Religion in my classes

In English, God has been showing up a lot. I don't have much of a problem with it though, since like European or US History, leaving religion out of it can kind of mess things up a little. Though with English, you can be fine without reading any literature dealing with religion, so that point sucked.

Anyway, allusions to the Bible are everywhere in literature. If a snake is mentioned somewhere, one could probably make it an allusion to the snake in the Garden of Eden and it would fit. My English teacher is aware that not all of us read or have read the Bible so she made a Bible "cheat sheet". It's a list of characters and some other things within the Bible. She didn't hand this cheat sheet out though, since she didn't want to be accused of handing out religious material or whatever, so she just set it in the front and said if anyone wants one, take it. She suggested that religious people may not want to take it since she... kind of takes jabs at some of the things.

An example would be:

Noah: Built an ark and put two animals of each species in it. God flooded the world to get rid of all the bad people and Noah and company floated while it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. A rainbow appeared at the end as a promise from God that he/she wouldn't cause any more plumbing problems.

Or

Bethlehem: Town where Christ was born in a manger (not a basket) because the hotel was full. Joseph forgot to call ahead.

Nothing bad, just a little comedic.

These two past days we've read two things concerning God. One was about nature being evidence of God's greatness and the reading last night... was, well, interesting. It was an except from a sermon given by a Puritan named Johnathan Edwards called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". For some background information, when he gave this six-hour sermon, he drove the congregation into hysteria several times. I find that hilarious. It's a lot of bullshit.

My teacher wanted us to look at the rhetorical strategies used and different stylistic devices. It was full of metaphor, scare tactics, bandwagonand just outright stupidity. He basically was saying that all of us were doomed to Hell unless we converted... or something.

We discussed all of this in class. I got the chance to say that I think God was personified as a spoiled five-year-old brat because he was dangling us over Hell and he'd drop us whenever he felt like it and that God kind of took a "It's my way or the highway" approach to things. Pretty childish, and thanks to el penguino for giving me the idea to say it. I wanted to mention how Edwards described God in a way that reminded me of the God character in the Bible, but I didn't and that may have alienated me big time. Not like I care too much anyway. My friend commented on how humans and God have a sadomasochistic relationship. He hates us and he makes us afraid but we love him and want to be with him. Stupid, isn't it?

And strangely enough, my physics teacher mentioned God today. He was talking about how when you slide a book down a table, it stops at some point. He said something along the lines of "Some evangelists would have you believe that little things called God stop it" and mentioned how some people are actually telling others this. I thought his comments on stupid ideas like that were funny.

So am I against any of this? Not really. None of my teachers are trying to convince me to convert to any particular religion or anything. I'm actually thinking my English and physics teachers aren't religious at all. Anyway, you can't
really ignore religion's influence on literature and some of the stupidity it tries to spout out.

More Idiotic Homophobia

I am one of those peoples who sing good songs when they hate being distracted. In math today I started singing the cookie monster rap byLimp Bizkit. So this guy overheard me singing the part "Big Bird in his nest/and Oscar in his can/Ernie is a guy/Who lives with another man." and the guy started telling me about the conservatives who SUED SESAME STREET for promoting GAY SEX using Bert and Ernie.

Bert and Ernie...

I mean COME ON! Are they that desperate to have something to complain about? Some plaintiffs were willing to drop the suit if GBH changed the rating to TV-14. Dog thats pretty stupid. Really. If you want to discourage homosexuality, stop sending people to prison. Then people wouldn't have to use other men to soothe their natural urges. Then after they have become comfortable to gay sex, they look for it outside. They do it, and they spread the "disease" around. How about you do that you conservative bastards? Oh thats right! Then crime will run the world. And you dont want that!

I'll leave you readers to come up with other fun, happy ways for the conservatives to exterminate the "problem."

Study: Religion hurts societies

First of all, let me say this:

YES! YES! YES!

With that off my chest, y'all should take a look at article from the Times Online. The headline: "Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'"

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

(my emphasis)

This makes me happy. I mean, really happy, I realize that this study won't have much of an impact, but it's great to see that an objective study has concluded that religion is a bad thing.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul ["Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist"] said".

We knew that.

