Are You an Atheist?

            You may not realize this, but there’s a lot of dispute about how many atheists are out there. I mean, sure, there are polls (such as this one by the Pew Forum) about the topic, but it may surprise you to know that there are a lot of differences of opinion over how to interpret them.

            In a sense, it comes down to definitions.

            Sure, look at the poll data, and it says very clearly “Atheists: 3.1%.” That should be it, right? Atheists are 3.1% of the population. But is that actually true? Because polls like this don’t tell us what we are, they ask us how we describe ourselves. And that is going to run into some problems with what you understand the definitions to be. If your understanding of what an atheist is matches your self-description, then you might identify yourself as an atheist (if your comfortable accepting the pejorative baggage that comes with that label). So it’s very likely that the 3.1% number under-reports people who actually are atheists… for certain definitions.

            The definition gets fought over all the time, though. The one I use is “someone who does not believe that a god (or gods) exists.” And since I don’t claim to know a god doesn’t exist, but I don’t believe one does, that definition fits me. This is different, by the way, from the definition “someone who believes that gods do not exist.” That definition doesn’t really fit me. And while those are the two that get argued over the most, they aren’t the only ones. Some people (usually theists trying to define atheism into absurdity) define it as “someone who claims to know that no gods exist.” I know atheists who claim the label, not because they have any particular position on whether gods exist, but because they don’t believe gods should be worshipped, irrespective of whether they exist or not. It’s not a popular definition, but is it invalid?

            But let’s look at my definition, and relate it to the other categories presented in the poll. Because it has implications.

            For example: where do agnostics really fall? According to the poll, they make up 4% of the population. But, again, definitions matter. What does someone mean when they say they’re agnostic? Do they mean they don’t know if a god exists? Well, that’s kind of a different question from whether you believe a god exists. I fit that definition of agnostic. By those definitions, I am both agnostic and an atheist – they are not mutually exclusive categories. So does that mean I get to claim that extra 4% of the population as being atheists (as some atheists are wont to do)? Hardly. Because some agnostics will say they don’t (or even can’t) know that a god exists, but they believe one does. Or they might use the definition of atheist that is the claim that gods definitely don’t exist, in which case it’s obvious why they might not identify as an atheist.

            And what about the fairly large (15.8%) group that identifies as “nothing in particular?” If they don’t believe anything in particular about gods, are they actually atheists as well? Under my definition, maybe. Perhaps they don’t believe a god exists, but don’t want to use the atheist label or don’t define it the way I do. Or maybe they do believe a god (or gods) exists, but have no particular beliefs about what that god is like or what (if anything) we ought to do in response to it.

            What about Buddhists? There are forms of Buddhism that don’t feature any gods at all – are those people atheists? Some will say yes, some will say no.

            Or we could venture further afield into the people who identified as members of particular religions that unambiguously center around gods. Might there be some atheists among them? I know of more than a few people who would identify as Jewish for cultural, philosophical, and ethnic reasons, but who don’t actually believe the Jewish god really exists. The same is true among Christians, and among Muslims, and for many (if not all) of the other religions listed in this poll. Are those people atheists, too? What percentage? Who knows? When we’re talking about demographics, do we get to claim any of those people?

            It gets to be kind of a mess. Depending on how you define it, you could have anywhere form under 3% of the population to over half being atheists. But language can be like that. When definitions are unclear (and on controversial topics, unfortunately, people frequently go to great lengths to keep them that way), people don’t hear what you mean; they hear what they would have meant if they had said the same words. So the purpose of this article, for the most part, is to try and clear up any remaining confusion about how I’m using some of these terms. When, in the title of this post, I asked “are you an atheist?” what I was really asking was “are you someone who does not believe a god (or gods) actually exist?”

            And I don’t necessarily expect you to answer me, one way or the other. I don't expect you to identify as anything other than what you already do. It’s just something to think about, and maybe worth answering to yourself.

Is Hell a Reason to Believe?

            In a recent, very brief, online discussion with a Christian, I asked them to give me a reason I should believe in their religion. They responded that the “only real reason to believe” was eternal damnation; that if I didn’t believe, I would spend eternity in hell, and that I did believe, I would spend it in heaven. When I responded that I didn’t have a reason to believe in heaven or hell either, they ended the discussion and apparently blocked me. So, while I didn’t have an opportunity to pursue that conversation any further, I’ll go ahead and lay out my thoughts on the matter here.

            As far as I’m concerned, what she presented as “the only reason to believe” isn’t even a reason at all. Firstly, it’s nothing more than a threat: do this, or you’ll be punished. But secondly, the nature of the threat is such that the only way to take it seriously is if you already believe anyway.

