an explanation...

In previous posts I have cited a phrase that deals with athiesm that conflates it with deism. I found the original source and quote when reading a post from samharris.org. It is from an article he wrote appearing in the LA Times:

As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

Roberts' reasoning is really flawless. If you can recognize why you repudiate Allah, Shiva, Cthulhu, Zeus, Jupiter, The Great Spaghetti Monster, etc., you should be able to understand why an atheist rejects your god. It's the same rationale.

Harris' article is entitled 10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism. It's a well presented argument.

The 10 myths:

1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.

For the 10 truths you have to read the article. Harris' truths are the rebuttals to each of the myths.

The truth that struck me the most was his countering to #10 -

If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.

We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.

and so, I still believe in one fewer god than you do.

can you understand it better now?

just asking...