The Portable Atheist

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Atheist arguments

From an “anthology of combat with humanity’s oldest enemy”

The Portable Atheist (readings selected by Christopher Hitchens)

some hindus say atheism is a path to god... maybe I'll discover myself

god is good, truth is good, maybe atheism is godly!

God is love. Love is good.  God is good.

Only god is good.   God is the source of all goodness.

God is infinite.  Time and space, space-time, always and everywhere.

Reality is all the god there ever is.  Achoo.  God bless you.

I am God.  You, too.  Everyone.  God is one.  Neo and money, too.

God is a man of war.  War is the art of deception.  War is hell.

Love-bliss.  Love is wanting others to be happy.

Don’t worry, be happy.   Love your neighbor as yourself.

Before reading:

Atheism, belief that god or God or gods do not exist.   

quick rundown on what 'God' is:

A being with supernatural power(s), said to be immortal, perfect, loving, good, wise, omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful, can do anything), omnipresent (everywhere, always), beneficent, merciful, forgiving, kind, just, righteous, mighty, holy, hears and answers prayer, residing in heaven, a Heavenly Father, called YHWH (Yahweh, Jehovah), Jealous, Allah, Zeus, Ra, Quetzalcoatl, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, the alpha and omega, a king and ruler, the source of all goodness, Ganesha, Hanuman, Krishna, Eshara, Shara, Hara, Ara, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Joe Pesci.  Also I AM, I AM WHO AM,  I shall be who I shall prove to be.   Creator, Sustainer, Destroyer.  All this and more.  Infinite.  Incomprehensible.  Reality is all the God there ever is.   Unfathomable.   A mystery and both immanent and transcendent.  Ahura Mazda.  Divine, like the divine right of kings, or the Japanese emperor, or your local parish priest, imam, rabbi.  God is a genius.   The king of kings.   The holiest of holies.  A man of war, and One.  The source.  Without error, better, best.  Flawless.  Love-bliss.  The word.

Can a God be just one of these things?  Or is God everything, always?   A hive mind?  Reality, as a unified, single thing, conscious spacetime, conscious light…. and Very Sexy, as a creator and love and communion and father and source, alpha, that answers all prayers… and Very Dark, as a wrathful and jealous and powerful and righteous man of war, and Death, omega.

A ruler of reality, using carrot and stick, pleasure and pain, reward and punishment, principles of psychology, to dominate and control and create, in his own image, society, the kingdom, the universe, the heavens.  Lord have mercy.  Lord, hear our prayer.  Forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.  We have sinned in what we have done, and what we have failed to do.   We fail in both action and inaction.  Religion is a system of social control.  Right and wrong. Guilt and forgiveness, law and morality and ethics and right and good, and sin, wickedness, crime, evil, iniquity, transgression; the illegal, criminal, unlawful.   Turpitude, mean, bullying, unkind, and depravity, cruelty, torture, rape, savagery, brutality.   love and hate.

Nobody is perfect. Everybody deserves everything.  Heaven and hell.  Fairness and justice.  Lies and truth.  The crux of the biscuit!  Absurdity, (vanity, frustration, futility, nonsense). No one lives forever.  But if one does, maybe everyone else should, too.  But zero do.  Maybe there are aliens that live a few thousand years, or something, though.  Right?

Agnostic.  I don’t know.  I believe.  Be evil E.   E as pentagon (or Ellen, or Eriin).  Or ecstasy.  Evil ecstasy.  Like a vampire biting his pray.   Vampyr.    Belie ve.  Belie means give the lie to, contradict.  I believe there is no God, (unless I take on the role).  And not a demon, either.

God has absolute power, if you give it to him

Requires submission, or you’re not part of the corporation

The same principle as, say, in 1979, the Iranian electorate voted overwhelmingly for a new constitution that gave Ayatollah Khomenei absolute power.

You could be in the minority on the God question, but He still rules?

