inner voice, you now have a map, and someone to tell you where to go. We love our maps.
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