Thanks to San Diego Humanist Book Club!

Thanks to the San Diego Humanist Book club for a very pleasant evening last night discussing The Religion Virus. It was a real pleasure to hear everyone's thoughts on such a wide-ranging set of topics.

It's always surprising to me which chapters and stories in the book appeal to different people. A number of people really liked the story of "William and Ruth." Several people mentioned how much the story of my father's motorcycle accident affected them. And I had the pleasure of retelling the story of Aunt Carolyn's "unbaptism" to the whole group in greater detail.

But the best part of the evening was the wide-ranging discussion about religion, its peculiar history and how it's still affecting us today. I spend far too much time reading the dogma and irrational faith-based arguments from "the other side," and sometimes I feel submerged. Last night was a refreshing change. It renewed my hope that humanism and rational thinking will prevail some day.

Bible Prohibits Homosexuality? WHO CARES?

Once again the Bible is proving how it wastes careers, holds back our culture and should be abandoned as a source of morality.

Professor Jennifer Wright Knust's new book, Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire, and her recent blog on CNN both purport to show that the Bible does not actually prohibit homosexuality. She claims that the message is ambiguous at best, and that there are many passages that actually condone same-sex relationships.

I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that her book and blog have provoked many responses from conservative Christians. Perhaps the most scholarly reply is this one by Professor Robert A. J. Gagnon. The good professor has written not one, but two books that prove that the Bible condemns homosexuality.

And you know what? We don't care!

This debate is just another illustration of why the Bible shouldn't be anyone's

Silly Christian Morals

In a blog last week I wrote that "modern adults realize that Christian 'morals' are a bit silly." Those are strong words. I should have realized that this would offend many people, and I started to think maybe I should retract it.

But on reflection, I can't retract it. I know it's offensive to Christians (and Jews and Muslims, because I'll add them to the mix), but I stand by this assertion. What I will do is amplify so that it's clear exactly what I mean.

Christians are for the most part a moral group. But their morals can be divided into two parts: The morals that all people share, and the morals that are uniquely Christian.

The morals that Christians share with all civilized people are not silly. Be faithful to your mate. Don't murder. Follow the golden rule. Don't steal. Protect children. Honor our parents. These are good morals that all civilized people share. But these are not Christian morals. They are human morals that arise from nature. Jewish, Christian and Muslim authors merely incorporated these into their holy scriptures thousands of years ago. This isn't unique; every civilization does this. Christians can't make some claim to exclusivity on these universal morals. (See Atheism IS Where Morality Originates.)

What about "Christian morals," the ones that are unique to the Christian faith?

A Truly Moral Preacher? Gay Megachurch Bishop Comes Out ... for a Good Reason

Now here's a story I like. Jim Swilley is gay, but few people knew it. He kept his sexuality a secret for decades because he was founder and bishop of Conyers’ Church in the Now, a "megachurch" in Rockdale County, Georgia.

Last week Bishop Swilley decided it was time to stop living a lie and come out as gay. But it wasn't because of a scandal, or because someone was threatening to "out" him. Bishop Swilley came out as openly gay to support the gay youth of America.

"I know a lot of straight people think it is a choice. It is not. ... As a father, thinking about your 16, 17 year old killing themselves, I thought somebody needed to say something.

What a wonderful, generous man.

Those of us in the atheist/agnostic/secular/humanist blogosphere are quick to point out the flaws of church leaders who are caught in scandals. We're fast to report on a megachurch leader caught with a prostitute,

City of Angels: Why is Christian Philosophy so Negative?

We watched an old Meg Ryan / Nicolas Cage movie last night called City of Angels. It was a decent romantic tragedy, though a bit slow moving. But it got me to wondering: why is Christian philosophy so profoundly negative? Why does happiness always come at a terrible price? Why is love a zero-sum game where if someone wins, someone else has to lose?