“Absolute” power is in only one domain, like say Iran, or Planet Earth, or the “body of christ”, and they also say absolute power corrupts absolutely, so maybe there should be some turnover, or term limits, to whom you worship!

People claiming divinity, or divine authority, are using religion for power, dominance, control.

(Personally, I feel dominated, largely;  also, I’m after truth, and spreading my truth)

Feeling superior, but claiming equality?

Is it even possible to rule over oneself?  mind and body

 or is it farcical, like Emperor Norton

eye 8 sum chilly chili in Chile

Holy shit, holy See, holy spirit, holy S

“The Great Master of All Scouts”

UCI, university of Chicago Illinois, university of California, Irvine

   (you see eye)

Robot reads Rubayyat

   Our sins are His, forgiven long ago

Shot shock

Is the same god who is good and just, also capricious and malevolent?

   justice, fairness, karma, chance, fate

boys in blue, black and blue, PD, ack devil, pigs and donuts, shopping for slop

Thank God I’m an Atheist:

1. stupidity of believers (e.g. thanking god for non-selection at auschwitz)
2. Religious make “absurd and wicked” claims
3. Plague, e.g., (an act of god) an act of injustice and outrage done to people
4. Nightmarish ignorance: calamity given wrong explanation, wrong culprit
5. A celestial dictatorship
6. Immoral and irrational belief in elect immortal bliss (heaven)
7. Religion persecutes sexually non-conformist
8. ancient, outdated, obsolete beliefs from ignorance and fear
9. Teaches we are center of universe, everything arranged with us in mind
10. Posits unscientific assertions that cannot be disproved
11. 98% of all earth species have gone extinct
12. Beyond even the suspension of disbelief, or dumb credulity before magic tricks
13. Religious dreads and prohibitions
14. Elevation into a godhead of all of mankind’s fears, hatreds, and stupidities
15. sprites, imps, demons, djinns, tooth fairies, ghosts, imaginary friends, space aliens
16. Everything in the world is enough, and plenty
17. Without God, we can agree on reality
18. Suffering under an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, vs. ourselves as helpers, and thus the possibility of less suffering (rest in peace, rest in pieces, rabbi imam priest)
19. Our wildest wrong is part of His great Right -ROK
20.         (I just started.   more gems to come)
21. 
    

Games

 5 of them

A Dangerous Game, link

The Most Dangerous Game, link

The Dinner Game, link

The Game, link

The Crying Game, link

I've read the first two (book and short story), and seen the last 3 (movies)

CATS

Catholic, cataphatic theology, characteristics/attributes/traits

prr, pussy, cat scratch fever, catty, kittens, kitty, meow and ow

Kate, Kathy, Kaitlin;  Cate, Cathy, Caitlin

9 lives, black cat bad luck, Leo, wildcats (go cats), black panther, cougar

toy with their prey, catnip, lasers

kitkat, katrina, catarrh, catch me if you can, catalepsy, catharsis, cathexis

Hevn

H and Urth 

God is one badass dude.   He is a man of war, and will fuck you up, if you go against him.  But if you worship and obey him, he will be your the best friend you ever had.  How do I know this?  I don’t.   I’m talking out of my ass, like every other theologian in history, ever,  has done.  The bible was written by about 40 writers, my smart speaker tells me.   And they call it the word of God.  God is a trinity?  Maybe add 37, lol.  

Jesus said only God is good.   Then he said be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.  Perfect is better than good.   There’s good, better, best, and then perfect.  Jesus, the perfectionist.  How does he know my father is in heaven?  I mean, what if purgatory, or, god forbid, hell?  Ha.   Jesus, the bullshitter.   His own dad was God, he said, and he was the only Son of God.   All the rest of us are afflicted with original sin, children of sinners.  Maybe my theology is wrong.  I don’t care.   Humans invented all their Gods, and the accompanying theologies and religions, too.   So whatever, who gives a fuck.   Not God the Father, apparently.   Virgin birth!

