The Good Atheist

Religion - Marcus Brigstocke

2007-08-18T02:07:00.001-06:00

Very funny. It's worth a look.

Jesus Video

2007-07-27T04:35:00.001-06:00

How it was really like to walk with the Lord.

First Freedom First

2007-06-28T10:12:00.001-06:00

How important are your freedoms to you? There are many in this country who want to deny you, and I, and all of their other fellow citizens the first, and in many ways the most basic right, of a free society.

Tough being an atheist (OK I FIXED IT. YOU CAN VIEW IT NOW.)

2007-06-03T21:20:00.001-06:00

OK I FIXED IT. YOU CAN VIEW IT NOW.
Hey I'm on TV! Check it out I'm at the American Atheist Convention. They got me for a couple of seconds at time mark 4:14 looking at a table of books. Check it out. Oh, also a good vid by the way.

Bloomfield NM wants to put up Ten Commandments on city property

2007-05-15T14:37:00.000-06:00

On April 4th of this year I became aware of a decision by the City Council of Bloomfield NM to place a stone monument of the Ten Commandments in front of the courthouse, on city property. As a long time resident of Farmington NM, which is just down the road from Bloomfield, I was doubly concerned.

The story was reported in the Farmington Daily Times but it was a reporter from another New Mexico newspaper who alerted me to the unconstitutional actions proposed by the Bloomfield City Council.

After reading the article, I emailed all the members of the City Council with my concerns, and received no response.

I decided to write the Farmington Daily Times editorial desk. Here is a copy of my letter to the editor, which they chose not to publish. In fact they only published letters which seemed to be at least partially supportive of the placement of the ten commandments on government property.

Editor,

A quick note to the Bloomfield City Council.

Though I am no longer a resident of San Juan County, I am still a New Mexico Resident. As such I am deeply troubled by the Bloomfield City Council's decision to place a religious monument on government property. This is in direct violation of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. I suggest that you consider the fact that, despite assertions to the contrary, our nation's governments, from the national level down to local the level, are required to remain secular. You may not show preference for one religious belief system over another.

Putting the Ten Commandments in front of city Hall is in effect saying "This City Government is Christian".

By their very nature some of those commandments are exclusionary to other belief systems. The first three demand reverence ONLY for the God of the Bible, that's fine if you are a Christian, or Jew. But what about Traditional Native Americans, of Hindus, or Sikhs, or Jains, or Rastafarians or Deists (like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin) or Atheists ( like Thomas Paine) or hundreds of other belief systems?

If you claim that our laws are based on all of the Ten Commandments then you are saying that those who are not Christian, or perhaps Jewish, are breaking at least the spirit of American Law by worshiping other Gods! You have the right to believe that if you wish, even preach it in your churches, but as public servants you cannot foist that belief, en-mass on your fellow citizens by promoting it in any tax funded forum, i.e. city property.

Perhaps worst of all you people will be costing Bloomfield at the very least tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, all to promote your own personal religious beliefs and to get a little attention.

I am reminded of Jesus' words at Matt. 6:1 "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. "

Please reconsider your course.

Sincerely,
John K.
NM

I a flurry of activity I attempted to alert as many organizations and groups as I could. American Atheists, American Humanists, The Humanist Society of New Mexico, the ACLU both national and State offices, AU, and quite a few smaller groups and individuals.

I am unsure if many these groups or individuals made an attempt to contact the Bloomfield City Council to lodge a protest or to pursue this situation in other ways, I received minimal feed-back. There was, however, one notable exception, Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Americans United emailed me back, asking questions which I was able to find the answers to for them by conducting a phone interview with the city manager, Keith Johnson .

I have recently received an email form Americans United with the following attachment, a letter sent to the Bloomfield City Council:

I applaud Americans United for their efforts to keep the separation of state and church a sacrosanct element of our freedoms as American citizens.

Gregory Boyd on "The Myth of a Christian Nation"

2007-04-30T15:44:00.001-06:00

FINALLY A CHRISTIAN EVANGELICAL WHO KIND OF GETS IT!

