Short Films on Atheism

I mentioned before that I had collected a series of short films and video clips covering atheism, religion, and science. This post contains the first half of that collection that focus on atheism.

Atheism: Jonathon Miller's Brief History of Disbelief


This hour long BBC documentary examines atheism in a very different way than other films and books that I've studied. It doesn't really try to promote atheism, it simply seeks to explain its causes. I wrote down in my notes that this film takes a very philosophical approach to belief. It also discusses some of the consequences of belief, visiting Ground Zero in New York City. It also addresses the history of religion in America, providing concrete evidence that many of the founding fathers were not religious men at all.


The God Who Wasn't There - The History of the Gospels


This clip is from the documentary film "The God Who Wasn't There", which I watched in full earlier this year. This particular section discusses the history of the gospels, how the story of Jesus fits into the known historical framework, and a comparison of Jesus and Christianity to older heroes and legends in folklore and mythology. I enjoyed the film and would recommend it to others, even though I recall that I had some reservations about it. The contents of this clip I think contain my favorite discussions in the film.

The Root of All Evil? - The God Delusion
Part 1

Part 2


This film features Richard Dawkins discussing the perils of religion. He also analyzes the stark differences between scientific inquiry and dogmatic faith. I personally find it immensely interesting, even though it does have some rather provocative moments. Dawkins visits fundamentalist Christian gatherings in America, speaks to Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, and visits various religious leaders in London. In the second part, the discussion turns to childhood indoctrination and an analysis of the contents of the Christian bible, particularly focusing on morality.

If Atheist Ruled the World


Finally is this humorous and terrifying video. These guys read out aloud text directly from online Christian fundamentalist forums. This stuff is absolutely unbelievable. It really scares me to think that there are people out there in this world with these sorts of warped views and opinions.

Finish What You Start

Lately instead of posting to my own blog, I've been reading and commenting on others. In particular I've been pretty active at the Atheist Experience blog. I had a great discussion with others in a couple recent posts there. The first post was a discussion about the moral/ethical implications actions of professed gods. I made the first comment to that post so if you're interested, read it through and follow where the discussion led (there was at least one theist who participated in the dialogue). Also in that post someone shared a quiz called "Religion 101" which I enjoyed. I don't agree with the wording, fairness, or relevance of some of the questions on there, but in general I think its great. The quiz can be found here. I have a Christian friend I've been having some religious discussions with off and on in the past few weeks and I'd like to ask if she would mind taking it and then we can have a discussion about the answers that she selected. The second post I commented on was about the "end times" doctrine in Christianity found in the Book of Revelation. The original topic was a discussion of how sick and disturbing it is to see believers actually express their desire for the end of the world to come and to observe all the non-believers suffering in agony, but the discussion in the comments went all over the place.

If you recall, earlier this year I mentioned that I had put together a selection of various video clips from The Atheist Experience that I wanted to watch together with my religious friend. And when our discussions broke down and she no longer wished to talk about the subject anymore, I started sharing the clips on my blog. The last time I shared a clip was way back in March and I'm not even half way through my list, so I need to finish what I started. Here's the next clip in the series on how the concept of "sin" is a control mechanism. In my notes I wrote to watch only the first four minutes and thus will only comment on that length, but feel free to watch the entire 10 minute clip.



The commentary by the co-host Don is rather acerbic, but I do think he makes an interesting conjecture on how sin is used to exploit people, and how ridiculous the concept of original sin is. If you don't know, original sin is the idea that you are guilty for all the "sinful" actions of your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etcetra all the way back to the original two human beings, Adam and Eve (of course, I don't believe that two homo sapiens spontaneously popped into existence from nothing in the first place). I don't have much else to add here.