Heaven is the reward of the righteous, eternal life of love-bliss and reward, presumably not subject to aging, lol.  You’re only admitted for being good, or receiving the approval  of St. Peter or whatever.  And then you get 40 virgins, or something.  Dude, anybody might blow himself up for that.  I mean, if my soul isn’t like casper the ghost, or I can manage to tear myself away from all that harp music in the clouds!  Seriously, I think an update to divine incentive system is in order.   Reward and punishment, carrot and stick, incentive and disincentive, pleasure and pain, are the same as they’ve always been, because people are the same, and there is nothing new under the sun, but there are endless heavens for the elect to sample and enjoy (and build and improve).   Different strokes for different folks.  Different levels of heaven, just like the different circles of hell.   A reality with infinite novelty and entertainment and fun.  Just a thought.  I bet there's lots of sex, roller coasters, heroin, restaurants, teleportation, and freedom in heaven, for all kinds of depravity, and death just reboots to another life, like a video game, right?  Anything I can imagine probably exist on earth, already, though!

The heaven for each religion?  The heaven for each deity?  The heaven for each preference!  Even the hellions.  I mean, God knows everything, so he’s made the same mistakes as those losers.  Warriors in Valhalla, they can battle enemies for fun, to keep the juices flowing.  Devil dogs and satan’s kittens can go at it, as the world turns, as the universe expands.   God is infinite, infinitely loving, so Everybody gets heavenly reward, because God knows all, why everyone is the way they are, and what everyone is after, in their endless variety.  Remember, you’re unique, just like everybody else.  Everybody gets their own personal heaven, with their own personal Jesus.   Heaven is infinitely big, the heavens scattered throughout the universe of endless spacetime.  One of those heavens, in my imagination anyway, is a landscape you can pause and press play to, so you can catch up on all the reading and output of each new day… or time travel and relive your favorite centuries over and over, until you get bored and move on to the next adventure.  You can groundhog day reality, for any day, or week, or month, or whatever.   Sound fun?   Reality is programmable.

Honestly, I hope I’m not getting your hopes up.  Heaven is here and now, and impermanent, like everything else, including hell.   I like to write.   Hopefully, you like to read.  Are we a match?  I’m in my own private utopia, and I’m not even in a relationship.  I think I might be near the end of my blog.   It’s like I’ve written everything, maybe.   The printed blog is like 2 feet thick.   Go out to love and serve the lord.   Save yourself.   Be good.  Don’t be evil.   That makes you God!  The lord serves you!  Right?

some points:

bible, parable, papal bull

God, Angels, Satan,  heaven, salvation

    souls, true religion, sin (all bull)

If no sin, no virtue, either?  (increase happiness, decrease suffering)

   increase incredible, decrease dukkha/discontent/dissatisfaction

creases and origami!  e.g. paper planes, crane

Only law, opinion, preference, community standards

Every man a state unto himself, a private kingdom

Human nature is largely the same, however

Know thyself, natural law, nasty brutish and short

The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation

Fulfillment, meaning, purpose;   freedom, coercion

Law of the jungle, predator and prey, red in tooth and claw

Golden rule, he who has gold makes the rules

Dog eat dog, might makes right, divine right of kings

Terrorism and dictatorship, tyranny, authoritarianism, fascism

Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Centralized command, crimson king, cult of personality

Terrorist Totalitarian Tyranny, rule by fear, intimidation,

   Subordination of rights of individuals to state control 

Rights are bull, too, like privacy, sparp, habeas corpus

Religion as an institution of social control, domination

Sparp: speech, petition, assembly, religion, press

Mind control, parental domination, economic slavery

race doesn’t even exist, gender is a social construct,

   And self itself isn’t a thing, re: buddhism

exits exist (and sexit/itsex)

wags: well and good, wonder and gratitude, walgreens, Wag!

black lives mutter

    black bishops miter

Matt lives up the block, Block lives Matter

blm, błam!  balm, bomb, bombay, tsar bomba, star bomb

respect my existence or expect my resistance!