Gregory Boyd Part 1 of 3

Gregory Boyd Part 2 of 3

Gregory Boyd Part 3 of 3

His book: The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church

Back from the American Atheists Convention in Seattle

2007-04-25T16:31:00.000-06:00

Well, I went to the 33rd annual American Atheists Convention in Seattle, held the first weekend of April, and I've taken these past few weeks to kind of "debrief" myself from the experience. A process which I could term a "short dark tea-time of the soul" (my apologies to Douglas Adams.) It was a good experience all in all, but it definitely gave me some moments pause too.

I really love Seattle, and the weather while I was there was great, a little rain, but more sun and even a record high temperature one day. I had quite a bit of fun, met some cool people, ate some great food including Thai, Brazilian, Sushi, and the best steak I've had in at least five years (Kobe beef!). I laughed a lot, no one can tell Christian jokes like ex-Christians, went dancing, rode a dinner train to a winery, listened to a New Orleans Jazz band, took a ferry to an island on the other side of the Puget sound, had some great conversations, made some new friends and, to top it all, I found myself getting pissed off more than once.

I don't mind getting pissed off. I think if it's a controlled kind of pissy-offishness and not the road rage, mad at the 90 year old lady for going 25 MPH in a 40 MPH zone kind, or the ultimately impotent "can this fast food clerk be any dumber? I said grilled chicken!" kind, then it can motivate you in positive directions. I'll even admit to enjoying being pissed off, in moderate doses.

Like most everyone I tend to get pissed with those I'm not inclined to agree with philosophically. So it's fairly easy to find myself pissed at the woman who insists that my chakras are in desperate and immediate need of adjusting, or the moron who thinks intelligent design theology deserves equal time with evolution in a science classroom, or Ann Coulter. Well my chakras and my auras are in a perfect Yin-yang harmonic resonance with Mars in retrograde, so keep that purple crystal, thinly veiled Freudian dangly thing you wear around your neck away from me, thank you very much! Oh and by the way, the "design" found in biology, it's not an example of intelligence, and neither, truth be told, is Ann Coulter! So yeah, I do like getting pissed off.

In Seattle though, I was hanging out with a bunch of my ideological peers. The experience should have been a idyllic repast from the rigors of my daily slog through the fetid intellectual indolence of the ontologically opiated masses. (Yes, I did just say "fetid intellectual indolence of the ontologically opiated masses") But I got pissed anyway. And that, it turns out, was a good thing. It set me to thinking in a lot of different directions and asking myself questions I needed to ask.

I won't go into all the questions I mulled over or the things I got pissed at. What I hope to do is give a distillation of some things I think I've come to terms with and also things I learned from the process.

The Longevity of Religion

Despite all of our wishes and efforts to the contrary, religion is not going away, ever. Our species is stuck with it, probably for countless generations to come. Perhaps religion will exist until evolution or extinction removes homo sapiens from the universe entirely. We can hope that the percentage of nonbelievers will continue to rise in the decades and centuries to come, but it is a percentage that will always fall far short of 99 and 44/100% pure, with religion forever soiling human existence. Of course I've known this fact, but until recently I haven't wanted to fully acknowledge it.

I think that there are at least four key reasons why religion and mystical belief are incurable facets of the human condition. Fear, social and familial ties, S & M, and narcissism.

One of the strongest, most consistent, and most motivating of emotions is fear. As mammals we naturally fear imminent threats to ourselves or family such as flashing lightning, a growling lion, or a raging mother-in-law. As humans though, we are in perhaps the unique position to anticipate scary situations. Ironically most of our fears are about things that never materialize, and this is because we also have great imaginations. We make up really good scary stories, and some are masters at it like Steven King, the Catholic Church, and Al Gore. But there is one very scary thing that we all anticipate and it isn't made up, it's one hundred percent likely to happen, our own deaths. People are deeply frightened by what happens when we die. It has to rank as one of the biggest, most long term fears the average person experiences in life. Many worry that this is all there is, they want more, this life isn't enough. Others worry about all the made up stuff like hell, purgatory, or the possibility of being reincarnated as a bowl of petunias. So humans cling to other fantasies, like heaven and resurrection or nirvana, to partially assuage those fears. The fear, coupled with those fairy-tale stories of paradise, makes it as difficult for a person to give up the opiate of untenable beliefs about an after life, as it is for a heroin addict to give up their drug.

