Further explanation and retraction of atheistic stance.

[psi29a]

This is a cross-post from my blog but I figured you all would be interested and it is worth the feedback regardless of stance on what is presented.

Below is a continuation of my earlier rant which included Richard Dawkin's calling out the hypocrites, liars, and the irrationals. I had a comment from Ryan that was well thought out and more importantly framed it in a way that I had not intended when I wrote it. So, I wrote a response to clarify the situation.

In order to further develop the “Calling out of hypocrites, the liars, and irrationals” that I spoke of earlier here, we must examine those words and their meanings more carefully then within context else we confuse the issue.

To be an atheist or a theist, as it currently stands is an interesting position to take considering the labels we receive for explaining ourselves. Our disbelief or belief is our own, however until proof is found in either that God exists or does not exist we are liars and irrationals, we are sometimes hypocrites based on the situations and circumstances.

Let us begin by going through the words, their meanings, then explanation on why we are liars, hypocrites, and irrationals.

According to the Heritage Dictionary the word Liar is someone who lies[1]. The most commonly accepted definition of 'lie' is as follows.

lie (lī)
n.
1.A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2.Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.

Let us make true and false the conditions and ask the question, does God exist? Before you answer yes, prove it true. Step beyond belief, and prove it. If you can't prove it, but still say that God does or does not exist, then you are a liar.

Currently, we can not empirically prove God's existence but we cannot disprove it either. So, while you can believe that God does exist does not bother me. What bothers me is when anyone presents God as existing or not existing without proof to me. I call that person a liar, because without proof then the statement is a false one deliberately presented as being true.

Interestingly enough, this leads us to hypocrites. A hypocrite is one given to hypocrisy[2] which is also defined here:

hy·poc·ri·sy (hĭ-pŏk'rĭ-sē)
n.
1.The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2.An act or instance of such falseness.

An appropriate example of hypocrisy is the professing of faith because of some external pressure, be it because of survival or just to fit in. So hypocrites are also liars, but worse in that they knowingly do so in order to deceive and derive some benefit from it.

Lastly we come to 'irrationals', to be irrational as described by the AHD is:

ir·ra·tion·al (ĭ-rāsh'ə-nəl)[3]
adj.
1.Not endowed with reason.
2.Affected by loss of usual or normal mental clarity; incoherent, as from shock.
3.Marked by a lack of accord with reason or sound judgment: an irrational dislike.

Most humans (barring impairments) are rational creatures, the use of reason explains why the sky is blue and why there are maggots where there was once old meat. This plays into the belief or disbelief because of the nature of God. If we can neither prove nor disprove God then to claim either is irrational.

Theists and atheists either believe in something beyond as in a God, God(s), Karma, and etc or believe all of it does not exist. If they try to tell you one way or the other without proof, that makes them liars and their arguments about the subject irrational.

Where does this leave me? I must confess that I'm changing my mind on atheism because I can't sanely argue against the existence of God. I can't argue for the existence of God either for the same reason. Where do I fall? It was suggested by my wife that I'm neither and that I fall under another group, Agnostic.

I had heard the term before so researched more and the AHD also sums it up:

ag·nos·tic (āg-nŏs'tĭk)
n.
1.One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
2.One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

I'll tackle agnosticism another time, but this is where my current self-learning is taking me.

Hopefully this also goes into greater detail why I think Professor Dawkins is my hero in that he is calling out these people, theists and atheists alike. I'm a hypocrite for trying to fit in. I'm a liar for doing so. I try my best to be rational, and I apologize to those who I've lied to.

[1] lies. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved December 02, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lies
[2] hypocrisy. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved December 02, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypocrisy
[3] irrational. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved December 02, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irrational
[4] agnostic. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved December 02, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agnostic

Below this is another post about my experiences in the work force in northern Virginia.

[psi29a]

In growing up in a Southern Baptist community, I was the hypocrite. It was necessary in order for me to fit in, for my family not to be ostracized.