urban turban

whipped and wept

flagitious flag-waving, huevos to wave ol' glory

eating pork in the park

clothes the door

contemplating light, rumination on illumination

a sincere atmosphere of sin and fear

nipples and naps

nopale burrito,  and an apple, in Napoli

and pals from Naples, Annapolis, Nepal

bubonic chronic

awful waffles, falafel, and offal

prophets and confit, profit and confetti

without sin, sin sin, assassin

sin without, virtue within

mass, morass, lass, lassie, passion, assiduous, pass gas

phD, peace hope, 

   D4: death and despair for the devil and his demons

poke and pinch:  James K. Polk, Thomas Pynchon

Monroe Doctrine (Marilyn was jewish)

saxophone from Saxony, many germs in germany, lion in lyon

hit lurid, ridiculous dick, urination nation, pissed about liquidity, free state of Saxony

MLK, milk, and marxism-leninism

monarchy, mono key, monkey monk, ark

dissed: disrespect, dishonor, and disrepute

tired of tirades near tirad pass

belle, does nobel prize in belfast on beltane ring a bell?

the sensei senses senate censure 

numerous and humorous

  hume and numismatics

room boom, tomb doom

challenged to change

prove or refute

deposing god from reign o'er x,y,z

propitiation by sacrifice and penance (S+P)

eudaemonia, happiness and welfare (not demonic at all)

utilitarian godslave

an omniscient god must therefore be a slave, 

  forced to always choose the most utilitarian course

(most good for the most people/beings)

if we grant god freedom, s/he can choose a lesser good

or even evil

Update

Decent Recent

 I got my booster shot yesterday (pfizer #3).  I got my flu shot, too (last week).  My dental appointment is next Monday (at the bfc).   I’m getting a small filling on my right and a replacement filling on my left.  The berkeley free clinic is great.   I’m grateful I won the dental lottery, years back.  You’re supposed to replace your toothbrush every 3 months.  I did not know that!  Most of my teeth were 3-2-3’s.   I told the dentist (Tiffany) that’s a Mazda, too.  I’m listening to college radio.   WPRB Princeton is my favorite.  “New Jersey’s only radio station.”  I slept in again.  I’m consistently oversleeping, these days: Argh.  I have 4+ alarms, if I want to get serious, though.  Still in the middle of Infinite Jest.  I have 2 Carl Hiaasen books, too.  My printer needs a new ink cartridge.  I’ve stopped doing pushups.  I need to get back to doing those, and supplementing my diet with my protein powder.   I bought a package of dates.   I made oatmeal with raisins.   Only one dog walk, today.   Junie, around noon.   I have some laundry.  Exciting life.  Trivia cards and 10,001 songs.  Stretch.  Meditate.  Write.  Veg to music.  Do whatever.  Charge my devices:  Radio, headphones, phone, computer, kindle, watch.   Do nothing.  Nap.  Email.  History.  News.

Apology

bipolar

 Fuck you!  I’ll cut your neck and throw your head to my dogs!  I’ll eat your heart, and shit you out, like the worthless piece of shit you are.  I’ll crush your skull in a vice.  I’ll rip your fingernails off, slowly.   I’ll rape your sister and your mother.   I’ll cut your tongue out, and burn your eyeballs right out of their fucking sockets.   I’ll erase every trace of you.  I’ll bury your children in a pit, and bulldoze the bodies into unmarked graves.  I’ll burn down your house, torture your friends, bomb your churches, and raze your neighborhoods.  Ha.  Just kidding.

I’m such a joker.

