Ask the Atheist

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Hello and welcome, Celia. The one-thing-at-a-time approach will be just fine. Amber123 recently did the same thing.

The answer to this specific question is rooted in human evolution. At every stage in our development as a species there has been fierce competition for the resources necessary to survive. The survivors all the way along have been not just the strongest or the smartest, but those with the greatest will to live.

We didn't always have religion to drive us, you know. Before our ancestors even had the intelligence to conceive of gods or ponder the meaning of life, if they lacked a strong will to survive they would not have survived and we wouldn't be here. Those who were content not to survive or procreate were quickly scooped out of the gene pool by the dangers of the harsh ancient world. The survivors passed down their determination to us, as instinct.

On a personal intellectual level, I'm an atheist and I want to survive because I don't think I have any other life but this. There is a great deal of joy to be had, and to spread, and I want to make the most of it before I die.

- SmartLX

Though it is a concern, I'm not overly concerned.

Conservatives of all sorts will be trying to add all kinds of material to the exclusion list, not just the religious ones. It'll be a battle for many different groups to keep their material available, not just the non-religious.

That said, there's always a way round. The internet outside the World Wide Web is almost completely unaffected; torrents and most bulletin boards will carry on regardless. Even banned websites can be accessed using a number of methods: mirrors, proxies, etc.

That's assuming that the new laws are actually enforced in any serious way. Going by precedent, that's not likely.

- SmartLX

Yes, let's tackle the issues which matter most to you.

Most Bible references to homosexuality are concerned only with male homosexuality, for instance Leviticus 18:22 which is addressed to a man: "Thou shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

References to lesbianism, if any are even intended, are more oblique, for instance Romans 1:26: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature." (Romans 1:27 goes back to talking about men.) Nevertheless, male homosexuality is universally derided and condemned in the Bible, and Christians have tended to generalise that to cover all LGBT behaviour.

The current scientific consensus on homosexuality is that it is largely hard-wired into the brain six to eight weeks after conception. All embryos start female, but at that point if there's a Y chromosome it causes a burst of testosterone which converts first the body, then the brain, to that of a man. If something interferes, a man might not get the full dose and be left with a partly feminine brain which desires men. Under other circumstances, a woman might get a small dose by mistake and have her brain partly converted, and thus desire women.

Therefore homosexual desire is not a choice. The abundance of homosexual activity in the rest of the animal kingdom demonstrates that it doesn't even require the ability to make a fully reasoned choice. It's instinct.

Homosexual activity, on the other hand, is a choice as much as any sexual activity is. That brings us to the question of whether homosexual activity is a sin to Christians. Even if you ignore the direct condemnation throughout the Bible, all sex outside of marriage is sinful. According to most denominations marriage is by definition between a man and a woman. Thus homosexuals can never marry their desired partners, and any sex they might enjoy is sinful. Their only sinless choice is celibacy, or else reluctant marriages to the opposite sex.

This is the problem right here. Why has God supposedly created people who can never be sexually fulfilled without damning themselves? Why does marriage, the only haven for sinless sex, exclude them?

Some Christians respond to this, and to gay rights campaigns, by attempting to prove that even homosexual desire is a choice by converting gays into straights. This is the impetus behind the whole "ex-gay" movement. The success rate of these programs is abysmal; since all the subjects are doing is suppressing their natural urges, they are tremendously likely to "relapse". Even the instructors, most of them "ex-gays" themselves, are regularly in the news after being caught having gay affairs.

While homosexuality is not the expected norm for a human being, it's hardly unnatural. It's not your choice, it's not your fault and it's not something you can truly change. You and those around you are just going to have to live with it. Fortunately, if you meet the right woman you can live happily thanks to it.

- SmartLX

A few reasons.

- I get free on-the-job training in written debate, research and effective writing in general, with rapid feedback if I do badly.

- I'm relatively new to atheism, and I'm crash-testing it. I'm actively seeking the best arguments against it to see whether I've missed something obvious. Nothing so far.

- Many religious folks paint a really horrid picture of atheism and atheists themselves. That reflects badly on me and any of my friends and family who are atheists. I want anyone who's genuinely curious about atheism to be able to ask an atheist about it directly, and set the record straight.

- You call this conforming to morals and customs? I spend half the time here explaining to people why I don't conform to their doctrines.

- SmartLX

Sure, atheists fight amongst themselves as much as any other group. Not everybody likes the RRS, for instance. The difference from religions is, we can't resort to schisms in order to draw clear battle lines. When it happens, we respond like people do in any non-religious argument. We reply, we rebut, or we rebuke. Sometimes, unfortunately, we retaliate. We're human.

Everybody knows that people will sometimes attack and betray each other...including the authors of the Bible. Passages like those you mention use the observational fact of constant human conflict. All the authors do is predict based on their own observation that it will continue, in other words human behaviour will not change in the forseeable future, any more than it had in the thousands of years of history available to the authors. I argue that the Bible is wrong in many of its claims, but nobody's saying there isn't a single true word in it.

Approaching this prediction using my new reference post on prophecies and predictions, it fits squarely into the first suggestion: High Probability of Success. It is indeed an implicit prediction, and it is correct so far, but it was pretty darn easy to guess. Did it really need to be divinely inspired to be accurate?

- SmartLX