If a person is going to give up some fantastic religious belief system, they stand every possibility of alienating family and friends. There is often the very real chance of being shunned by the very individuals with whom they wish to remain the closest. Most people have seen what happens to members of close knit religious groups who have become apostates to the strongly held beliefs. Social pressure is a powerful deterrent to free thought, or at least expression of those thoughts.

Dominance and submission are ubiquitous aspects of groups and are played out in countless ways. Whether it's found in a wolf pack, or in sadomasochistic role playing, hierarchical arrangements of social structure are the norm. In humans, once that structure has been formed, codified, and in some cases institutionalized, it becomes extremely difficult to remove oneself from it. Both the dominant and the submissive receive positive inducement to retain the structure. In the religious context the priest or religious leader has his or her ego boosted as the source, or at least the conduit, for all real knowledge. The submissive has the benefit of not having to take full intellectual responsibility for understanding the meaning of the world and their place in it, someone else can explain it all.

Of all the reasons why we are so strung out on religion, it seems to me that the one that should be most easily resolved is our inherent narcissism. Unfortunately this is not the case. We cling tenaciously to our self-love and our feelings of universal centrality. Despite the Copernican revolution that moved the Earth from the center of things, the Darwinian truth of our relatedness to all living things, the understanding of deep geologic time, and the astrophysical discoveries of billions of galaxies each with billions of stars, we still pretend as though the universe was created just for us and that there is some grand purpose for humans, even individual humans. Few see that the only purposes that our little species, residing on this speck of dust in infinite space, will ever have are those we define for ourselves. The universe is ambivalent to our existence.

Atheists need to focus on what's important

Debating creationists, though entertaining, is not very productive. And attempting to convince a believer that the Jesus of the Bible is just an image of Mithras and other deities, manufactured primarily by the apostle Paul, will most likely fail.

I don't think we should stop doing these kinds of things. I just think that there are more important issues on the table. Everyone has something at stake and we all need to address what is happening around us.

Not just atheists but agnostics, "liberal" Christans, and anyone concerned about our constitutional freedoms and the first amendment's guarantee of separation of church and state, need to react to any and all attacks on those freedoms. If people don't know what's happening with the "faith-based" initiatives and the billions of federal dollars going to churches and religious organizations that are effectively unaccounted for, they need to be encouraged to educate themselves.

There are millions of people in this country working to place their personal religious ideology above the secular law and to place religious requirements on all of us. The story The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood may prove more prophetic than any of us would like. There is a very good book on the subject of the current religious takeover of the government written by Michelle Goldberg Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. For a quick read that may literally put the fear of god in you about what's happening to some the nations youth, try the Rolling Stone article by Jeff Sharlet Teenage Holy War.

These are real threats. People want to roll back the political and intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment in the name of a sadistic, vengeful, homophobic, bloodthirsty deity. They want an American theocracy. Even if they are only partially successful, which they have been already, we've lost important freedoms. We need to remember that when religion ruled the world, it was called the dark ages, and for good reason.

Come out of the closet

Just admit you are a non-believer and don't hide behind agnosticism. Most all atheists technically would more accurately be described as agnostics (see the orbiting teapot example of Bertrand Russell). But if you are, to all intents and purposes, a non-believer just say so, don't cop out. If someone says something to me like "Do you believe in the Lord?" , I've started saying things like "no of course not, why, you don't do you?"

There are many more of us out there than most people realize and there really is strength in numbers. So let's stand up and be proud of the fact that unlike much of humanity, we aren't a bunch of gullible sheep.

So the convention was fun, I met some fellow non-believers, and learned some stuff. Plus I love Seattle. The city is beautiful and cosmopolitan, it's a place where even a convention full of atheists might feel at home. You can find some crazy stuff in that city though. For instance, it's the home of The Discovery Institute which is the primary "think tank" for creationism and its alter ego, intelligent design theory. But then I guess no place is perfect.

Christian nation myth

2007-04-17T00:54:00.001-06:00

I get so tired of hearing that ours is a Christan nation. Well here are just a few thoughts from some of our earlier Presidents.