Link to google video (Sorry, blogger isn't accepting the embed code for some reason)

This is actually a full 90 minute episode, not a single clip. The portion of this episode I want to discuss is the segment from 6:00 to 35:00. Yes, its nearly 30 minutes long. In my notes I wrote that this segment is about the following. "A dialog on what motivates people to believe in Christianity, reasons for beliefs, reasons for disbelief, and touches on young Earth creationism". At 12:00, the hosts discuss a Christian blogger who told atheists why they are atheists, and gave two reasons (both reasons he gave require the atheist to believe in God). I've seen this many times before, on both sides of the aisle. Rather than listen to why the other person believes or disbelieves in something, they assert their own reasons on that person and assert them. Sometimes they do this because its easy for them to refute. Sometimes they do it because it makes them feel more comfortable about their own beliefs. But regardless of why they do this, its wrong for them to do so. The hosts also mention that some people, such as Ray Comfort, claim that there are no atheists. Rather those that call themselves atheists do believe in a god (particularly his god), but are in denial about it or reject the god for some reason. Its quite an ignorant assertion.

Between about 14:00 and 22:00, the hosts divulge into a good summary of the difference between theism, gnosticism, and weak/strong atheism. Around 24:00 the co-host Tracie provides a great example of contrast between the reaction of two fundamentalist Christians when they are presented with conflicting evidence that the Earth is 6,000 - 10,000 years old. One believer is open-minded at looking at the scientific evidence and as a result, becomes convinced that that particular belief they hold was wrong. The other is adamant that nothing can nor ever will change their beliefs. The latter believer is the type that I have serious problems. They proudly boast about being close minded and either uniformly reject or ignore contradictory evidence. Regardless of what you believe or disbelieve, whether its gods, UFOs, or political ideology, I think it is a horribly awful thing to be dogmatic and close minded to contradictory arguments, evidence, and opinions. And religion, particularly many forms of fundamentalism, are excellent and promoting this maligned view.

Cause and Effect

In this post I'll discuss what happened as a result of this recent experience of mine. What were the bad things that happened, what were the good things that happened, and why did I decide to begin writing about this in my blog?


The Bad
Its pretty obvious what the most negative consequence of these discussions was. My friendship with this girl has taken severe damage and it remains to be seen whether we can salvage it. I don't want to belittle this point, because this alone makes me very very sad. I got closer to this girl than I could have ever imagined. I typically don't form close relationships with people because I have a hard time finding friends that I really connect with. She is the one friend I have in Austin who I felt completely comfortable with. I felt like I could talk about anything with her and do everything with her. I really, really value my friendship with her and she's a very important person in my life. It makes me sad to think that religion could tear us apart forever. Even if that is not the case, I doubt that we will ever be as close as we once were.

I'm not so sure I feel entirely comfortable around her anymore as well. Her admission that she would kill young children if God commanded her too really scares me. I thought about this carefully and during an online chat once I told her I wasn't sure that I could feel comfortable around her anymore. She asked why, and I cited her earlier admission and said "What if God commanded you to kill me? How can I feel comfortable knowing that you wouldn't even question that command?". (She never responded to this question so I don't know her answer). There are numerous examples in the bible where God commands people to kill those close to them, including parents sacrificing their children. If God would accept the blood of the innocent, he surely has no problem asking my faithful friend to extinguish a blasphemer such as myself. Of course I don't believe in God so I don't think that he will ever tell my friend to kill me. I raised the point as more of a hypothetical question. Because if I did believe in God, then I may have good reason to fear my friend.

And her YEC stance makes me greatly uncomfortable as well. I've been thinking very deeply and philosophically about this lately. My friend and I have a list of activities to do around the Austin area. A couple of those things were to go exploring the local historical cave sites and to go star gazing. But can I really appreciate doing those activities with a friend who believes the earth is only a few thousands years old? If that were the case, most of the stars in the sky should not exist. If that were the case, then there's no way that she could appreciate the millions of years of erosion and geological formations in those caves. I can't imagine viewing the universe in the same way as a YEC does. For example, if I'm touring a beautiful garden with a friend and this friend says "Wow, look at all the fairies in this garden!". I don't see the fairies but my friend insists that they are there, making the flowers beautiful and taking care of them. Are we really appreciating the same garden? Can I appreciate nature and the stars and history with such a friend?