            Let me see if I can make an illustration. Suppose I were to tell you that Frodo Baggins saved us all from eternal enslavement by destroying the One Ring. Furthermore, I tell you that if you don’t believe me, the dark wizard Sauron would cart you off to Mordor to torture you for the rest of your life. Would you find that a compelling argument to believe that there’s a real-life Frodo Baggins who saved us from real-life enslavement by destroying a real-life One Ring? Barring serious issues separating reality from fantasy, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t give that argument a moment’s consideration for one simple reason: you probably don’t believe Sauron or Mordor are real. Therefore, the threat isn’t real. It can’t possibly frighten you.

            But even so, what if I were to tell you that if you didn’t believe that Frodo Baggins saved us all from eternal enslavement by destroying the One Ring, I would imprison you and torture you. That seems a little more of a threat, right? I exist, after all, and you can probably satisfy yourself of this fact to a reasonable degree of certainty. So maybe you would tell me that you believe in Frodonic salvation, for the sake of avoiding torture. But you wouldn’t really believe it, now, would you? You wouldn’t be actually convinced of the existence of a humble Hobbit and his ring of invisibility. Because the threat has absolutely nothing to do with demonstrating the truth of the claim.

            Oh, also, I imagine you’d probably consider it pretty immoral of me to make such a threat to begin with.

            To bring it a little closer to home: suppose I were to tell you (assuming you’re religious) that if you didn’t stop believing in your god, you would be tortured or killed. Not only would you probably not find that a compelling reason to change your actual belief (even if it compels you to tell me you did), but you’d think I’m an asshole (if not outright evil) for making the threat. Guess what: it’s no different when you do it. And it’s no different when the writer of a “holy book” does it, either.

            So what it comes down to is this: if you ever find yourself on the point of saying that the only reason to believe in your god is hell, or eternal damnation, or anything similar, you’re really at the point of admitting that there’s no reason whatsoever.

Why Do You Believe in Pythagoras?

            So there’s this Atheist and Theist debate page on Facebook that I’ve been following lately. I can’t say that I recommend this particular page to anyone; you have to wade through a lot of ignorance, vitriol, and insults from all sides to find even the tiniest nugget of something with any merit. But every now and then someone will pose a question that might be worth addressing. This is one such question.

            The person who posted this was asking why mathematicians believe in Pythagoras, or why philosophers believe in Socrates, given that there’s little to no hard evidence that either was ever actually a living breathing person. The source of this question is rooted in the fact that there are a growing number of scholars calling into question the idea that Jesus ever existed. And we’re not even talking about the idea that Jesus was just an ordinary human historical figure who has been exaggerated to mythical proportions. These scholars (collectively referred to as “mythicists”), make the claim that there may never even have been that much; that the entire Jesus narrative was a myth that does not refer to any real person whatsoever.

            I’ve heard some of the arguments in favor of the mythicist position, and while they do seem to have some merit I can’t say that I am necessarily convinced by them. I just don’t feel like I have enough information to make a judgment yet. I also don’t know any of the evidence for or against the existence of Pythagoras or Socrates. But that’s not really necessary for addressing the question at hand: why accept the existence of Pythagoras or Socrates on little or no evidence, but not accept the existence of Jesus?

            It has to do with the nature of the claims, and what depends on them.

            You see, belief in Pythagoras is trivial. He was a Greek mathematician, perfectly ordinary in every way except for a gifted intellect, who supposedly founded a school of math and philosophy in Ancient Greece, and is credited for a number of advancements in the mathematical field (most famously: the Pythagorean Theorem that is named for him). I know Greeks exist; I’ve met some. I know mathematicians exist; I’ve met some of those as well. I know schools exist that teach mathematics; I’ve been to a couple. It’s reasonable to believe Greek mathematicians exist, and some of them have founded schools. Nothing about believing in Pythagoras asks us to accept anything preposterous.

            And what is credited to Pythagoras? Mainly, a lot of mathematics, none of which actually depends in any way on Pythagoras having been a real person. Whether Pythagoras existed or not, the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle would still be equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. That’s mathematically provable and physically demonstrable, and the possibility that we may have accredited that statement to a fictional person makes not one bit of practical difference.

            In other words, it’s the fact that the existence of Pythagoras is utterly unimportant that makes it easy to accept without specific evidence. You don’t need to prove the existence of Pythagoras, precisely because whether he really existed or not makes absolutely no difference. And it’s reasonable to accept the existence of Pythagoras because doing so doesn’t require you to discard your everyday observations about the world. If you find out you were wrong, it’d make almost no difference in how you viewed the world or lived your life.