(Spoiler alert!) In City of Angels, Nicolas Cage plays Seth, an angel who watches over the good citizens of Los Angeles. Meg Ryan plays a heart surgeon (Dr. Maggie Rice) who is having a personal crisis over the fact that some of her patients die. Since Seth is an angel, he doesn't have human senses like touch, taste or smell. To make a long (literally) movie short, Seth falls in love with Maggie, discovers that angels can "fall to Earth" and become human, and so he gives up his immortality for love. After a good dose of reality (cuts, bruises, rain and getting robbed), he gets to spend one blissful night with Meg Ryan before she is hit by a truck and killed.

I totally don't get this. This is one of the weirdest things about Christianity: whenever something good happens, it has to be balanced by something tragic.

Seth the angel is immortal and he loves saving people from danger and comforting them when they die. He gets to hear the choir of Angels in the sunrise every morning. But God has given humans the greatest gift of all. Seth is denied the pleasures of touch, taste and smell. He can't feel a caress,

The Religion Virus: Atheist ethics, part 3

Secular morality is inherently more moral than religious morality. Secular morality is accountable to itself, whereas religious morality is "free standing," without any foundation.

Let's start with a relevant analogy: Science versus faith. The foundation of science, far more important than any particular discovery, is accountability: Any scientific claim must be verifiable. As Richard Feynman famously said,

The first principle [of science] is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

Science is the process of finding rational, consistent explanations for natural phenomena, explanations that can be written down and verified by others. Any fact, however trivial, that contradicts a scientific theory immediately requires that the theory be revised or rejected.

By contrast, faith-based explanations of natural phenomena (we are, of course, talking mainly about creationism and its relatives) have no accountability. They don't have to match the facts, they don't have to provide any deep insight, they don't have to be verifiable. Worst of all, history shows that faith-based explanations of nature are often motivated by politics and power, not a desire for knowledge.

Now back to morals.

Secular morality has rested on the solid foundation built by the Greek Rationalist (Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and their intellectual followers) for over 2,500 years. These amazing philosophers realized that morals had to start from a foundation that everyone could agree on, that is, an axiom that was plainly true. They selected happiness and improving the human condition as their axiom; who could possibly dispute that happiness and health are good, and suffering and pain are bad?

Based on this axiom, the Greek Rationalists built a set of moral principles, one that was based on sound logic, and that anyone could examine for flaws. And many did: The earliest ethical treatises have been discussed, dissected, and improved since they were first proposed. Yet even today, Aristotle's ethics stand as one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time.

The key point here is that secular morality has accountability. You can't just make stuff up; new claims about secular morality must rest on the foundation of improving the human condition and must have a logical connection to that foundation. Furthermore, like the scientific method, secular claims about morality are open to scrutiny. If you make a claim about morality, you have to explain it clearly, show how it is derived from the foundation, and be willing to defend your position.

By contrast, religious morality is without foundation. If you believe morality comes from God, then you fall into trap that Plato discovered: What is the foundation of God's morality? How does God know what is good and what is bad? If you argue that God just knows, then you've admitted that there are things (like human happiness) that are axiomatic, and you're back to the secular position – you don't need God in the equation. If you argue that something is good because God says it's good, then God could say rape and murder are good, and they would be good, and the argument is circular; there is no foundation.

Those of faith claim their morality is inspired directly by God, but if that's true, then God is very confused. For example, He made numerous laws about how to treat slaves, but no laws prohibiting slavery. He made conflicting laws, and dietary laws that make no sense in today's modern world. He made laws that we have to prostate ourselves and praise His glory, a very odd thing for a supreme being to want.

And if that's not enough, religious morals quickly lose relevance as societies progress, yet they're frozen in time by the "inerrancy meme" – it asserts that the Bible is a perfect transcription of God's own words. Morality becomes cast in stone, and religions can't adapt as human society advances.

I discussed in a previous blog how churches claim to have the "lock" on morality, that without God, morality is impossible. In fact, just the opposite is true: Religious morals are inherently inferior to secular morals.