Why I am an Atheist

Religious affiliation is a huge way in which people define themselves. Religious adherents are always eager to espouse their own faith and creed to others. The proud fashion in which the pious advertise their beliefs is what I believe to be a remnant of our prehistoric tribal past. This helps them to identify with other members of the same faith and thereby form a bond with them. This is likely why religion has been shown to be such an efficient means of controlling people. Those in power typically use faith as a justification for others to obey them. At times through history, this obedience has been used to commit acts of atrocity and evil. If you can convince a man that he must obey you for the good of the herd or for the will of some all-supreme being, then you have effectively enslaved him. Not all religious people may consciously feel that they are enslaved, but by accepting the doctrine and authority of a religion, they are absolutely (or partially) surrendering their will to think to others.

I view the acceptance of religious doctrine a lot like ordering at a fast-food restaurant. You are effectively ordering a combo of pre-established ideas in the same way that one would order a combo of food. For instance, when you purchase the Family Dinner Box at KFC, the meal includes two pieces of chicken, a chicken sandwich, two pieces of mini chicken breast, a wrap, French fries, coleslaw, and a potato and macaroni salad. When you adhere to the religion of Catholicism, you receive your own standard issue set of beliefs much in the same fashion as receiving an assortment of soggy poultry bits. The combo pack beliefs of Catholicism include the opposition to a woman’s right to choose, to homosexuality, to stem-cell research, the belief in transubstantiation, the absolution of sin through confession, and the divinity of Mary. Just like you may not negotiate how much chicken you can receive in your Family Dinner Box, you are forbidden to disagree with the doctrines of Catholic ideology if you choose to be a member of that religion. Don’t question the rules! The Pope and Colonel Sanders are equally infallible.

I believe that one’s spiritual beliefs should never be accepted as the doctrine of any organisation or institution. People should also never accept their political or cultural views in this way. Instead, they should be acquired based on your individual morals and values. If you claim to be a conservative, it is not necessary to adhere to every single conservative ideology. You must justify for yourself what you believe based on your own intrapersonal contemplation and rational ability. 

There is no empirical evidence whatsoever to assume that a god or any mystical being exists. Therefore, I see no more reason to believe in Zoroastrianism or Voodoo than I do Catholicism.

Atheism is the philosophical default on religious ideology. It is merely the lack of a belief in a deity and entails absolutely nothing else. Atheism is not a pre-established set of beliefs and philosophical ideas. Atheists vary greatly in terms of political ideology, nationality, aesthetic tastes, fashion, moral beliefs, and culture. Atheism is the declaration that you refuse to accept your philosophical beliefs in the same way that you purchase chicken. It is a sad reflection on an individual’s mind if he/she chooses to accept the theological premises of our knuckle-dragging past. My unwillingness to submit to such dangerous doctrines is why I am an atheist. 

New Tasmanian Smoking law

There is no doubt that Tobacco smoking is harmful to your health. Since the 1950s, there have been conclusive studies that link smoking to several fatal diseases such as lung cancer, mouth cancer, kidney cancer, emphysema, cataracts, strokes, and many others. On the television, on print advertisements, as well as on cigarette packs themselves, there are warnings about the fatal risk that smokers take when they light up. As true as these warnings may be, are they really necessary considering all the knowledge our society has about the risk of these diseases? Only a moron in this day and age is unaware of the fundamental consequences of cigarette smoking. Furthermore, why is the attitude towards smokers (at least in North America) so negative? If someone wants to smoke and endanger their health, it is an individual choice they have made and one only they must take responsibility for. We have every right as consumers to choose whether or not to start smoking. Tobacco is not the only harmful product that is available for purchase by far. Alcohol, foods high in saturated fats, and even candy are all harmful to the health and some of which have been shown to foster dependence and addiction in a similar manner as tobacco. Therefore, it is very hypocritical to insult someone for smoking a cigarette while you guzzle down a thirty-ounce Coca-cola. There are not nearly as many warnings and advertisements against alcohol or hamburgers, so it is unreasonable that there should be so many against tobacco.

Tobacco advertising is one of the most regulated forms of marketing in North America. In 1988, the Canadian government banned all forms of tobacco advertisements and ruled that tobacco corporations must place warning labels on all their products. In 2008, retailers are no longer allowed to display tobacco products in their stores and must be kept under the counter. The ability to smoke in restaurants and workplaces is also prohibited in Canada.