Atheists Have Faith? What the #@*&

2007-03-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

I am, on most occasions, an optimist. I'll admit, however, that when I read the words of religious apologists, new age gurus, and pseudo-scientists, it's hard not to get a bit discouraged about the ultimate fate of humanity. I'm especially disheartened when I think about the vast majorities who follow, or at least give credence to one or more of these charlatans. The abject ignorance that is manifest in most individual examples of our species is rattling to anyone who tries to live by a rationalist credo. Where will it all end? Perhaps our extinction?

OK! So I'm more than a bit pessimistic this morning. I just read something in The American Thinker, an on-line "news" paper which comes from a fairly conservative point of view, and it's bugged the hell out of me. I don't mind the conservative perspective by the way, just like I don't mind the liberal perspective, though they both tend to be mired in ideological dogmatism. Anyway that's a topic better left for another blog.

What I read was a silly and I do mean silly attempt to characterize Atheism as a faith-based religion. The author argues that because Atheists can't disprove the existence of God, they are displaying faith in his non-existence. Apparently what we non-believers are failing to understand is that God may pop up at any moment and then where will we be? Hmmmm?

(if you want to read his "thoughts" here are the two links:
A note on atheism and Atheism’s uselessness)

Well how do you answer such simplistic drivel? I suppose silence would be one way, but then there are those who will accept this crap at face value and then parrot it the next time the subject of Atheism comes up in conversation. No, better to disabuse them of this fallacy now and save them the embarrassment of being laughed at while attending some important dinner party.

So then what is Atheism? Atheism is a lack of belief in a deity. It's as simple as that. I am an Atheist. I don't have faith in God. From all of the evidence, God is a made up, human contrivance. Like He-man and the Masters of the Universe or Bumba the African god of vomit, so too are the Christian god, the Jewish god and the Islamic god just fanciful, human created fictions. It would be oxymoronic to say that I have faith in the non-existence of God.

Why do I say oxymoronic? Because of the definition of faith. A definition that I had to memorize growing up with a faith in the Christian God. This is the definition spelled out in the Bible at Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the reality of things being hoped for, the proof of things not being seen." And one Webster’s Dictionary defines faith as "an unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence." In other words you can't see it, you can't prove it by any empirical methodology, but you believe it exists nonetheless. Your "proof" is simply your willingness to accept, and perhaps the willingness of millions of others.

As pointed out by a number of writers, most recently Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, Atheism is a "default position." It is a base line from which a person may deviate into some specific non-empirical belief system, in other words into a faith. This could be Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, or crystal healing. The specifics don't matter. The requirement of religious faith is that you believe in things without hard evidence.

Faith also requires an active mental participation on the part of the believer. Belief in god(s) or goddess(es) comes from the acceptance of a set of positive statements about the existence of these beings and their relationship to humans and the cosmos. Thus the need of holy books, priests, shamans and ministers to explain to the faithful the mind of God.

OK lets say you are a Christian and as such you put faith in the Lord God i.e. the father, the son, the holy spirit. So if I asked you if you have faith you would say "Yes, I have faith in the God of the Bible." You would never say "oh and by the way I have faith in the non-existence of Bumba, the African god of vomit." Even if I asked you about Bumba you would likely say: "no, I don't have faith in Bumba, he's just made up." There are millions of gods, worshipped now and in the past, in which a Christian puts no faith. Must such a Christian actively learn about each of these and then claim that he or she has faith in their non-existence? No, the Christian can simply state the same default position of the Atheist. They don't believe and they have no faith because they have no evidence.

But, you may contend, a religious person might say: "I have faith that all the other gods and goddesses are false. They don't exist. Even Bumba." True, but if they do say this, it is still a positive statement of the acceptance of an un-provable belief system. Specifically that there is only one true invisible friend in the sky and it's the one characterized by their specific faith.

The situation is quite easily understood with a simple thought experiment. Let's say human colonies are established on the surfaces of two newly discovered planets. Children are being raised in both colonies and neither group has contact with the rest of human civilization. One group of colonists are Christian. They read the Bible daily to their children and instill the ethics and beliefs of Christianity as best they can. These children will no doubt learn to have faith in a supreme being. They will have "an unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence."

