The 12 Unthinkable Horrors of Human Existence: A Manual for Atheists, Agnostics and Secular Humanists

The Global Religious Landscape.

Drifting Down, but Still High". Martin, Michael , ed. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism Essay collection. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, Religion and Culture. God in Nederland — Retrieved 17 January Archived from the original on September 8, Retrieved August 23, Retrieved 4 May Census reveals a picture of Britain today". Archived from the original PDF on 25 May Retrieved 10 May Forschungsgruppe Weltanschauungen in Deutschland.

Archived from the original PDF on 15 January Retrieved 24 January Mitgliederzahlen Religionswissenschaftlicher Medien- und Informationsdienst; 31 October Retrieved 19 November Swiss Federal Statistical Office. Retrieved March 21, Two Years after Maidan ] pdf in Ukrainian , Kiev: This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Retrieved 30 August Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek - Suriname. Archived from the original pdf on 4 April Retrieved 4 April Retrieved July 12, If all human actions are the result of a chain of causality, that chain is so complex as to be almost completely unknowable.

To determine an individual's future behavior with precision, one would have to know and understand every aspect of that person's brain and hormone system, as well as the state of any matter or energy which might interact with the person in the future. To simulate reality with this degree of accuracy seems impossible — indeed you probably would have to create an entire simulated reality to figure it out. Thus, the illusion of free will and the unpredictability of humans, as individuals, is simply generated by a great many inputs from various external stimuli, and the internal chemical balance of each person's body — and this interaction, while deterministic, is too complex to predict and free will is what it appears to be.

Since it seems likely that we will never be able to prove or disprove that free will exists, a rationalist could alter the question further to reflect this reality: Or, you could believe that your tendency to try to find the best possible action in any given situation has been set up by your biochemistry, in interaction with past events, and simply go with it. Of course, you still have the problem of knowing what the definition of 'best' is, but that's another discussion.

Most people make the assumption that free will is real and ignore the paradox it forms with an apparently predictable universe — as we have said, it is a mostly harmless assumption. Once you start to consider that there may not be any gods out there and therefore no divine influence, claims of expertise in theology and religion look a little shaky. Indeed, you can then wonder if there can be any relevant "expertise" on the question of God's existence that can only be attained by studying theology.

You need to ask yourself why a priest or academic should be better placed to tell you that God exists than a gardener, a police officer, an English teacher or anyone else. For that matter, why should we place confidence in the expert opinions of Christian theology, and not on experts and theologians from other religions? The basic assumption of theism, that God does exist, and that it's specifically the god s of the religion in question, hasn't been backed up with evidence that's convincing to anyone outside that religion — so arguing the finer points of the nature of God is quite pointless.

Theologians , and especially priests, are obviously not independent experts on the question of god's existence; their status as experts is dependent on the public acceptance of their tenets and doctrines. If the wider public tended towards explicit skepticism of God's existence, apologists would quickly find themselves without a job. They have a very strong vested interest in defending religion regardless of whether or not its fundamental premise is actually true. When dealing with apologists, one should keep Upton Sinclair's famous quip in mind: When theologians demand that critics of religion first immerse themselves in apologetics before addressing any arguments, they are employing a special tactic known as the Courtier's Reply.

This can either be to quash dissent, or stave off embarrassment, by deflecting attention away from their shaky and uncertain foundations and towards the supposed sophistication and detail of deeper theological arguments. Atheists and agnostics will tend to agree that discussions about the nature of God are moot until the existence of God is established. There's even ignosticism , which posits that even God's existence is moot until you get around to actually defining "God" properly.

The importance of the fact that religious apologists were often indoctrinated with outlandish beliefs from childhood simply cannot be overstated. Because of this, their views tend towards just assuming God exists and working from there — what is known as presuppositionalism.

In all areas of rationalism and skepticism not just in terms of atheism it is important to never just accept what you are told as outright truth. Ask questions, as anyone who is relying on fact should be able to answer them even if they utter an honest "I don't know"! This is called due diligence in business, and it's your best protection against scams and liars, including those who hide behind a Ph.