            Contrast that with the claims for Jesus. Many Christians will tell you that the most important statement attributed to Jesus is “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; nobody comes to the Father except through me.” This is a statement that requires a complete revision of one’s understanding of the world and how one ought to be living one’s life. That statement is utterly, completely, irrevocably dependent on Jesus actually existing, and actually being the person who made that claim. That is the barest minimum that must be true in order for that statement to have any possibility of being true. If Jesus never actually existed, that statement cannot possibly be anything more than a metaphor, and the stories of his life cannot be anything more than parables.

            Of course, the existence of a historical Jesus-figure is far from sufficient to justify believing any of the fantastical claims made about him. There easily could have been an ordinary man preaching in ancient Israel who couldn’t walk on water, who couldn’t conjure food out of nothing, who wasn’t the son of God, but around whom a body of fantastical legendry grew. It wouldn’t be hard to believe that guy existed. But it also wouldn’t matter much – just as whether Pythagoras existed or not doesn’t matter much. It’s the divine claims that make it imperative to know if Jesus existed, and demand that evidence of his actual existence be pursued that much more rigorously. So it’s reasonable to dig into the question. And if, in the course of trying to prove whether the divine figure existed, you can’t even find the evidence to prove whether the ordinary historical figure existed, what reason would you have to believe it anymore? The intellectually honest thing for someone in that position would be to admit that they don’t have reason to believe Jesus existed.

            So yeah, in the strictest sense, there may be no more reason to believe in Pythagoras or Socrates than in Jesus. But it’s reasonable to prioritize the relative importance of granting or withholding belief – or even whether it bears investigation - based on the nature of what depends on the claim. Belief (or nonbelief) in any of them ought only to be provisional anyway, open to change with the emergence of new evidence.

Does the Bible Condone Rape?

            So there’s this Atheist and Theist debate page on Facebook that I’ve been following lately. I can’t say that I recommend this particular page to anyone; you have to wade through a lot of ignorance, vitriol, and insults from all sides to find even the tiniest nugget of something worth discussing in any depth. One subject that has come up on this page repeatedly is the question of whether or not the Bible condones rape. And I have to say that I find many of the Christian defenses against this accusation to be highly misleading, if not outright lies. Many are encapsulated in the dishonest little meme seen below, and I thought I might address them.

 

            We’ll start with the bit that the meme references as being the verse atheists use to make the accusation. Specifically, it’s Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 17-18, which reads:

            “31:17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.”

            For context, these are the orders that Moses gave to the Israelites after discovering that they had spared the lives of some of the Midianites he had previously ordered them to kill (for the crime, bu the way, of accepting the Israelites into their community, intermarrying with them, and inviting them to their religious ceremonies). Aside from the explicit genocide, there are clear implications for what will happen to the virgin girls who the fighters are to “keep alive for yourselves,” but it’s not explicitly stated. This gives the Christian a bit of wiggle room to claim that this verse is not calling for rape. But, interestingly, it’s the very verses the meme calls in defense that clarify exactly what is going to happen to those young virgins.

            Let’s jump to the most relevant: Deuteronomy 21, verses 10-14:

            “10:14 When you go out to war against your enemies, and Yahweh your god gives them into your hand and you take them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, 12 and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13 and she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go into her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.”

            The meme presents this as “the captive women are allowed a time to mourn before they marry,” which is clearly disingenuous. They are allowed a period of mourning before their captor rapes them, after which they may be kept as a wife or turned out of the house. Requiring a waiting period before raping a captive does not make it not a rape. Calling her a wife does not make it not a rape. This is clearly going to be the fate of the captive virgins from Numbers 31. At no point in any of this is it even remotely suggested that the woman’s consent is desired or required; they are captives. When people accuse the Bible of condoning rape, they aren’t “conveniently ignoring” this verse; it is part of the accusation.

            And what of the laws regarding rape in Deuteronomy 22 that the meme also claims we ignore? Are they clearly against rape, as the meme suggests? Let’s take a look at them, starting with Deuteronomy, Chapter 22, Verse 23, which is the first verse that appears to directly address rape.

            “22:23 If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them out to the gate of the city and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

            So this is a very specific situation: the rape of a betrothed woman. Note that the offense with which the rapist is charged is not presented as being against the woman, but against her fiancé/husband. Note also that if the woman didn’t call for help, the sex is assumed to be consensual and she is therefore also put to death. Which means any woman who is sexually assaulted under these laws is in a terrible position: she can attempt to call for help and risk her attacker killing her, or she can stay silent in the hopes that her life will be spared and nobody else will find out. She is then forced into the position of having to collude with her rapist to keep the assault secret, because at that point her life is forfeit.

