Posted: November 7th 2009

Eshu www

I think that is the wrong kind of question. I don’t blame you for asking it, but I think you’re approaching this from the wrong direction.

We should start by trying to work out what is true. Whether we like it or not or what it “offers” us is secondary. The universe doesn’t change just because we’d like things to be a certain way.

If that was the way to choose a worldview you’d have religious believers doing a cost-benefit analysis version of Pascal’s wager.

See also What Does Atheism Offer That Belief In God Canâ€™t? and the comments which follow it.

Posted: November 20th 2009

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Dave Hitt www

A skeptical viewpoint that will make you much less susceptible to scams and rip-offs. You won’t be as likely to risk your health on alternative medicines, fall prey to con-men, swallow the latest pseudoscience scare, etc.

Time. The religious waste an enormous amount of time on church and church related nonsense. You get all that time back and can use it however you like.

Money. See:Time.

Laughter. Many faiths have no sense of humor, especially about themselves. As an atheist you can enjoy the comedy of artists like Mr. Deity, Pat Condell and Tim Minchin.

The Pursuit of The Answer to Life’s Biggest Question: Why Are We Here? Godders tell us we’re here to worship the big sky daddy. How boring. As an atheist, you get to decide your purpose (or purposes) in life, and you’re free to change your mind anytime.

And best of all, bacon. Tasty, tasty bacon.

Posted: November 14th 2009

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bitbutter www

Atheism isn’t a worldview like Christianity, or Islam is. But if we’re considering atheism as a consequence of a skeptical outlook that places a high value on evidence and critical thought, then its chief advantage, over religion, is that it allows intellectual integrity.

When you’re an atheist, you don’t need to tie yourself in mental knots trying to maintain that a particular ancient text is infallible (even when the text claims, for example, that bats are birds, or that daylight was created before the sun). You don’t need to employ double standards to uphold a particular set of miraculous claims, while rejecting other similar stories. You don’t need to try to silence your doubts by persuading yourself that belief without sufficient evidence is a virtue. You don’t need to pretend that senseless suffering is compatible with an all-powerful and loving creator.

Posted: November 13th 2009

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logicel

Fridays off if you are of the Islamic faith.

Snark aside and just in case the snark failed to get the message across, you get nothing from atheism, not a dickie bird.

However, you do get loads of benefits from having the kind of mind that recognizes that theism, along with teapotism and toothfairism, are concepts with which are not worth bothering.

Religious scientists along with other religious believers who are not scientists are both able to compartmentalize their non-evidential, religious beliefs from their evidential and factual knowledge allowing them to enjoy many of the benefits of putting rationality over blind faith in certain cherry-picked instances. However, psychology shows that this requires mental energy – cognitive dissonance sustained in many for their entire lifetimes – to keep the two warring factions apart.

What better scientists would Francis Collins and Ken Miller be or a better person would a theistic non-scientist be if they were able to have more mental energy – the brain has enormous calorie needs – freed up to think clearly much more of the time?

Note that there is no implication that atheists are de facto superior to theists, but that in our own internal competition with ourselves, to improve ourselves, a clear-thinking brain is an asset while blind faith is a detriment.

Blind faith can certainly make you feel better for a while like a glass of wine or a hit of cocaine can, but it can’t give you the tools to really improve. I often think of the grave emotional pain suffered by Mother Teresa for decades when that buoyant cloud of feeling her god’s love deserted her. Due to pronounced cognitive dissonance and being surrounded by religious authorities who were just as cognitively dissonant as her, this severely depressed woman kept on clinging to unproven god belief though the benefits connected with it long ran out .

Posted: November 12th 2009

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