The second group are non-believers and never even bring up the concept of a god. Their only explanations for the origins of things are naturalistic ones based on empirical science. They provide the children with the tools of rational thought and experimental science. These children never hear of the concept of a god and thus they develop no faith. But what's important is the children simply do not believe. Not because they have "faith in atheism." They don't even recognize they are atheists. They don't know what an atheist is because they don't know what a theist is. They don't have any "unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence."

This is why atheism is a default position that requires no faith.

I will however make one small confession. An Atheist may lapse into the trappings of faith under extreme stress. As I once did after going to a Jim Jones Memorial party with some friends and drinking way too much purple Everclear punch. I began calling the porcelain god that I found myself hugging, Bumba. Frankly, it didn't help.

In GOD We Trust

2007-03-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

Waiting to pay for my cheeseburger and fry combo at Lotaburger last night, I looked down at one of the $5.00 bills in my hand and immediately got a warm fuzzy feeling all over. Seeing the back of that bill, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that I was not alone in the universe, there was really someone out there after all.

I'm told that people get "religious" experiences all the time. One person sees the face of the Virgin in her second helping of fried calamari, another sees the shape of the cross in the piece of celery sticking out of his morning Bloody Mary, a third wins a hundred bucks on the lotto numbers he's been playing for 2 years and can now pay his electric bill before they shut it off tomorrow, an answer to his prayers.

I'm quite sure that the feeling which came over me at that particular moment was no less moving, no less enlightening than the emotions experienced by those others. Yes, I was having a pseudo-religious experience! (well you can't expect an atheist to have a real religious experience, now can you?). This experience was sparked by a message I found on the back of that $5.00 bill.

We all know that ubiquitous statement found on United States money, "IN GOD WE TRUST". Well someone who had been in possession of this particular bill in the past had apparently taken a bit of umbrage with those four words. They had crossed out the word "GOD" and written right above it, the word "REASON." Oh that little rascal whoever he or she was!

Seeing this, I knew that there are truly other unbelievers like me in the world. Of course I've met many other Atheists and Agnostics in my travels, read numerous books and websites and blogs authored by the faithless, but standing there with the smell of onions and beef grease wafting into my nostrils, listening to the country music blaring from the cook's radio and witnessing a mother scold her little boy: "¡Hijo! ¡No mire fijamente ese hombre!" I felt an atheist presence. Like an indescribable force in the world, one I couldn't see but one that I knew existed none the less, I felt the hand of the non-deistic touching my heart!

When it comes to feelings about mottos, I know that there are many of my fellow atheists who are deeply offended by the "IN GOD WE TRUST" emblazoned on our money. Personally I'm not one of them. I'm just horribly amused by the thing. It is such a ridiculous sentiment to be placed on a nation's currency, isn't it?

I know too, that many Americans like the motto. It makes them somehow feel that the government gives it's blessing to their belief in god. Or alternatively that it signifies that their god is somehow blessing their government. Silly I know.

But which god is being referenced in the motto? The majority of Americans are of the Christan religious persuasion, so nominally the majority believe in the "god of the Bible" but this can be a bit dicey. Not all Christians really believe in the same god now do they? Each denomination has it's own version of god based on it's interpretation of the holy book. For instance, many Baptists think Catholics will go to the nether regions of high caloric content when they die because they are worshiping god in the wrong way, or the wrong god in the right way, or the wrong god in the wrong way...well you get the point, it's all the same, they're going to hell.

Now Catholics for their part tend to be a bit polytheistic, at least in practice if not creed. Prayers to Mary, the saints, etc. are little different than those offered up to Vishnu, Shiva, or Ganesha from the Hindu Pantheon. And speaking of Hindus, there are an estimated 1.5 million in the U.S. today.

Then there are Buddhists who don't have to believe in any god, but many of them still do, at least a number of them pray, so there is that. Of course we have Judaism and Islam which supposedly look to basically the same god as Christians (The Lord, Allah, Yahweh, a rose by any other name...), but the Christan god does have the nasty "physical" feature of having three heads, which Jews and Muslims are loath to accept.