The Good
There are, however, many unexpected good results of this too. The best one is that my thirst for knowledge and understanding has been revived. When graduate school ended back in December 2006 I had to take so many months to recover from my anxiety disorder. By the time I was feeling back to normal, I just no longer really cared to learn anything anymore. But now that feeling is back and it is just as strong as it was before I became a graduate student. My passion to learn really drives me in life and I am very thankful to have it back again.

I have learned so much in the past two months it is incredible. Initially all that I was learning was about Christianity and the Bible. As I was reading the bible though, I began to wonder how true the stories in it were. For example, the book of Matthew discusses King Herod of Judea under the Roman Empire. This king really did exist. Matthew describes how Herod heard that the Messiah (Jesus) had been born in his lands and ordered that all infants two years or younger be killed (see massacre of the infants). Jesus and his human parents fled to Egypt to escape this massacre. The problem with that story is that Herod had a personal historian who kept detailed records of his days. Although Herod committed many awful acts as King according to his own historian, there is nothing in these records that describe the massacre of the infants. Furthermore, there is very good evidence that King Herod died in the year 4BC, 4 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. I've learned a lot of history about the times which are mentioned in the bibles.

After talking to my friend and learning about her YEC stance, I began re-evaluating my own stance. I do believe in evolution, and I do believe that the universe is billions, not thousands, of years old. But why do I believe that? What evidence support my beliefs? Am I justified in my beliefs? These questions led me to go back and re-discover the answers that I once found, evaluated, and decided were true. I've studied biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, cosmology, palentology, archaelogy, and history. And I'll share the things that I have learned through my studies in future posts, and justify why I hold the views that I do.

I've also been learning about religion in general, not just Christianity. My roommate (also an atheist) took a couple courses on religion during his college years and lent me the textbooks that he studied. I've studied them to try to understand why people hold the beliefs that they do. Why do some people reject science and historical evidence when they conflict with their beliefs? What role does our childhood experiences play in what we believe as adults? I've started looking into psychology and sociology to find these answers. I have my own hypotheses about these answers, which I will share in future posts. I do hope to share them when I have better knowledge of the human mind and childhood development.

Another positive benefit I've gained from this experience is awareness. I am more aware of (what I consider to be) some of the dangerous beliefs that some religious people hold. I can no longer afford to be naive about these people, because their views do affect my life both directly and indirectly. I'm aware now that as an atheist, I belong to the most distrusted group in America. In the past I've been somewhat of a "hidden" atheist. I didn't tell people that I was an atheist unless they ask or unless it is relevant information to share. That's probably why I haven't experienced a lot of discrimination from believers that other atheists have experienced. I've decided to be more open about being an atheist and to do my part to try and dispel the negative stigma about atheism. Like everything else, I'll discuss discrimination and atheism in a future post.


The Effect
So why have I decided to start blogging about all this? The main reason is because I've learned so much and prepared so many questions for my friend, and now I can't share them with her anymore because I agreed to not speak about religion or her beliefs anymore. All these thoughts in my head that I was going to share with her suddenly had no where to go, and it was driving me crazy. Thus, I decided to share them in my blog because I need to get them out of my head!

A secondary reason is to raise education and awareness about these sorts of questions that are so fundamental to our lives. I'm speaking to both atheists and religious people in this respect. If someone decides to accept or reject a viewpoint, I want them to have well supported and intelligent reasons in doing so. Education is something that I think our society doesn't respect enough here in the United States and across all other nations. And I do blame religion in part for playing a role in making people less educated and less enlightened about the world and the reality in which we live.

I realize that being on my blog and avaiable in the public domain, my friend has the access and opportunity to read what I have to say here. I'm not going to force my blog entries down her throat, but I will tell her that what I think and feel is available here. It will be up to her whether or not she chooses to read what I have to say, but I hope that she does. But I don't want her or anyone else to mistakenly think that I am writing these postings specifically for her because that is not the case. Using this blog to indirectly share my thoughts with my friend is a teriary reason for why I write.


That's all for now. Next time I think I'll discuss why it is that I trust science and likewise distrust religion.