And finally, the conclusion (a quote of Mr. Paul's) of this article is by far one of the best things I've read today:

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

The Real Reason

I have finally decided to come clean with a lot of things. This includes my story of why i became an atheist.

I was about five. A very impressionable age. I wanted a brother to play with. That wish has fucked up the last 9 years of my life. Nine and a half today. My mom became pregnant and i was ecstatic. i told my friends. My teachers. Everyone. When the big day came. March 25, 1996 i was too happy to contain it. guess what. He died. before he could breathe real air. He died. Before he could truly see the world. He died. Being a hindu, over the years i consulted religion. I learned about karma and mokhsha. I was pretty analitical back then. I was logical. I wanted to find out why he died. So i did.

Hinduism teaches us that you accumulate karma in your life. Your good deeds are good karma, and your bad deeds are bad karma. When you die, your karma determines the quality of your next life. This is all according to Vishnu. My former God. So i wondered, if god says that your karma is so bad that you cant even live. Then how can you improve your karma. Therefore you have completely lost the chance to attain Mokhsha. If God designed that system so someone could get stuck as a baby that was unborn over and over and over again. How could the soul ever develop good? if God could make a system so infinately flawed, was he really hoping for our betterment? I realized that if God was truly as benevolent as Hinduism says, and that we would truly protect you. He would show some mercy to those who are not completely good. If God cannot be completely benevolent to those who could possibly promote him, then why would he have such a plan? It didnt make sense. The only thing that did make sense, was that God could not make a system that didnt show what he said. He was good. If God contradicted God. He couldnt exist. (Remember this is like 8 year olds logic). So i decided that there was no God. And now i am what i am now. A death obsessed, suicidal, masochistic, sanguinaphilic, atheist. That is my story.

Response to "Mr. Theist"

A commenter on this post (at my blog) brought up something I want to talk about: Faith and reason and all that jazz. Seth has dubbed him "Mr. Theist" so that is what I'm going to call him.

You have faith Kele, you just don't know it. Whenever you do something as simple as sitting in a chair, you have faith that it will hold you. I have faith that God exists and YOU have faith that He doesn't because you cannot pove He doesn't exist.

A theist has faith, an atheist does not. Of course, both of us do have faith in certain things, but that's a different kind.

First, let's look at the definition of "faith", from dictionary.com.

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.

Which kind are we talking about? I don't think we're talking about 3, 4, 5 or 6. I'll go with 2. "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." I think an atheist does take faith in things probably every day, but that's with #1, and I think that can be partly based off reason and past experiences. An example would be the chair analogy Mr. Theist used. I can look at the chair and judge if it will hold me or not, wait for somebody else to sit there and then sit it when they get out of it.

But I think the kind of faith we're really talking about is #2. "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." If there was logical proof or material evidence for a god, everyone would be a believer. There just isn't any right now. Maybe in the future sometime.

The atheists are being rational while the theists are being IRrational. "Irrational" is a good word to use, I think; I bet it would infuriate a lot of theists. Dictionary.com defines "irrational" as:

1. Not endowed with reason.

There ya go. That is the theist position. They have faith, or a belief that isn't based on logic or evidence, in god, while the atheist does not.

Note that I'm not calling theists irrational people, just that particular belief is irrational.

Until there is evidence for a god, I won't believe in one. But really, I don't want to believe a god exists. I'd rather KNOW a god exists based on logic and evidence. Until then, screw it!

So, Mr. Theist, YOU have faith God exists, based on irrational assumptions while my position is based on the evidence (or lack of evidence).

If you could prove your point, noboby would worship a God that doesn't exist.

You're making the positive claim, you have to prove your point. I don't have to do anything.

(I took out the evolution bit. Evolution has nothing to do with atheism so I felt that it shouldn't really be talked about on here. If any of the other contributers feel otherwise, please say so.)

So, basically, the theist belief that a god exists is irrational and not based on evidence, logic or anything. The atheist's position is based off the lack of any of these things. Until someone comes up with a good logical argument or good evidence, there is no reason to believe a god exists. As PZ Myers said at the presentation I went to yesterday (this isn't exact), we just don't have a need for a god in any of our current scientific hypotheses. Everything we know about in science just doesn't need it. They work fine without it.