            Moving on to the very next verse:

            “25 But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, 27 because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.”

            Again, this is specifically the rape of a betrothed woman. The rape itself is not the issue, it’s the violation of another man’s property. Also, it’s worth pointing out that elsewhere in the law it is specified that a man may not be put to death on anything less than the testimony of two witnesses. Given that this rape law very clearly specifies that it only applies when there are no witnesses around, how would it ever be prosecuted? It can only ever be one person’s word against another, and it seems impossible to see how this law could ever be justly applied.

            But the final rape law is the most damning, and it comes in the very next verse.

            “28 If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”

            Here we find out what happens to virgin women who are not betrothed or married. And again we see that the offense is not against the woman, but against the man who owns her: in this case, her father. All that is required is that the father be financially compensated for the loss of a marriageable daughter. The woman herself is handed over to her rapist to be assaulted at his leisure for the rest of his life. Again, nowhere is it implied that the woman’s consent is desired or required for any of this. If anything, this law incentivizes men to rape eligible women whom they are otherwise unable to convince to marry them.

            Incidentally, there is no law that says anything about raping non-virgin, unmarried women (which would include widows).

            I would contend that none of these laws are actually “against rape,” so much as being against violating the sexual property rights of the men who own the victims. When atheists say that the Bible condones rape, we don’t “conveniently ignore,” the verses this meme calls on to defend the Bible. Those verses are evidence for the accusation.

            I’m not bringing this up to score points against Christians. I sincerely believe that the vast majority of Christians are absolutely opposed to rape. I sincerely believe that the vast majority recognize that compelling a woman into a forced marriage before (or as a result of) raping her is still rape. If anything, the desperation with which such dishonest memes attempt to deny that these verses say what they so clearly say betrays how deeply their creators understand the monstrousness of these instructions. In order to think of their religion or their God as moral, the only recourse is to deny these instructions or pretend they don’t mean what they plainly say. Most religious folks are better people than their holy books would have them be.

            I’m bringing this up because these defenses are dishonest. It offends me to see people telling outright lies, especially when they are so easily checked. It derails conversation and inhibits understanding. I understand why they may feel the need to do it – why they may even be lying to themselves – but that doesn’t mean I think it’s excusable. What good is it to hold a faith, if holding it is based on a lie?

Do Atheist Atrocities Prove Atheists are Worse People?

            Theists who believe that their god is the foundation of all morality seem to love bringing up the atrocities committed by atheistic regimes of the twentieth century. It’s one of the most common arguments I see: the atrocities of the atheistic regimes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot prove that atheists (and atheism) are evil.

            It’s one of the most common arguments, and one of the most hypocritical.

            Mind you, there is a legitimate argument to be made there. But it isn’t that atheists are automatically evil or even that atheists are automatically worse people than theists. You can argue that these events prove that being an atheist does not, in and of itself, make you a good person. I’d even agree with that argument. There are some pretty shitty people who are also atheists. But you cannot argue that the atrocities of the above regimes demonstrate that atheism is evil. Or at least, if you follow one of the Abrahamic faiths, you can’t argue it without being a massive hypocrite.

            Why do I say that? Moses and Joshua, among others.

            Let’s have a little talk about Moses, the great hero of the Israelite Exodus. Everyone is familiar with the Exodus story, I think, up to Moses getting the Ten Commandments and the whole smashing the tablets after the golden calf episode. People seem to go a little vague on what happens after that point in the story, probably because preachers don’t seem to like bringing it up in sermons a lot. You see, according to the Bible Moses didn’t just smash his tablets after the golden calf thing. He also ordered the execution of three thousand Israelites over it. You can check it out in Exodus, Chapter 30.

            Later, as the Israelites were crossing through the wilderness, they tried to cross the lands of the kingdom Arad. The king sent out his army to stop them, and a battle ensued. In retaliation, Moses had his followers attack every city in Arad and murder every man, woman, and child. He then proceeded to do the same to the Amorites, Jazerites, and the kingdom of Og. This is all in Numbers, Chapters 20-21. Later in their wanderings, the Israelites settle for a time among the Midianites, who take them in and start intermarrying. But when Moses hears that some of the Israelites have started worshipping the Midianite gods, he gives orders to attack and kill all the Midianites. His people kill the Midianite men, but take the women and children captive; Moses was having none of that shit, and orders all the women and male children killed while the virgin girl children are to be kept as captives/slaves (and let’s not be naïve about what that entailed). That’s Numbers, Chapters 25-31.