D which includes most anyone who makes a big deal about having a doctorate. If all this seems daunting and incredulous, consider this: The source of all good things according to Judaism and Christianity, yet a source of endless vexation to nonbelievers. But not for the reason you'd think—while many preachers would have you think the Bible 's truths are self-evident and all-sufficient, most non-believers find they are anything but. Bible studies that would be church-based study, not historical scholarship, which is often quite thoroughly researched very often dance around or outright avoid the context of the creation of the Bible.

The fact is that the Bible, as important as it is to Western literature and thought, was begun in an area that was almost a backwater—Iron Age Judea , whose single most significant factor in its time was the fact that it happened to be located near major trade routes and on the military invasion route between Assyria and Egypt. For proper perspective, the original territory of Judaea began somewhere a little north of modern Jerusalem and extended along the Dead Sea into the northern reaches of the Negev Desert.

While modern Israel extends all the way to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, ancient Judaea had another Hebrew -speaking nation, Edom, occupying that area to the south although both Solomon and Amaziah managed to conquer it.

Dealing With Life Without God

In other words, this was a country that, on a good day, covered less than a third of modern Israel and the West Bank. Judaea was a tiny, mostly agrarian temple state based in Jerusalem that for much of its existence was overshadowed by the nominally coreligious but far more cosmopolitan state of Israel to the north, and it didn't manage to come into its own until Israel was crushed by Assyria after making a number of hostile and rather dubious political alliances.

The question of whether there was ever a united kingdom of Israel containing all twelve tribes of Israelites is, at best, murky. It's clear that both kingdoms shared much common tradition, but there is little evidence of much activity at Jerusalem at the time of the early Davidian dynasty, if you use Finkelstein's chronology. Seeing an opportunity for development, the priestly caste of Judaea combined the related but divergent religious stories of Israel and Judaea into a common tradition, and any previously believed gods into the single personage of YHWH , the God now worshipped, in various variations, by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, ruthlessly suppressing other traditional Semitic faith elements in favor of those that promoted Judahite—Jewish—identity.

From the original documents of the faith—believed to have developed into the modern Book of Deuteronomy — came an immense anthology of literature relating the history and faith of the Jewish people and their struggles to retain an identity of their own in the face of cultural encroachments of regional powers. Middle East researchers have found a great many elements common to many other Semitic peoples in the area—many of the details of Noah's Flood date back to the Sumerian i.

This is the Jewish Bible. As for the New Testament , its history covers a scant 70 years, from the birth of Jesus itself a somewhat wobbly date, generally believed to have been somewhere between 8 and 4 BC based on current calendar understanding to the ministry of Paul of Tarsus , who is the only Biblical writer outside some of the prophets whose name we know, and who wrote only about half of the material attributed to him in the New Testament.

The Gospels — the most direct and contemporaneous biographical material of Jesus known — were compiled second and third-hand from other sources, now lost, of unknown provenance, and were picked out of a much greater number of books by a Catholic bishop named Eusebius around years later. At least one Gospel of unquestioned early provenance, the Gospel of Thomas , was lost entirely until the 20th century and never made it into any known New Testament canon.

And the Book of Revelation , so beloved of modern evangelicals, had its canonicity questioned by theologians even as late as Martin Luther. What we do know is that the idea of Biblical inerrancy simply isn't possible or sensible — even the parts of it that can be verified by historical evidence often contain anachronisms or obvious literary license, and that a great many parts of the Bible simply do not translate into anything comprehensible to modern ears or thinking. There is quite a lot of material written on the subject of Biblical history, and the few sources mentioned below in the bibliography don't even scratch the surface of what has been written on the subject.

One thing's for sure — it's highly unlikely you'll get answers in your old church. It's good for you. These books have their own histories, some as colorful as the Bible itself. In Western cultures, histories of some of these books may be hard to come by, but with a fair amount of diligence and a critical eye, quality literature exists on the histories of all of these books as it does for the Bible.

You might even be able to use that information to improve this FAQ. Morality is one of the more complex issues in human behavior. Our morality governs how we act and treat each other so understanding and justifying the ideas behind our morals undoubtedly plays a huge part in philosophy. Some people, based on the fact that morality is complex, attribute it to higher powers, namely their religion's God. Think about this for a moment: To be held to a view of morality only by an external force, implies that should that force be taken away, the individual would resort to immorality almost immediately.