Which brings us to the Unitarian creeds and Jehovah's Witnesses who are not at all convinced of Jesus' godhood either, though they do call themselves Christians.

Mormons believe in one god, for this Earth that is. Happily for them there are many planets that need their own gods so that's what they get to be when they grow up, I mean die.

Of course there are the Shintos, the Scientologists, the Sikhs, the Satanists, the Shamanists, the Pagans, the Baha'i, the Rastafarians, the Pastafarians (he he), the Neo-Druids, the Wiccans, the Mami Watans, and on and on. So many, many beliefs, so many, many gods.

OK so I have a really good suggestion for the U.S. Treasury Department. Now the Treasury guys will need to check with Congress on this before they go off half cocked, so it could be a bit problematic since we do know how ineffective legislators can be. Althoooough... they could just implement it and see who notices. Anyway here is the idea: Change the motto to "IN GODS WE TRUST." Great idea huh? Just think how much more accurate this is. It fits America. It's so much more descriptive of our true diversity, yes?

Well not quite, right? Those pesky Atheists and Agnostics are still hanging about. But my fellow rationalists and non-believers needn't worry, I have taken our interests to heart too. Here is what can be done, an asterix (*) will be placed next to the new motto, directing the holder of the money to a foot note which could read something to this effect: "Some however don't." or perhaps the longer but more accurate: "There are however some thinking citizens who reject the childish concept of an invisible friend or friends in whom they can put even a modicum of trust." Personally I don't have a preference here, there are lots of possibilities.

Some may prefer the dagger (†) notation instead of the asterix but I really don't think it looks ecumenical enough.

Now even though this "GODS" version of the motto is more descriptive of the beliefs found in American culture, there is another motto which is far better at expressing the real diversity/unity that our land aspires to. We are all familiar with E Pluribus Unum - Out of Many, One. Wow! so much better isn't it ? And the nice thing is it's already on our money!

Most people actually don't know that our paper currency didn't have the "In God We Trust" motto on it until 1957. And to be honest the real issue for most of us non-believers, and actually quite a few in more liberal religious denominations, is the fact that the motto is blatantly unconstitutional. That pesky establishment clause really is being ignored.

Finding that bill was quite an amazing bit of luck. It definitely made me think. I wonder how many hands it has already gone through, and how many more people will notice it. I wonder how many of those people will actually be motivated to think about what it really means.

I wonder too, how many bills like that are out there. And how many more are going to be turning up in the near future. All Americans, including Atheists, have access to ballpoint pens...hmmm. And didn't someone once say that the pen is mightier than the sword?

I hope you too find an "altered" bill in the not too distant future, and that it gives you the same warm feeling it gave me. It's good to be reminded that there are other rational people on our planet and that we all don't have invisible little friends that we talk to.

Information and history on "In God We Trust" motto.

The National Stamping Out "In God We Trust" Protest (very interesting stuff)

SUBMISSION PART ONE --by Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2007-03-22T13:33:00.001-07:00

This short, ten minute film, explains the plight of four separate Muslim women.

The sheerness of the woman's clothing reveals her body to Allah, forcing him to look at what he has created, a beautiful woman. The Koranic texts written on her injured flesh show the physical pain inflicted by applying the words of this "holy" book. The words of her prayers tell of the emotional trauma. In the end she raises her eyes to God, saying that perhaps she will defy and not submit. Islam means submission.

Because saying anything against Islam is worthy of a death sentence, Theo van Gogh, the film's producer was murdered in his native Holland by a "radical" Islamicist. His throat was cut, he was stabbed repeatedly, and shot. A note was tacked to his chest with the knife the murderer used, in which the life of the film's writer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was threatened. All of this done in the glorious name of Allah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the author or the book INFIDEL the best seller about her life growing up as a Muslim in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya, her escape from an arranged marriage, to Holland were she eventually became a member of Dutch parliament. Ali is living in the U.S. and still under a death threat. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

300 - An Allegorical Tale of Reason Versus Religion?