            So to recap: according to the Bible, Moses is responsible for at least five separate genocides.

            How about Joshua? Well, you know that famous song we’re all taught in Sunday school? “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho?” That happy, upbeat piece of children’s fluff about blowing horns and knocking down walls? Do you know what happened to all the people inside those walls? The men, the women, and the children? Joshua ordered them all killed, of course. You know what horrible act of aggression the people of Jericho had committed against him before the battle that justified it? Nothing. They were living on land he thought his god had promised to him, so he slaughtered them all. That’s it. In fact, that’s pretty much the story of the entire invasion of Canaan: Joshua and his army of Israelites committing one genocide after another, while enslaving anyone they didn’t kill. See the Book of Joshua, Chapters… well, pretty much all of them.

            And if you think it’s a numbers game, that the atrocities of the twentieth century were worse because they involved more people, bear in mind that both of those men issued mandates to kill everyone. The only factor that limited the number of deaths was the number of people available to kill. There was no moral limit imposed.

            Now here’s where the rubber meets the road. I, as an atheist, will tell you unequivocally that I believe Stalin and Pol Pot to be monsters. It’s debatable whether Hitler was an atheist – publicly he was Catholic and used loads of Christian rhetoric in exhorting his followers to commit atrocities, but apparently he was privately contemptuous of mainstream Christianity. But regardless of what his religious views were, I’ll tell you he was a monster as well. These men are not atheist heroes. The only regard their roles in history should be given is to learn how to make sure men like them never wield the kind of power they did ever again.

            Can you tell me the same about Moses and Joshua?

            If you follow an Abrahamic faith, I don’t think you can. Because, you see, according to your holy books they were acting on God’s orders. They are presented as heroes, as being among the best men who have ever lived. They are held up as men who exhibit the kind of faith – the kind that perceives and carries out God’s wishes no matter what they are and how much they contradict our sense of what is good or right – to be the sort of faith all believers should aspire to.

            But if you’re honest with yourself, continuing to celebrate Moses and Joshua means you’re a hypocrite if you berate atheists for the fact that atheist regimes have committed genocides. Because you don’t actually disapprove of genocide. You’re fine with it. You excuse it. You laud it. You teach young children to sing nauseatingly sweet songs of praise for genocide and the people who commit it, so long as they do it for the right reasons. You don’t object to the atrocities committed by those regimes, you just disagree with their reasons for committing them.

            I won’t defend the atrocities committed by any atheist regime, nor will I defend their reasons for committing them. I don’t know a single atheist who would. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but it’s not the norm and I would oppose such people. Just because they were on “my team,” on the one singular issue of whether a god exists does not obligate me to their defense when they do that which I cannot abide.

            People don’t commit atrocities because of what they don’t believe in; they commit them because of what they do believe in. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, they did what they did because they believed their visions for society were greater than the human lives they would have to grind under in order to fulfill them. Moses, Joshua, Muhammad, they also believed they were serving something greater than the lives they had to destroy in that service. That’s something they all had in common with each other, not a feature that distinguishes them from each other. In that respect, they are very much the same. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

            Ultimately, it shouldn't be a blame game. We should all, atheists and theists alike, be trying together to make sure nobody does these kinds of things again.

Did You Know That I Know That God Exists?

            An argument I see all the time is that atheists really do know that God exists, and are merely rebelling against Him and/or suppressing that knowledge. It is especially common coming from Christians, as apparently this assertion is based on Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Chapter 1, he writes “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

            I can sort of see why this might be a useful argument when talking to believers and trying to persuade them to ignore atheist arguments. It’s a way to poison the well up front, by telling your fellow religionists that the atheists are simply lying (or deluding themselves) about not believing. And since it comes out of the Bible, it lends scriptural weight to the assertion – especially amongst those who accept the Bible as infallibly true and authoritative in everything it says. So it doesn’t surprise me, really, that Christians would tell each other this.

            What does surprise me, though, is how often I see this assertion deployed directly against atheists in arguments: “You know that God exists; you’re just denying it.” It’s surprising because we don’t see the Bible as authoritative, and we’re pretty unlikely to prioritize it over our own experience on the subject of ourselves. So why say it? As far as I can tell, the only reasons for this would be because the person using it is either 1) saying it to try and reassure themselves, 2) saying it for the sake of any fellow believers who may be observing the argument, or 3) simply unable to grasp how the atheist viewpoint can differ so much from their own that the argument is worthless or even detrimental. On the chance that the third option is the case, or even that 1 and 2 are true but the Christian debater doesn’t want to undermine themselves in the argument in order to accomplish those goals, I thought I might give some discussion on why this is such a bad argument to use on an atheist.