Rationalist or atheistic views of morality are defined otherwise, and often look to the history of humanity in not only deciding what is moral, but why we would think that. This removes any external factors, and allows us to make our own informed decisions, with an end result that is just as ethical as those who attribute their actions to God alone.

More philosophically, the divine fiat idea doesn't hold up. Is something bad because God says it is? Or did He just identify for us things that are bad? If so, what about the times when He violates His own dictates, such as the many people he kills or ordered killed in the Old Testament? But if not, then good and bad would be so arbitrarily at the whim of God, which hardly sounds right. Many would say Well obviously, God wouldn't do bad things because He's all-good, but the aforementioned examples in the Bible contradict that assertion.

Humanity and its ancestors, and many other species besides has long found it advantageous to live in communities governed by an ethic of reciprocity, best summed up in the many formulations of the Golden Rule "do unto others as you would have them do to you", although this position is not without its critics. This moral code appears in some form in virtually all of the world's religious texts, but also in virtually every secular philosophy, and has been central to human society throughout history.

This is not, as some people claim, because we obey God's moral guidance, but because it is basic common sense to treat others as we expect to be treated, that is, with courtesy, dignity and kindness rather than loathing, spite and murder. In fact, religion and morality were separate in many cultures whose gods were tricksters or simply unconcerned with the ethical behavior of mere humans.

Despite what the works of Ayn Rand might tell you, selfishness is often counterproductive and altruism often helps society. Aiding the weak and sick, who might never get to contribute to a less social society, helps improve the lot of society at large. Many religions and nationalisms work against this, dividing society into "in-groups" and "out-groups" , and frowning on helping those who are not part of the favored in-group. While the right form of competition is necessary in business and scientific research to foster new ideas and provide an incentive for product improvement, it is not always a useful thing in society, and is sometimes outright deadly, such as with war.

The types of people who believe it is our duty to help to make society better generally fall under the label humanist. If they are non-religious, they're secular humanists —those infamous nasty words preachers love to spit out as if they're a term of abuse. Nobody's perfect, and everybody has prejudices, but it does seem as if most people, absent a reason to hate The Other, are humanists at heart.

That would happen only if people stopped caring about or respecting other people, not just because they stop believing in God. As noted above, it is perfectly possible to act in a moral manner without interference from supernatural beings and it is arguably more noble to do so without their interference. Regardless of religious beliefs, there are two main things that prevent most people from willfully harming their fellow humans. One is the gift of empathy — "how would I feel if somebody did that to me? It's at the root of the Golden Rule , and, for most people, empathy and respect for other members of society prevents them from wanting to engage in destructive behaviour.

Despite being naturally greedy, stupid, etc. Research in biology, neuroscience, and psychology supports this idea. The study of the evolution of morality is demonstrating that empathic behavior is not unique to humans and that the "law of the jungle" doesn't always mean dog-eat-dog. The second thing which prevents us from harmful behaviour is our knowledge or prediction of the consequences. This does not have to involve visualisations of Hell, since there are plenty of consequences here on Earth for antisocial behaviour.

Depending on the level of the transgression, we may suffer embarrassment, the disappointment of those around us, punishment, possible attacks on us, setbacks in our life or career, etc.

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With these possible consequences in mind, we do not commit that crime , no matter how much we want to, or if we do, we suffer those consequences. Of course there are different levels of selfishness, and it isn't always harmful to do whatever we want. A lot of the time it can be harmless fun to indulge ourselves moderately in small ways.

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Religions often instill a sense of guilt about these small acts of selfishness, which is unnecessary since they usually harm nobody else. Some other acts of selfishness might be more silly. We might want to stay at home instead of going to work, but we don't because we know that's a good way to lose our livelihood. This is a case of predicting the consequences of a transgression, as is also the case with preventing more destructive acts of selfishness, such as a person who considers committing a crime but does not want to go to jail.