I want to relate an experience I had while working at an IT job while at University. While the company itself could have cared less what my personal beliefs where, so long as I did the job. However, it was consultant work with companies around Northern Virginia who shall we say where overtly pro-Christian.

“Thanks for helping me out, I dunno what happened but my computer is acting funny and I can't do any work.” That was a fair enough statement, as I began to work I state that it probably is going to take a bit of time to figure out what is up. “In that case, might as well get to know each other.” We exchange pleasantries while I work, and then he says. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”
At that point, being unsure what to say I nodded and said something to the effect of “Nobody is an atheist in a foxhole” which I had picked up the night before after watching Full Metal Jacket. He seemed content with the answer and after moment commented. “You guys are alright. We only hire Christians here, the world's gone crazy and we gotta help our government one way or another.” The last part was a comment about how they are a subcontractor.

At this point, I'm extremely nervous because Spybot and Ad-aware explain the plethora of nag-ware applications, adware, and some very interesting stuff that somehow is linked to processes which I'm unable to kill. Ccleaner is going nuts as well. I explained the situation and our options where to either try to surgically get rid of 'em via several reboots into safemode and a certain process killer application who's mascot is an animated wizard (a sure sign of trust) or a re-install of windows via our disk-image.

He seemed noticeably uncomfortable for a moment, then said “I have a lot of stuff on there, can we get it up and running enough so I can backup what I need to before wiping it?” I said no problem and proceeded to get Windows into a state conducive for making backups... for at least a few hours anyway. While killing processes, and deleting the executables Windows decides that the particular directory has images so it produces the images on the screen. The guy was no where to be found, and I turned back to see some pretty graphic and possibly illegal porn.

Not knowing if I had possibly done something illegal myself just by looking at them. I killed the executables as fast as I could, in detail listing mode, not icon/thumbnail view. Guy came back, did his backups, and we packed up to take his PC back to work on. I was off the next day and a co-worker re-installed the image without me. I talked to my boss about the incident and he laughed. “An you don't have porn?” “Not at work, some of that stuff is a bit to explicit for me and possibly Virginia as well.” “Well, to late now, we just re-imaged the drive.”

So, I had to be a lie about my beliefs in order to do my job, which was uncomfortable. I had to also seen some very non-Christian values. Oh, and there are more experiences like the one above. This wasn't an isolated incident.

[LordMune]

Organized religion is fucking awesome.

[Brainpiercing]

From an outside perspective that's a pretty awesome and funny story.

I don't imagine it was that funny for you, though.

The question that remains: Did he backup the porn, too?

[MonkWren]

I agree with the liars and irrational statements, but not the hypocritical. They do, in fact, hold and possess their beliefs, irrational as they are. Indeed, it is that unswerving loyalty to their (I believe) misguided beliefs that religious fanatics are so dangerous, because hey, when your side isn't speaking the truth, you might as well shout so loud that it can be heard in the first place.

And that is a pretty funny story, from the outside. I'm sure it was far worse for you, though.

[psi29a]

I agree with the liars and irrational statements, but not the hypocritical. They do, in fact, hold and possess their beliefs, irrational as they are. Indeed, it is that unswerving loyalty to their (I believe) misguided beliefs that religious fanatics are so dangerous, because hey, when your side isn't speaking the truth, you might as well shout so loud that it can be heard in the first place.

And that is a pretty funny story, from the outside. I'm sure it was far worse for you, though.

The real point I was making with the hypocritical is when you have to say you hold these values, beliefs, morals when you really don't.

This is one of things Dawkins hits upon is that many people are atheists, but do not say so in public for fear of retribution, not being taken seriously, or plan 'ol shut out of the good 'ol boy network.

In order to grease the wheels of work related contact, it was better to nod along and do your job than to be ostracize and feel unwelcome in the work place.