(Oh crap, what time zone are we supposed to use?! Hahaha. I'll stick with the default for now.)

(This was also posted at my blog.)

Example of homophobia in the US

This is a post from my blog at http://cdmarcus.blogspot.com.

Disclaimer: This happened in January, so it's not recent. But you should still know about it. Recently, I was surfing the web when I found some information about how the Education Secretary Margaret Spellings asked PBS not to air an episode of "Postcards from Buster," an educational public television show where Buster, a rabbit from the "Arthur" show, visits places and learns about their cultures. In this episode, entitled "Sugartime," Buster visits a family in Vermont, and learns about how maple syrup is made. The family he visits consists of two lesbian parents and their adopted children. According to the Washington Post, she said that "many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode." Now, I find this totally wrong. Homosexuality does exist, and there's nothing wrong with that. Isn't it better that children learn that from a neutral point of view and are allowed to come to their own conclusions? I would hope that any parent who encourages their child to watch such shows as "Postcards," which teaches children about different cultures and lifestyles, would not be prejudiced against homosexuals. In fact, nobody should. But at least don't conceal facts and censor certain lifestyles and cultures, and the people to which they belong.

In a country that frowns upon prejudice, how can this happen? Be sure to look at the comment by Bobkul, who commented on Kingdom of Heathen, on the original post at my blog. To see the comments, click here.

The Lone exHindu

This is more of an introductory post. My name is Rohan I am a freshman and am 14. I am the only person on this blog who came from a polytheistic religion. I think this will help differentiate opinions. Not much to say, except that i will barely ever post.

How Religion Came to Be: an Atheist Myth

A long time ago, there was a young man with amazing intellectual capacities named Zilphagin. People always came to him for advice. Since modern drugs hadn't been invented, and no one actually lived long enough to be an old, wise man.

Now, Zilphagin knew that there was more to life than sitting on a rock in the town square and answering people's questions. He could become a lawyer, or a doctor. His city-state could certainly use one of those, as university graduates were hard to come by. Anyhow, one day, he created a plan. A plan to get all those irritating, undereducated citizens to leave him alone, leaving him to pursue a better life. His plan was so simple, yet so powerful... powerful enough that thousands of years later, his legacy lives on.

His plan was, the next time anyone inquired about why the moon changed, why the tides rolled in and out, what made the sun come out in the morning, etcetera, he would tell them, "Because there's a big man named God who lives in the sky and makes it all happen." Sure enough, they left. And no one ever asked him any more questions at all. He lived happily ever after as a doctor. Unfortunately, being one of two doctors in miles around, he was never left alone. He realized how stupid his whole "God" story was.


By the way, I'm Caleb. I know Seth from the Hebrew school we both used to suffer in. I hope to be a regular contributor on Kingdom of Heathen.

What can we do for American children?

America is a difficult country for children to be atheists. When the media is constantly determining what is "in," teens are constantly under pressure to conform. Religion is everywhere; even the movie industry has begun pandering towards religious groups.

Furthermore, this is a country where parents have the ability to control their kids' religious activities. There is no law against parents bringing their sons or daughters to church at an early age. But there should be.

It is unacceptable for parents to raise their kids into a religion. Religious indoctrination of children is nothing short of brainwashing; when you are young, you think that everything your parents do is right. If you start regularly attending church at age 3, it's pretty damn likely you're going to grow up to be a Christian. My mom (my dad's an atheist) put me in Hebrew School at 5. I was a theist until I was 12, and that's only because my HS teachers that year were horrible.

For a while, I thought that children should be exposed to all religions when they're young. Now I believe that we should be completely shielded from religion; maybe if we're educated in a completely secular fashion, we will eventually realize that religion does not provide answers.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will ever happen in America. There is no way a law forbidding parents from raising their kids religiously will ever make it into Congress. So what can atheist kids do to prevent our peers from being brainwashed?

…Well, I have no idea. But this is a problem that we must address. Please leave your ideas. Thanks.