But would those consequences still be there if everybody was an atheist? Theists sometimes claim that we only have laws because of their God's commandments, but in fact the basic laws—prohibitions of murder , rape , violence, theft, etc. This is because they are founded on the principles of empathy treating others as we wish to be treated and aim to maintain a stable and peaceful society, something that every government , and every member of society, has an interest in upholding, no matter what they may believe or not believe about invisible forces or life after death.

The meaning of life has been pondered over for thousands of years, and may well be the question central to all philosophy. It's difficult to convey the answer in a few short paragraphs; indeed there may be no one answer. So this, at least, is a very brief guide to a rationalist interpretation of the question and its various answers. Rationalism tells us that, in all probability, what awaits us after death is pretty much what we experienced before birth: No one alive today was aware during the 16th Century, just as no one alive today will be aware in the 31st Century ignoring any such conjecture of "immortality" being so close that the first immortal has already been born.

This is a pretty scary thought for most people, as most people tend to quite like being alive and aware, and well, death sucks. If you are going to die, it helps focus the mind on what we want to achieve in the now. If one assumes that your current awareness is all that you will experience and that it is far from permanent, it makes it more special, and makes every second something to be relished and cherished. This allows a great flexibility and potential for people to discover their own meanings for why they're here, or even ignore the question entirely, treating it as irrelevant or just the wrong question to ask.

An afterlife, on the other hand, actively diminishes the value we put on life as we see it now since attention is focused on following a religion's instructions for how to reach the positive afterlife and avoid the negative one , despite how comforting it is to believe that consciousness can transcend the temporary nature of life. Existentialists believe that life has the meaning you bring to it.

One of the great liberties of being an atheist is being able to decide what it is that is important for you to get out of life, rather than have it thrust upon you by the weight of history and tradition. Some people see success as being the best person they can be within the bounds society sets out for them, while others will choose to find success outside those bounds. Other philosophies find an inherent meaning in a life that is filled with good works.

Of course, what exactly constitutes a "good work" differs with each philosophy, but most agree fundamentally that living a good life is doing the best you can with what you have. Some things are seen as inherently more meaningful than others, and what is meaningful is not left up to personal discretion but typically that which will make the world a better place in the present and for future generations.

If living on in some semblance after death is important to you, you have some practical options. Children are the most direct way of ensuring some continuance of both your physical attributes and your thought processes. Just make sure that the little brats behave themselves! Instead, it is a self-help manual for the hundreds of millions of non-believers worldwide. Part One introduces the 12 Unthinkable Horrors.

Agreement with all of them is not expected — debate is encouraged. If you wish to learn more, comment or debate the 12 Unthinkable Horrors of Human Existence, they are: Part Two explains the Statistical Theory of Everything, which, quite succinctly, explains everything and is never wrong. Part Two ends with a chapter on humor and irony. If we are going to thrive in a world of reason and rationality, a sense of humor is required.

Part Three concludes with interviews, comments and excerpts from some of the best and well-known authors in this genre: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Victor J. Their comments are heartfelt, personal, and illustrate how millions can find meaning and purpose without faith. I thank them for their contribution. The author can be contacted at the website: Kindle Edition , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia.

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Apr 01, Book rated it really liked it Shelves: Probulos is at it again and this time the author provides a more comprehensive look by presenting 12 horrors that exemplify the persistence of superstitious thought. This stimulating page book is broken out into the following three parts: The 12 Unthinkable Horrors, 2.

A Manual for Atheists, Agnostics and Secular humanists, and 3. A provocative, engaging book.

The author provides interesting perspectives to the debate. Respectful yet firm tone throughout book. How religions use the fear of the 12 unthinkable horrors to indoctrinate those who are most susceptible. Many references to books, YouTube clips and other supporting material.

Religion is answers that may never be questioned. Religion provides us with a supernatural answer for any question not yet answered by science. The concept of sin. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! However, it requires a huge leap of faith to jump from an entity that created the universe to a personal God that answers prayers.

Irreligion - Wikipedia

We are not special. We gave it to ourselves. This means more humility, not less. An interesting discussion on morality.

Irreligion

The short answer is that morality has evolved over the centuries and humankind can determine what is in the best interest of our species. The damage of religion. Allowing others to influence us impacts our ability to make rational decisions.