100 ‘Damned’ Good Reasons to Be An Atheist, Part 5
Many religious people will tell you that it’s better to believe than it is to not believe, and bring out a whole suitcase of ‘logical’ arguments for why that is the case, but they’d be lying. Here’s why it’s better to be a Heathen like me.
41. Open Education — Atheists don’t have sectarian education. Our schools (meaning public schools) are open to everyone. And our science classes teach science, not religious propaganda.
42. It’s our fault if we don’t act — Own up people. If you have the power to effect change for the better, and you don’t, you’re the one at fault; not a god, not a demon, not a divine revelation, not a premonition, not a non-specific, otherworldly feeling that you were in the right for doing so.
43. Mustard seeds are for cooking, not philosophy — Unless you’ve read the bible (which many people who claim to be religious haven’t done) you wont understand the significance of the Mustard Seed. Suffice to say, it’s a tedious exercise on illustrating growth from tiny beginnings, which can be illustrated better in today’s world considering most people think mustard comes from a yellow squeeze bottle and not a plant.
44. No severed limbs — Transgressing the law in a civilized society shouldn’t leave a person disabled. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind, as the saying goes. If you’re hungry and you steal a loaf of bread to feed yourself, it’s quite cruel and unusual for the state to deprive you of your hand for the rest of your life should you be caught in the act.
45. Everyone can have fun — No matter where you are on the spectrum of human sexual identity, whether gay, straight, trans or what have you, you’re more likely to find acceptance in Atheist circles, thus more likely to enjoy a better quality of life with a broader degree of social acceptance.
46. Do no harm — The first law should always be ‘If it harms none, do what you will’, which goes a long way toward helping to reflect on the self and devising a broader understanding of what harm actually is. One may derive pleasure from collecting all those Pokemon cards, but most of them will be useless pieces of paper with no commercial value when all is said and done. Where will they end up? Landfills. What will be the harm of this? Further spoiling of the environment from self-absorbed consumption and potentially extinction…
47. My dead relative is not a cow — Most of us eat animals, we don’t venerate them. Thus, our relatives don’t come back as creatures of nature after they die. It wouldn’t exactly be a promotion if they did, considering most animals in nature live under constant stress with too little to eat…
48. The BIG BANG came first — The gods came later. Why? Humans invented the idea of gods and humans came very late on the timescale of the Universe. We’re a blip on the RADAR (if that) and the Universe wouldn’t even notice if we disappeared suddenly.
49. Humans are a part of the universe, not the center of it — Again, who would notice if we suddenly went away…? We may be at the center of our own egotistical delusions, but we are certainly not the center of anything, especially considering how piss-poor has been our stewardship of the planet we call home.
50. Female genital mutilation is OUT! — I’d love to be able to come up with a clever bit of wit to explain this one, but I just can’t. I had to sit through a video on the subject in a college class once and it was so disturbing. The video didn’t actually show the procedure but it played audio of the procedure being performed on a female child and, I have to say, the screams of pain she let out as a ‘trusted elder’ mutilated her privates were some of the most disturbing sounds I’ve ever heard. Inflicting this kind of traumatic pain for the sake of a religious ideal is the very reason religion is a corrupt institution and needs to be abandoned. Power corrupts; religious power corrupts worse than most.
Continued in Part 6.
DISCLAIMER: For those who are curious, I do not allow feedback on posts of this nature due to the fact that religionists have nothing original to say on the matter. They continually trot out the same tired, unqualified arguments for why they are right and I am wrong and I refuse to waste another second of my life re-litigating these issue with people of limited imagination.