2007-03-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the movie theater last Monday night, munching stale popcorn, I was tyring to decide if I liked this new movie 300 or not. I was putting real effort into giving it a fair chance, but I just kept finding myself a bit irritated. Granted it was one of those last minute "oh hell I don't have anything else to do, might as well go to the movies" type of decisions. It wasn't like I'd been waiting in nervous anticipation for the film's release, as had a few of my friends.

I went to the movies by myself that night, yep I was alone. If you haven't noticed, this can create a completely different movie-watching state of mind, well at least with me it can. For instance, if I'm at a movie with a date I know that the question is going to be coming up at some point, probably between walking back to the car and going out for a drink. You know the question: "so what did you think, did you like the film?" A fair and innocent question that has the potential of being as romance killing as admitting to your Prius driving, yoga practicing date that you voted for Bush in the 2000 election. So if you're smart you don't make any strong declarative statements here, such as "It really sucked!" or "Can you believe how flippin' historically inaccurate that thing was?" For all you know she thinks that the movie is the most romantic comedy since Boxing Helena (not to be confused here with Helen-a-Troy), and you could end up spending the rest of the night alone, eating Vienna sausages from a can, watching reruns of the Sopranos, and wondering what it's like to be a "made" man.

No, instead you field a few non-committal responses, "I really liked the costumes and the computer graphics seemed nicely executed." She counters: "Yes I agree, it was a bit long for my tastes though". You thrust a bit, she parries. And so, after perhaps 15 minutes you come to a consensus, not what you think, and not what she thinks, but what you think as a couple. How nice, how cute, how sweet. Now for those drinks...

If you are used to this kind of coalition building on your movie dates, you'll already be working on your responses to the "what did you think" question from the opening credits. So when you find yourself alone like I did Monday night, you automatically start asking what do I think? But then you ask yourself no really, what do I think? Not what I think I should say I think, so we can decide what we think, and I can avoid the Vienna sausages.

So that's where I was at on Monday night, watching 300 with no end game, contemplating rather deeply what I thought of the film. I found, quite frankly, that I didn't really like it. The computer graphics were bugging me, as was the lack of enough women in most scenes. In fact just about everything was mildly irritating to me, including the stale popcorn. That is until I got it. I got the deep important point of the film. It was like a flash, an epiphany.

Here it is, are you ready?

Religion is bad. Reason is good....I bet you knew that little fact already didn't you? Well here is how the film made the point:

Religion, as represented by the leprous, corrupt priests and by Xerxes and his Persian hoards, is the evil which is faced and held at bay by the champions of reason, by the fearless Leonidas and his vastly outnumbered Spartans.

Those diseased, cankered priests of the old religion, bribed with the Persian god king's gold, lecherous and vile in their abuse of the fairest, most beautiful Spartan women, use religious tradition in an attempt to sway the Spartans from the only rational course, that of defending themselves from Xerxes and his worshipping hordes. But Leonidas, with his 300, faces them fearlessly, refusing to fall down and worship. Unafraid of the god enslaved masses and even the so called immortals, the few hundred Greeks present a united phalanx of free men who "value reason" and refuse to submit to the mysticism of Persia. Though they give the ultimate sacrifice, it is not in vain. The battle inspires the rest of Greece to take up the fight. It also delays Xerxes, giving Queen Gorgo and Dilios time to reason with the rest of Sparta that the priests have betrayed them, Sparta can't sit back and wait, they must all fight. In the end the god king is defeated. Reason reigns supreme!

As King Leonidas said: "A new age has come, an age of freedom!"

Let us hope that we too are living in a new age of freedom, freedom to openly express that only through rational thought and not the perpetuation of fairy tales, myths, and superstitions will the human species find true hope for the future. Let us make this the age when the tyranny of religious dogmatism is at last banished to the dark corners of history.

We can hear the words of Leonidas to his men: "Remember this day, for it will be yours for all time."

I guess it pays to go to the movies by yourself sometimes. You can have some fairly amazing insights don't you think. So would someone please let Frank Miller know that his story is indeed an allegorical tale of Reason versus Religion? I need to finish my Vienna sausages.

Oh by the way, maybe Richard Dawkins as Leonidas?

OK, it was just a thought.