            Quite simply, it’s wrong. Atheists don’t know that your god exists; that’s why they’re atheists. And even if you cannot be persuaded that I’m telling you the truth about that, or even if you are 100% convinced that the atheist is simply “suppressing the knowledge,” somehow, you have to understand that atheists will at least perceive the assertion as wrong. Which means it can only undermine you if your goal is to convince them of the truth of your religion.

            When someone says to me “you know that God exists; you’re just denying Him,” I know that the conversation is done. Because I know that there’s no point in talking to someone who will make that assertion. They aren’t listening. And because they are confidently asserting something about my own inner thoughts – something they cannot possibly know, but about which I know them to be wrong  – as if it were absolute truth, I also know that they are comfortable with lying in order to prop up their argument. They are comfortable with simply dismissing me as a liar, and so nothing further I have to say will even be considered.

            I know the counterpoint to this: that it isn’t the Christian saying it, but God via the Bible. So it’s not that the Christian is claiming to have access to my innermost thoughts. They’re claiming that God does, and has told them through his infallible word, the Bible, that I know He exists. It’s not that they’re comfortable lying about having access to my thoughts, it’s that they trust the Bible. And my response to this is, “so what?” Practically speaking, the result is the same; if the Christian is not going to listen to my sincere expression of my thoughts, having already dismissed them as lies, what’s the point in continuing to talk? I’ll move on to someone who seriously wishes to engage.

            It bears repeating: atheists don’t believe that God exists. As a consequence, we don’t believe that the Bible represents the infallible words of an omniscient being. So when Christians tell us that we must know God exists because the Bible says we know it, we aren’t thinking “Oh, well, if the Bible said so it must be true!” We’re thinking “You’ve just given me another reason to believe the Bible is wrong.”

            If your goal is to shut down conversation without changing any minds or reaching any understanding of other people’s viewpoints, I suppose it’s a worthwhile thing to say. From certain perspectives, it may even be honest insofar as your beliefs go. But if you want to have a meaningful conversation then it’s terrible. No matter how strongly you may disagree with someone else’s beliefs, if you can’t enter into conversation with them on the basis that they are at least sincere in holding them, then you might as well not talk about them at all.

            I think we’re all better off when we try to understand each other. So please, don’t shut down the process before it’s even begun.

How Do You See the Progressive Tax?

            Definitely not an atheist issue, but I don’t really have anywhere else to rant about this. So it’s here.

            There’s this video making the rounds today purporting to describe how the Progressive Income Tax works. You can watch the video here. but the script goes like this:

Once upon a time, there were three brothers; triplets named Tom, Dick, and Harry Class. They were raised in the same home with the same parents, had the same IQ, same skills, and same opportunities. Each was married, and had two children. They were all carpenters making twenty-five dollars per hour.

While they were very similar in all these respects, they had different priorities. For example, Tom worked twenty hours per week, while his brother Dick worked forty hours, and Harry, sixty. It should also be noted that Harry’s wife worked full time as an office manager for a salary of $50,000. Dick’s wife sold real estate part time for 10 hours a week, and made $25,000 per year. Tom’s wife did not work. Tom and Dick spent all of their families’ income. Since they paid into Social Security, they figured they didn’t need to save for retirement. Harry and his wife, on the other hand, had over many years, put away money each month and invested it in stocks and bonds.

Here’s how it worked out: Tom made $25,000 a year, Dick and his wife made $75,000, and Harry and his wife: $150,000.

When a new housing development opened up in their community, the brothers decided to buy equally priced homes on the same street. One day, the brothers decided to pool their funds for the purpose of improving their street. Concerned about crime and safety, and wanting a more attractive setting for their homes, the three families decided to install a security gate at the street’s entrance, repave the street’s surface, and enhance the lighting and landscaping. The work was done for a total cost of $30,000.

Harry assumed they would divide the bill three ways, each brother paying $10,000. But Tom and Dick objected. “Why should we pay the same as you?” they said. “You make much more money than we do.”

Harry was puzzled. “What does that have to do with anything?” he asked. “My family makes more money because my wife and I work long hours, and because we have saved some of the money we earned to make additional money from investments. Why should we be penalized for that?”

“Harry, you can work and save all you like,” Tom countered, “but my wife and I want to enjoy ourselves now. Not 25 years from now.”

“Fine, Tom. Do what you want; it’s a free country. But why should I have to pay for that?”