I'm not saying that this is always the case, my current place of employment is a lot more open and we can talk about anything. But I've had bad run ins where it just wasn't a good idea to say no to Jesus.

[square-enix]

Although I do agree that we cannot prove or disprove a God through empirical science, (Because by default, the notion of a God isn't falsifiable) we are however able to contradict characterizes of the Judeo-Christian God or the Islamic one. Personally, I think that disproves those particular gods but for others, it would depend how you define your personal God.

But I've had bad run ins where it just wasn't a good idea to say no to Jesus.

Seems I'll have to be attentive. Is it simply a matter of getting fired/not getting the job or more?

[psi29a]

Seems I'll have to be attentive. Is it simply a matter of getting fired/not getting the job or more?

Not so much that, because it can be taken to court these days in the states for discrimination.

Just depends on the culture you are in, be it a small town function, event you are invited to by your friends and/or aquantinces, and where ya work.

All this being said, a solution is to just leave and find other work. I ran into this in several places basically as a subcontractor for IT support, not from my employer or his staff.

It is simple to say, "I'm not a hypocrite, and no I'm not down with Jesus." (or whatever), until you have been in the situation when all you want to do is get your job done asap and leave. You just learn to smile and nod and play along. It makes them happy, it makes your employer happy who is billing you out 3 times what he is paying you, and you get a pay check.

[Eldo]

An aspect I don't like about so-called 'religious people' (especially Christianity amongst the Asian community here) is that they use church as a social gathering, to pick up chicks/boys instead of doing their prayers or worship or whatever crap. A friend of mine got married to this chick he met at church when he was 15, this chick who flirted with him first, and is 5 years his senior. It's basically like a singles date night. Another friend goes to church every week just to play the guitar at church, and when we question him anything related to Christianity, he pauses, unable to answer, and replies that he's a 'bad Christian'. Yet he never missed church in his entire life. Oh, he met his girlfriend at church too, they were matchmade by their parents. It's a bloody matchmaking service, that's what church is. And it's crucial that nobody misses church, otherwise gossip would ensue. I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing amongst Asians or anything, but that's one aspect that disturbs me. Using church to prowl for a date.

I am, however, a hypocrite regarding religion. If I had to date or (gasp) marry some chick, but religious barriers divides us, I will totally convert to her faith. Well, except not some cult or Scientology, unless she's really hawt or puts out often. But of course, I would fake it just to get into her pants.

[MonkWren]

Seems I'll have to be attentive. Is it simply a matter of getting fired/not getting the job or more?

Not so much that, because it can be taken to court these days in the states for discrimination.

Just depends on the culture you are in, be it a small town function, event you are invited to by your friends and/or aquantinces, and where ya work.

All this being said, a solution is to just leave and find other work. I ran into this in several places basically as a subcontractor for IT support, not from my employer or his staff.

It is simple to say, "I'm not a hypocrite, and no I'm not down with Jesus." (or whatever), until you have been in the situation when all you want to do is get your job done asap and leave. You just learn to smile and nod and play along. It makes them happy, it makes your employer happy who is billing you out 3 times what he is paying you, and you get a pay check.

Ah, it makes sense in that context, then.

And I've had to smile and nod a few times as well, more for social acceptability than anything. I try to be as honest as possible, however (regarding my religious beliefs. Homework is another matter).

[Brainpiercing]

I'm happy I live in a place where I can raise eyebrows at the devout christians.

[sima]

I live in an ex-communist country, and in the last 20 years since it's gone,
people started to embrace religion more and more.. then you got a situation
where everyone pretended to be religious, and claimed that they were true
believers under communism but were afraid to show..
It's Orthodox Christianity, and now the church is trying to gain some political power too..
Personally i am interested in anarchism, am not a communist ,
but in my country at least it was a good thing they taught evolution ,
not Intelligent design.. (sorry if i was unclear,wanted to say a lot of things on a second language)