I’ll educate you, help you get a job, provide food and housing, make high speed internet available to all, open libraries, give access to gyms and restaurants, help you meditate and sleep, give your life meaning and purpose, integrate you into the community, help you make friends, and give you free time to travel, pursue hobbies, and attend sporting events.   I’ll open comedy clubs for standup comedians to perform at for you, and musical venues.  Dating services so you can fall in love and raise a family and not be lonely.  Therapists and ways to vent, for mental health.   I’ll provide every kind of good and service, in a thriving economy that can meet every demand.  You’ll have privacy, and freedom, and the right to vote, freedom of speech, assembly, religion, press.   You can associate with anyone you choose.  You can be happy, and rich, and healthy;  entertained and busy and helpful and sexy and appreciated.   You can travel the world, and be all that you can be.  Your life can be fun.  

You’re on your own.  Make do with the cards you’re dealt.   You’re just another human, with the same needs as everyone else, with human rights, and aspirations for wealth, power, prestige, bliss, and meaning.   Good luck.   I won’t round up your family into boxcars and enslave them before mass-murdering every last one, in a final solution, that will wipe out every last trace of your disgusting, inhuman, verminous existence.  You are not a cockroach!

This is what it means to be human.  Angels of life and death whispering in your ears.  You can choose.   But there’s really only one noble path, and god help you if you stray off of it, as I see it.   Love your neighbor, love all, even the idiots and the deluded and the angry and hostile and violent and disrespectful.   Or lock them up.   Or love them AND lock them.  You can do both.  Or you can be a friend.   Take all this rhetorical garbage with a grain of salt, and let actions speak louder than words.   Just do it.   Be a man.  Be a man for others.  Serve and protect.  Make the world a better place.  Be a part of the solution, not the problem.  Make the world rich.   Show respect, and allow people to be themselves.   Live and let live.  Heaven and utopia are the rightful possession of every creature in existence.   We should all help each other get there.

Paradise Paradigm

pair of dimes, pair of dice!

it's time for a new paradigm 

shift shit, like my bike gears

Marilyn Manson, Eminem, and M&M’s candy

vampire, ima perv;  bloody hell, childbirth

Violence and vampire victims

    Gulp it down, gush, glug glug

    Make it messy, spatter and spray

vicious for the viscous, a sincere sin

Virtue and values,

     fate and faith, spitting shit, dudgeon in the dungeon

Voldemort vs. verses

Vonnegut and V (Pynchon)

Devil and vice and the spice

Tired and stupid and angry and bored and irritated and ignored and sad and hating

violent, vicious, vile, verminous, victim, victimizing, villainous, and very volatile

vader, voldemort, vampire, a view to a kill

a post featuring a piece by proust

an optical Aleutian

sheriff Sharif, I shot the ...

the head of state need to maintain the state of his head

the midget fortune teller who escaped from prison...

   a small medium at large

My Blog

Magic trick:  Presto!  God is real

DFW, in his "this is water" speech (on YouTube) lumped "self-worship" in with fear, anger, frustration, and craving as behind the insidious, unconscious "default-settings" that will leave you "totally hosed" (cheated, tricked, defeated).  We all worship, there are no atheists, and reality isn't all about you (or me).   We each have our own skull-sized kingdoms, at the center of our very own private universes, and being God, or your own God, or any other kind of blind certainty, will leave you locked up inside your own private hell, according to David Foster Wallace, who eliminated his own map, to borrow his own language.  My blog is a Dr. Laura sermon*, and unenlightened at that, it appears, to him.  I still like my magic trick though, honestly.   I don't think reality is conscious, however.   Just other minds, which we all share.   So maybe God does exist, but in a weird, different way than the Catholic consensus-reality with which I was brought up.  But what do I know.   God supposedly knows everything.   I know nothing.   Unless there's only one thing that any of us CAN know.  I AM.  Buddhism puts even that simple, ascertainable fact in doubt.   There is no self.   Poof!  God disappears, too.  That's the second magic trick!