New textbook on the block: About the Bible

CNN - Interfaith coalition unveils public school Bible course. The Bible Literacy Project, operating out of Virginia, spent two million dollars writing this supposedly objective textbook entitled "The Bible and its Influence". Says American Jewish Congress attorney Marc Stern, "this book is proof…that it is possible to acknowledge and respect deep religious differences and yet still find common ground."

Now. I'm a reporter. At least, in the middle-school-newspaper-that-covers-national-events sense. Consequently, the idea of objectivity appeals to me, as it should to everyone else. However, I think it is virtually impossible to be impartial about the Bible; it's just too crazy. There is bound to be some information omitted. I mean, the way I see this is that the textbook probably focuses on the "moral" aspects of the scriptures, and probably ignores most of the parts that condone beating women, convicts, killing homosexuals and the part that says bats are birds. If students are taught about the Bible, they should be exposed to the nonsensical parts as well as the moral.

Bible Literacy's editors accommodated Jewish sensitivities about the New Testament, attributed reports about miracles to the source rather than simply calling them historical facts and generally downplayed scholarly theories -- about authorship and dates, for example -- that offend conservatives.

Ah, political correctness. Do they also teach that the Bible is not about political correctness? Hmm...

Stetson said "the important thing was not to compromise on peoples' beliefs. They are what they are." To Schippe, the key to effective education is respect for the biblical text, constitutional law, scholarship, various faith traditions and divergent interpretations.

Call me crazy, but I think the best way for educators to avoid disrespect for conflicting faith traditions and interpretations is to ignore them completely.

Another program, favored by evangelical groups and used in hundreds of schools, comes from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools of Greensboro, North Carolina. It provides a teacher's outline with the Bible itself as the textbook.

……brilliant. That is why I love conservatives (cough). They have such zany, original ideas. If only there were some way of getting them into the government...

Welcome, ye sinners

Hello and welcome to this, the first public post on the Kingdom of Heathen. We're not quite in full gear yet, so be patient as template changes occur in the next week or so. However, we're looking forward to producing one of the finest youth atheist blogs on the Web that Stretcheth Throughout the Earth.

I'm going to ask my fellow team members to edit this post with a little information about themselves. However, Aeger is away for the weekend, so you'll have to wait for that. So, without further ado:

Seth: I'm 13, and if I remember Aeger's birthday correctly, the youngest contributor right now. I maintain a personal blog, Spoiled Honey. I'm co-editor in chief of my school's newspaper (a monthly 18-page broadsheet which attended the Democratic and Republican national conventions), so I have experience with writing.

Kele: I'm 16 years old and a junior in high school, making me the oldest here and automatically better than the other contributers! Kidding. My main interests concern atheism and religion as well as evolutionary theory. Right now, I'm aspiring to be a scientist who uses evolutionary theory (Perhaps an evolutionary biologist?) but that could possibly change if I end up liking physics a lot more. You can find my blog here.

Pyro_Shark: I'm 14 (15 in a month) year old freshman. I enjoy writing, though I don't have the journalism/writing experience Seth does. I'll post my essays here as at well as my blog: Excelsior.

Aeger: Yo. I yam a 13 year old 8th grader. As far as I can tell, Writing iz my "thing", though other interests include drawing, acting, singing, drumming, and sitting quietly on a rock in the middle of nowhere for hours at a time quietly humming "Wake Me Up When September Ends" to myself. I'm the illustrations editor for THE DAYTIME (same paper as Seth), and I also write about 2 opinion columns a month. My personal blog is Quailitude Dot Com, though it's actually Quailitude Dot Blogspot Dot Com, but that doesn't really have as much of a ring to it. Oh, and just FYI, my name is pronounced "Ashzeer", not "Ager". It means "The Light" in Latin. That's all I can think of for now, bwul.

Onwards.

Here's how I see this happening: Kele, Pyro, Aeger and I (well, and whomever else joins up) will post about religion/atheism-related topics from a teenage perspective. Basically, like our personal blogs, except without the personal stuff.

If there are any other teenage atheists out there who would like to contribute, please, let us know. We will add you.

And for everyone in general: If you have any input/feedback about template, background, and whatnot, please comment. We are open to suggestions.

Alrighty. I shall post this, plug the blog at a few other sites, then start working on the first piece of real content. Thanks for reading.