“I can’t believe you’re being so… unbrotherly!” Tom argued. “You have a lot of money, and I don’t. I thought you’d be more generous.”

At this point Dick, the peacemaker in the family, entered the conversation. “I’ve got an idea,” Dick said. “Our combined income is $250,000, and $30,000 is 12% of that. Why don’t we each pay that percentage of our income? Under that formula, Tom would pay $3,000, I would pay $9,000, and Harry would pay $18,000.”

“I have a much better idea,” said Tom. “And one that’s fairer than what you’re proposing.” Dick and Harry turned to Tom. “Harry should pay $23,450. Dick, you should pay $6,550, and I will pay nothing.”

To Dick this sounded completely arbitrary, and not really fair, but it did have one big plus: his share would be $2,450 less under Tom’s formula than under his own. So he decided to be silent.

Harry, however, was stunned. “You want me to pay almost 80% of the bill despite the fact that each of us is receiving the exact same benefits? Where did you get such a crazy idea?”

“From no less an authority than the US Government!” Tom responded as he pulled out a grey booklet. “It’s all right here in the IRS tax tables. This is the progressive tax system all US taxpayers live under, and I don’t see why we should be any different. In fact, I believe all future improvements should be paid in this way.”

“Works for me,” said Dick.

So, by a vote of 2 to 1, the cost of the street improvements was divided as Tom had proposed, even though they benefitted equally and even though the reason Harry had more money was that he and his wife had worked many more hours than his brothers and their wives, and had saved some of what they had earned instead of spending it all.

Tom and Dick lived happily ever after with their new arrangement. Harry grumbled a lot. But whenever he complained, his brothers called him greedy and selfish. The End.

            Now, obviously, the brothers here are meant to represent socioeconomic classes – the makers even went so far as to give the brothers the last name “Class” just in case the metaphor seemed too subtle to the viewers. I’ve seen my more conservative-minded friends posting this video on Facebook, praising how it makes such a brilliant explanation of how the progressive tax system works, and generally getting pissed off about it as I’m sure the video creators intended. It pissed me off, too. But in my case, I’m pissed at the makers of the video, because they’re either out-and-out liars or deluded to the point of psychosis.

            Firstly, I’ll say this much: they are correct that the progressive tax system requires higher income earners to pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the lower income earners. That much is true. The rest of it is pure fabrication, based on three myths: 1) everyone has the same access to opportunity; 2) poor people are poor because they are lazy, irresponsible and immoral, while rich people are rich because they are hard-working, responsible, and just; 3) the benefits of society are shared equally across all economic classes. These glaringly false talking-points are inserted into the narrative, and used to manipulate the audience into seeing the progressive tax structure as inherently unjust and the rich as benighted victims of the greed of the lower classes.

            So, I thought I’d write a new script that bears a little more resemblance to the plights of the various classes involved in the story.

Once upon a time, there were three brothers named Tom, Dick, and Harry Class. Although they shared the same well-off parents, Harry was clearly the favorite. Harry was sent to an Ivy League college, where he was able to befriend the favored children of other rich parents – one of whom he married -  while acquiring a degree that automatically opened doors in the business and academic communities. Dick was able to get into a lesser college through token support from his parents combined with taking on student loans. He graduated with an engineering degree and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Their father denied that Tom was even his son, and refused to give him a cent in support. With no one to vouch for his credit-worthiness, Tom was unable to continue his education beyond high school, but at least he had a few basic skills to rely on and few debts. All three brothers were married, and had two children. As the favorite, Harry inherited the family construction business when their father retired and hired his two brothers as employees.

Although they came from the same family, their lives proceeded on very different tracks.

Tom started out working 40 hours per week, but because Harry cut corners on material quality and safety equipment in order to increase profits, Tom suffered serious injuries when a building project collapsed. Harry refused to pay for the medical bills, and Tom was unable to afford a lawyer to sue for compensation. By the time he had recovered as much as he would be able to without specialized and expensive medical care that he would never be able to afford, Tom was disabled and unable to work more than twenty hours a week. Tom’s wife took a job to try and make up for the income, but because she was now part-time caregiver to a disabled adult as well as their two children, she could only manage to get part-time jobs on grueling off-shift schedules. Tom and his family spent all of their money on food, shelter, and increasingly unmanageable medical bills.

Dick, likewise, also started out working forty hour weeks. But Harry laid off the two other engineers at the family business without hiring any replacements. And, while Dick managed to find ways to work more efficiently, he was still putting in 60-80 hours a week. But because his job was salaried, that extra work did not translate to extra pay for Dick; just extra profits for Harry. Dick’s wife sold real estate part time for 10 hours a week because working any more hours would have required them to put their children in daycare, which would have cost more than she could earn by working extra hours. Dick looked into striking out on his own, but because of his existing school debt he couldn’t qualify for a loan to start up his own business. Dick hasn’t had a meaningful raise (one that exceeded inflation) in almost a decade.