*Dr. Laura, "preaches, teaches, and nags, about morals, values, and ethics"

destitute, destined for destruction

be true to THY self: wealthy and healthy, stealthy and filthy

institute for the destitute

what constitutes a prostitute?

as bovine as a rock,  chomp chomp 

Sa 11/20

bought a roast beef sandwich, on sourdough, 

  and a bottle of el mexicano liquid yogurt

and a package of pitted dates

some evergood hotlink sausages

and an eclair

got my new grip6 wallet, delivered this morning

and brought infinite jest with me, dfw, to read at

   Junie's house (sitting til 8p, tonight) 

after walking Kaleb, this morning

Johnny and Teresa are busy with Nutcracker

I can watch tv, if I want, but I don't

sum ran dumb strings:

dim sum.  88 :-). 7

koch's cock

kickin' it with keck

suffering under the Saffarids

skills, skulls, kills, and Cal

Nas at Nascar is scared and scarred

   please clarify the meaning of scarify

do something witchy...eat a sandwich 

which witch ordered the sandwich?

basketball, wishing for a swish

Rat!

Teshara (he's a rat), the rat race, gym rat, rat a tat tat, 

Ratt (band), right and true, rat fink, rat bastard, rat fuck...

The beauty and ugliness, the love and the hate, the attachments and aversion, the good and the bad, the friendly and mean, the sublime and boring, the exceptional and banal, the virtuous and evil, the saintly and demonic, the sanctified and depraved, the pleasure and pain, the content and miserable, the joyful and depressed, the elated and tormented, the blessed and the cursed, the heaven and hell, the delicious and disgusting, the pure and the corrupt, the angry and the content, bliss and torture, the wise and foolish, the intelligent and retarded, the sexy and hideous, the funny and dour, the intelligent and stupid, harmony and war, stimulus and boredom, the salutary and poisonous, healthy and dying, motivated and unmotivated, happy and sad, hungry and satiated, wealth and poverty, comedy that killed or bombed…

It’s all good, it’s all bad, it is what it is, one man’s trash is another’s treasure, zero sum, and synergy and symbiosis vs. mutually antagonistic and deleterious and harmful.  

Synergy is not sinful energy

Sinsemilla

statistician, and Status of Titian

Pope will V?  Uh

Popul vuh

Papal duh

People huh

Pop pull what the heck is vuh

Just words.  I'm not sorry.  FU can be jarring.

but what's wrong with masturbation? go f yourself

Manute Bol has minute balls

Hugo's are huge, lol

firm worm, hard guard

  soft loft, oft coughed

  quaff coffee? doffed Hasselhoff, off

wiggle, wriggle, jiggle, squiggle

dirty, gritty, grotty

naughty karate

carry on, clarion

drum and bliss, drum and doom

toffee is not taffy

I smell on Mel, the stench of a wench, not the scent of a gent

drinking bigelow with a gigolo

a mellow fellow, fused and confused, kept and wept

a profusion of bemusement

launching an a-bomb with aplomb

Ronald Reagan and Elena Kagan are pagans

melungeon dungeon

give a bug a hug, Doug

muggles struggle with juggling

navigators and Navy Gators

be good and kind to man and beast

suffering folk from Suffolk

reproduction, in pre-production

dichotomy and duality

CDF, bad grades for the

    congregation for the doctrine of the faith

the emperor of Japan had to renounce his divinity

  (maybe I should too) (I don't see the harm in it, though)

it may even be true, lol

milestones and mill stones

Jose, can you see?  Buy the Dawn!

the call sign of the Khalsa

Rama, hindu god, at a scout-o-rama

Gahan and Strahan

starry eyed about stare decisis

pagans pay again?  say again?

eskrima and screaming eskimos

stay tuned, satan - state uno

qatar, guitar, and catarrh

deadly squirrel shooting

theomancy- divination by a (supposedly) divinely-inspired oracle

the aletheon and Raytheon

an obscene obstetric scene

TV, transmissibility/virulence (hospitalizations and deaths) 

irked by turkey work, don't shirk the work, it has its perq's

take yourself with a grain of salt, like coffee with cream

wonder and gratitude vs. resentment and malice

Black Friday, in Mordor