These laws are absolutely ridiculous. They only enforce the notion that man is not responsible for his own actions and must rely on government regulations to save him from the danger of his own decisions. The restaurant smoking ban is particularly unethical. It should be the decision of the individual business owner regarding whether or not people may smoke inside his establishment. Those who wish to eat and drink in a smoke-free environment are free to go elsewhere. Just as the individual should be at liberty to smoke a cigarette if he/she pleases, bar and tavern owners should be at liberty to choose whether or not their patrons may smoke in their establishment. Why should the government tell people how to run their businesses and their lives?

The law prohibiting tobacco companies from advertising is equally asinine. The government assumes that people who are subjected to any advertisement are under a helpless spell which forces them to buy whichever product or service is being advertised. Of course this is not the case. People must learn to think critically about what they see in the media and on commercials instead of absorbing all information like mindless consumer zombies. Rational, self-sufficient men know how to perceive what they are being advertised and do not need government regulations to shield them from the dangers of tobacco. Most people are perfectly able to pass judgment on a commercial without the nanny state having to filter the content of commercials based on the safety of the product. Anyone who starts smoking for the sole reason that a print ad in the magazine told them to is likely a highly-suggestible personal anyways and is likely prone to similar moronic tendencies with or without government regulations.

 Most disturbing however is a recent law that has been proposed in the Australian state of Tasmania. The article which describes the bill in detail is posted in a link below. In a nutshell, the bill gradually seeks to raise the age at which one may purchase tobacco products until eventually smoking would be banned for everyone outright. The goal of the bill is to prevent children from starting smoking. Children however, are similarly capable of making decision for themselves based on their own rational faculties. Not every child starts smoking. In fact, smoking rates have nearly halved in the past three decades according to a study done by the World Health Organisation 2002.

 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/tobacco-ban-backed-for-next-generation/story-fndo471r-1226471374394

Such displays of complete batshit as the one in Tasmania are a result of the prevalent socialist and statist philosophies of our culture. No demographic of individuals, regardless of their size or political influence has a moral right to vote away the rights of others. If you don’t like smoking, that’s fine. Don’t smoke. Only a tyrant and a bully would seek to take away someone else’s right to smoke if they so please.

Obviously these people have not learned from past instances of prohibition. When something is prohibited for which there is a demand, a black market will be created. A ban on tobacco outright will not get rid of smoking; it will just turn smokers into criminals, which further entails an entirely new set of problems for that society. Just look at alcohol prohibition in the twenties. It is utterly sad how people refuse to learn from past mistakes.

The anti-tobacco lobby in Canada, Australia, and the United States has grown so over-bloated and conceited that they will not be satisfied until tobacco has been outlawed completely. People must always be mindful of the risks that smoking entails, but that should never mean taking away other people’s right to do so.

On Ayn Rand and Objectivism

Ayn Rand was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Her novels and her philosophy of Objectivism were the voice of reason that was most needed in the tumultuous era in which she lived. It is not just on the internet, but in the general mindset of our time that there are unjustified dismissals of her ideas and her philosophy. Those refutations and dismissals that I have read thus far have been largely founded upon ad hominem attacks or on largely distorted strawmen of her ideas. It is expected that anyone who disagrees with an idea of someone else will not explore their reasoning and philosophy in great depth, so this outright hatred of Rand can be easily explained. However, it is not warranted. The philosophy outlined by Rand in the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead contain important values that every intellectual should give due consideration. It is primarily among liberal and “leftist” thinkers that she has been dismissed and spat upon. If more people would take the time to understand Rand’s philosophy instead of resorting to the popular distortions and disfigurements of her work, then the current state of intellectual debate and the world in general may be improved.