Harry paid himself a nominal salary as head of the company, and his wife earned a similar amount thanks to the management position she got straight out of college because of their rich friends who also owned businesses. He was also able to supplement their income by combining their household expenses with business expenses.

This is how it worked out: Tom and his family earned $25,000 per year, all of which was eaten up in food, shelter, and medical bills while debts steadily mounted on necessities they couldn’t pay for; Dick and his family earned $75,000 per year, much of which went to paying off debts and what little savings they could build up were routinely wiped out by minor emergencies like the car breaking down or plumbing repairs. Harry and his wife nominally earned $150,000 per year, but found ways to combine household and business expenses such that they were able to live as if earning $500,000.

The three brothers had bought similar houses on the same street. The houses weren’t identical in price or condition, though. Tom’s house was the smallest to begin with, but after his injury he wasn’t able to keep up on maintenance and couldn’t afford to pay anyone to help out. As a result, his house had a number of structural and plumbing problems. Dick had a slightly larger house, which he managed to keep up but couldn’t afford to make any improvements to. Harry’s house was the largest, was maintained in perfect condition, and was routinely upgraded.

One day, the brothers decided to pool their funds for the purpose of improving their street. Concerned about crime and safety, and wanting a more attractive setting for their homes, the three families decided to install a security gate at the street’s entrance, contract private security and ambulance services, repave the street’s surface, and enhance the lighting and landscaping. The work was done for a total cost of $30,000.

Harry assumed the cost would be divided three ways, with each brother paying $10,000. But Tom and Dick objected.  “Why should we pay the same as you?” they said. “You make much more money than we do.”

Harry pretended to be puzzled. “What does that have to do with anything?” he asked. “My family makes more money because my wife and I work long hours,” he lied, “and because we have saved some of the money we earned to make additional money from investments. Why should we be penalized for that?”

“Actually,” Tom countered, “Dick works much harder than you do; you just pay him poorly. I can’t work any more than I do because of injuries I sustained for your profit, and I have no money because you refused to pay the medical bills for the accident you caused.”

Harry waved the objections aside. “That’s your bad luck. It could have happened to anyone; why should I have to pay for it?”

“Perhaps because you got to make all the decisions about what we’re buying in the first place. I only wanted my house repaired – which I’m not getting, by the way – and neither of us wanted landscaping or a gate. But you knew we couldn’t afford to get any of the things we did want without you and kept threatening to torpedo the deal altogether if it didn’t include everything you wanted.”

“Look,” said Harry, who had been watching Dick’s expression and was afraid he was going to lose the middle brother, “I’ve got another idea. Our combined income is $250,000, and $30,000 is 12% of that. Why don’t we each pay that percentage of our income? Under that formula, Tom would pay $3,000, Dick would pay $9,000, and I would pay $18,000.” Harry hoped that making this concession would get Dick on his side.

“I have a much better idea,” said Dick, finally stepping into the conversation. “And one that’s fairer than what you’re proposing.” Tom and Harry turned to Dick. “Harry should pay $23,450. I should pay $6,550, and Tom will pay nothing.”

Harry was stunned. “You want me to pay almost 80% of the bill despite the fact that each of us is receiving the exact same benefits?” Of course, even as he said it, all three brothers knew Harry was lying. Most of the benefits were the things Harry wanted and the other brothers didn’t, the security improvements benefitted him far more than the other two because his property was far more valuable, and the contracts with the security and ambulance companies were written to prioritize Harry and his property over the other two brothers. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Being in touch with reality,” replied Dick. “You were given every advantage from the start, and continued to take advantage at every opportunity since then. The fact is that Tom has no money to give no matter how you badger him, and it’s at least partly your fault that he’s in that position. I can afford to chip in something, and I will, but since you’re already profiting far more from my work than I am, you can at least pay some of it back in the form of picking up a larger share in this instance. You’re getting most of the benefits anyway.”

So, by a vote of 2 to 1, the cost of the street improvements was divided as Dick had proposed. The cost hardly made a dent in Harry’s finances, though he complained and moaned as if he’d been consigned to the poor house.

Tom and Dick lived marginally better with their new arrangement, though it still wasn’t easy. Harry hired a PR firm to make and distribute a dishonest video portraying his brothers as greedy, lazy leeches who took advantage of him. The End.