Men's Memes: Atheism

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Atheism

A band of intellectual brothers is mounting a crusade against belief in God. Are they winning converts, or merely preaching to the choir?

Whilst the concept of God, and a supernatural realm is absolutely fascinating, I find the concept of atheism to be basically boring. Its a depressing, baren idea and I just can't understand why anyone would want to read a whole book on the subject. Its the intellectual equivalent to a head-teacher lecturing you on why you'll never make anything of yourself in life, or of a depressive droning on that life is meaningless. Not exactly the way I would willingly choose to spend my spare time.

The atheists like to claim that the more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to believe in God. Well, whilst it may be easier to convince those of more modest intellectual talents of the more hard to believe aspects of religious dogma, atheists do not have the monopoly on intelligence. Firstly, a great number of intelligent and knowledgable experts (even in the sciences) are religious. Secondly, there are other personal traits which would make someone more likely to be an atheist (for example, if you are incredibly wealthy, you may have less interest in the concept of a spiritual afterlife than if you are grindingly poor, or if you have gone through some really gut-wrentchingly bad tragedy, such as the death of one of your children, you may be push more towards atheism (or indeed more towards faith)).

However, to my way of thinking, the choice of whether you believe in God or not probably says more about you personally than it does about the absolute truth (which we clearly just don't know enough to guess at).

Equally, its a bit pathetic for the atheists to play on people's fears over Islamic terrorism in order to try and get people to drop their faith in a God. There is no evidence that its only believers who create death and destruction. Hitler and Stalin where atheists.

I believe that there is no more reason NOT to believe in a God - defined in the broadest sense as some form of intelligence that is behind our universe, or greater than our universe - than to believe in God.

Whilst it would take a long time to lay out my reasons for this (and indeed - related to what I was saying above, about belief mostly being a reflection of personal character - I don't think I could convert everyone anyway) I would offer the following points for contemplation:

1. A 'supernatural' reality almost certainly exists, and is often discussed and theorised about by scientists. Any reality outside of the bounds of the laws of physics that we observe within our corner of nature is basically 'supernatural'. Scientists are continually theorising about universes outside of our own, and indeed are apt to imagine thousands or millions of such universes. Equally, scientists regularly theorise about multiple dimentions within our own universe, and advanced alien life. So why a concept of a supernatural based intelligence should be so offensive to the minds of campaigning atheists is just beyond me. And the only reason I can think of is that there is just something within their experience or personality that has strongly motivated them in this direction.

2. Currently, in the abence of adequate evidence, your belief about the origins of our universe must fall into faith in one of the two possibilities:

(A) There are so many universes outside of our own that the process of 'natural selection' has taken place and is the reason why our own universe is so co-incidentally friendly towards life (the co-incidences within the laws of natural that make life possible are numerous).

or

(B) There was some form of guiding intelligence involved.

Do you know how large our universe is? Can you even begin to comprehend its size and energy? Think about that, now think about which of the two possibilities above is more likely: an almost infinite number of other universes, or an intelligence? Well neither seems more likely than the other to me. And even if you DO believe that (A) is correct, that STILL doesn't negate the possibility that there is a higher intelligence. Or, to put it another way, if during the 3 billion year history of our own planet, intelligence has already evolved to its current state where we are able to manipulate matter, and create sophisticated computer simulations, is it not absurd to believe that outside of our universe, where time is either non-existant or infinite, a form of intelligence far, far, far greater and more powerful than ours has evolved?

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Turn of the tide: feminists begin to regret

Cosmopolitan (The women's magazine that urges women to use men for sex) Editor Lorraine Candy has a change of mind and now urges women not to have "Soul-less sex":

"We didn't feel ashamed about one-night stands...this, we thought, is what feminism is about."

70s feminist Fay Weldon now says:

"It is the fault of me and my like, who... got it wrong.

So were we wrong, we feminists, setting women free? The results have been devastating – greater than we ever imagined.

We steamed ahead, changing the world with too little caution, and I hope the future will forgive us.

The pendulum has swung too far over. But it may yet swing back again. Societies, thank God, tend to be self-righting."

"Once a man could look forward to starting a family and the dignity that came from being the provider. Forget it. At best as a man you're decorative, look after the kids and earn a bit sometimes; at worst you're a write-off. Women are elbowing the men out. The boys get anxious, the girls swagger. The male suicide rate goes up, female down. Twenty-eight per cent of us now live in single person households - a lonely and unnatural state - and most of the 28 per cent consist of young men. It is strange that it is left to a woman to suggest, in the normal nurturing way, that men start some kind of movement to promote their gender's status and self-esteem - call it masculinism, brotherism, machoism, what you want - and some mark of the success of the feminist movement, that it needs to be done."

60's feminist Doris Lessing now says:

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

An excerpt from an interview with Joan Rivers:

"She's not with the feminists when it comes to matters of the heart. For her, they're to blame for the current parlous state of our relationships, as depicted in these television Shows (Such as Sex in the city) and films. "I saw this coming. You cannot be equal to a man, you cannot make a man feel 'I don't need you' or 'I'll take my sex when I want it'. All these shows are so sad."

Camille Paglia :

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."