The World Will Go To Hell Without Religion! Really?

“What is the alternative to a belief in Santa Claus? The answer really is nothing. Now, it's not that a belief in Santa Claus was doing nothing for a child. You know, a child is entranced and consoled and interested and happy that Santa Claus exists.

You take the belief away, you've taken something away—you haven't replaced it with something but whatever conspired to make the belief untenable, perhaps he saw that it was his parents wrapping the presents. The belief disappears and we all know that no one wants to be the last kid in class who believes in Santa Claus.

And imagine how untenable the position of a child would be, if he claimed not to want to throw the baby out with the bath water, he claimed to have found a moderate position on Santa Claus and he could keep the sleigh and the elves but jettison the guy in the suit.

So the first answer to the question, 'What are the alternatives to faith?' there don't have to be alternatives. If these beliefs are false, if they're untenable, we can relinquish them. As many countries in western Europe have done. Only 10 percent of Swedes, 10 to 15 percent are believers of the sort we recognize in the states.”

“We can relinquish these beliefs without an alternative. Let me remind you about how easy it is to see the wisdom of this when we simply change the word God to Zeus. No one is feeling that we should maybe hold on to Zeus.”

—Sam Harris, talking about his book, The End of Faith at the University Synagogue on January 18, 2005. See the entire video of his lecture here.

Sam Harris on Morality.

Religion has the worst morals and ethics. We all agree that slavery, owning people like farm equipment, is morally wrong. However, the God of Abraham did get this wrong, in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Yet people claim that Christianity is of divine origin.

Why would anyone want to cling to the teachings of the Bible when these teachings are immoral? To do good things for bad reasons. You better be good or you'll go to hell. There are many good reasons to do good things. To love and fear your God. That's the very definition of sadomasochism. How revolting.

To love your neighbor. Compulsory love. Disgusting. And furthermore, most people can barely love themselves and/or their partners and/or their families. Show me a family where everyone gets along and I'll show you my unicorn. The commandment of loving your neighbor is not only an impossible commandment to follow but impractical.

How many feet or miles away, do you love your neighbors? The ones on your block, those in a two block radius, a 1 mile radius or more? How many Christians invite all their neighbors to their house every weekend to show their love to their neighbors?

To love your enemy. What? Sorry, Christ got it wrong. This is an absolutely bad moral. You defend yourself against your enemy. How many Christians want to dismantle the US Military?

I can reassure you that my Christian relatives love the military. They certainly liked Bush and the way he waged war. Where is the love there? Christians say their Bible is divine yet completely ignore the teaching of loving their enemy. Christians ignore any verse of the Bible when it's convenient for them to do so.

Sam Harris wants to begin talking about morality and human values in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the world.

Sam Harris is interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. See the interview here online.

The atrocities of the Catholic Church by Christopher Hitchens

If you like Christopher Hitchens and are not fond of the Catholic Church (or if you really don't know much about the atrocities committed by the Catholic Church and would like to know more), you might like this video.

And if you feel that God-bashing is still taboo and disrespectful to believers, in our society today, I submit this is exactly the same attitude of the church leaders when they were burning heretics (those who reject the teachings of the church) in the 1500s.

The video is from the debate called Intelligent 2 Debate. See Christopher Hitchens video here.

Note: After you watch this video, if you are still Catholic, I submit, you are part of a cult.

Certainty. A False Goal.

“Certainty is, I think, a false goal. We’re achieving functional certainties in science and just… in our day to day lives. I mean, it’s a functional certainty that I’m sitting here talking to you, though it’s possible I could be dreaming or, you know, deceived by an evil demon.

Those kind of philosophical, epistemological worries don’t really relate too much to the ordinary practice of science, the very useful practice of science and our ordinary task of just negotiating our lives and finding happiness in this world.

We recognize there is a range, there’s a continuum of, you know, “I’m not sure,” “You know, it’s a coin toss, 50/50”, understanding of our circumstances, to be functionally certain about what is so.

And many people are pretending to be functionally certain or believe themselves to be functionally certain about things like “Jesus is going to come back and judge the world in their lifetime,” and 20% of the American population claims to be functionally certain that, that is going to come to pass and 78% think that Jesus is going to come back sometime, not necessarily in their lifetime.

And these certainties do real work for us. The person who is certain that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception, is the person who wants to veto stem cell research despite the fact that tens of millions of people are suffering conditions for which stem cell research is the best line of research to generate therapies.

So, these are ideas that are not just of academic interest or personal, private, spiritual relevance, I mean, these are shaping policies, they’re shaping the national conversation. And when you look at the Muslim world they are causing people to blow themselves up on street corners.” —Sam Harris

Watch video here: Is there certainty in science? (Hint: Choose the video titled, "Is there certainty in science?")

The Big Think website does not give the date this video was recorded. However, it's most likely after 2006, not sure.

Christopher Hitchens speaks. Authors at Google.

Author Christopher Hitchens discusses his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" as a part of the Authors at Google series. This event took place on August 16, 2007 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Watch YouTube.com video here: Christopher Hitchens speaks for Authors at Google.