The underlining trend in Ayn Rand’s novels is the role of the individual in society. Contrary to her belief, it is according to modern political philosophy that man ought to exist for the benefit of society, or the state. Look no further than the laws enacted by many governments around the world to see how this is true. Drug prohibition, for instance is a manifestation of the notion that man is incapable of making decisions in his own self-interest and thus requires an authority figure to make them in his favour. Such laws are insulting and useless. Although things like drug use, homosexual relations, gun ownership, and pornography have been restricted by government regulation, these laws have been of no effect and are a gross allocation of otherwise productive resources. Government action is incapable of thwarting the decisions made by individual men. It is powerless in attempting to alter the private behaviour made by the people who supposedly live under its control. Laws that are enacted as a means of trying to regulate human behaviour only serve as a means to lower the standard of living for those in society and reduce the idea of man to that of a moronic automaton who is at the whim of any influence of the given moment. Laws that prohibit the individual to make decisions for him/herself only enforce the stupidity and degeneracy that are so prevalent in our modern culture.

The philosophy of Ayn Rand advocates the complete opposite of what authoritarian laws attempt to enforce. Objectivism states that man’s individual perception of the world around him is the only reliable source of sensory input on which he is to pass judgment. The moral claims of those around him must only be considered as secondary sources. Consider the following hypothetical scenario:

You are living in Nazi-occupied territory at the height of the Second World War. Those around you are all singing the praises of Der Fuhrer and proclaiming that the Jews are subhuman and must be exterminated.  However, you happen to be a person of rational and highly-developed moral faculties and you see the disgusting hatred and bigotry of their beliefs. Despite strong influence to the contrary, you refuse to join the SS and turn over some Jews you know to be in hiding to the SS, who you know will not treat them with general kindness. Rightfully, by doing so, you have made an individual rational judgment against the popular belief of those around you. Despite the revolting intolerance and racism that is pervasive in that place and era, you refuse to go against your moral principles and turn innocent people over to the hands of a violent tyranny. By doing so, you are adhering to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of individuality and objectivism.

The opponents of Rand will try to twist her philosophy into a disgraceful representation of chauvinism and a disregard for the lives of others. Ayn Rand never advocated that anyone ought to disregard the lives and liberties of other human beings. In fact, contrary to what the liberal thinkers of our time will tell you, Rand was one of the most passionate proponents of individual rights in recent memory. Objectivism in a nutshell denounces the use of coercion and force in human relationships. She viewed the tyrannies of Hitler, Stalin, Franco, and Mussolini to be unjust and evil.

The initiation of force is the cause of all evil. From thieves, to murderers, to extortionists, to frauds, to despots, the one consistent source of human anguish and global conflict is the use and the threat of violence. Only cowards and sociopaths feel they are justified to rule over other human beings through the barrel of a gun. Freedom is the only proper state for man to exist.

Objectivism states that rational self-interest is the way that man can achieve his goals. It is not through violence, or subjugation, or extortion. Socialism and Communism by their very definitions violate these fundamental principles and which is why Rand is so hated in our modern culture. It is because she believed in freedom of choice and in individualism. She loved the concept of man as a self-sufficient, rational being and not the concept of man as an imbecilic ghoul who needs the state to make decisions for him. Socialism can only justify its morality if it can establish that an individual’s choices are not his/her own. Socialism succeeds in that it propagates the notion that success and failure are not contingent upon a man’s ability, but on some indescribable external factor. Because socialist and statist ideas are so prevalent in our modern culture, this is why many people hate Ayn Rand. It is because she believed in personal responsibility and freedom.

The reaction of the enslaved man to the idea of freedom is one of panic and denial. It is very much like the reaction of the woeful denizens in the Allegory of Plato’s Cave. When exposed to the light of reason and rationality, they hide and cower like cornered rats. Those who are dependent on the government do not believe freedom to be possible. They do not trust their own ability to make decisions and proclaim judgments for themselves because they are so used to being treated like experimental animals in the grand scheme of tyrannical statism. This is why, when exposed to the philosophy of Ayn Rand and other libertarian philosophers, they have nothing but childish insults and idiocy with which to respond.  Ayn Rand has faced so much negative criticism by social commentators like Paul Krugman, William Buckley, Gore Vidal, and Cracked.com for this precise reason. They proclaim Rand to be evil and villainous but never elaborate on why they feel this way. There are no shortage of weaklings who will call Rand a stupid Russian bitch, but are incapable of grasping, let alone, refuting her philosophy.

Ayn Rand was one of the greatest thinkers of our era, and common to great thinkers, she was appreciated by some and despised by many. 

Life, Liberty, and Property

The most essential of all human rights are what the English Philosopher, John Locke referred to as “life, liberty, and property”. These three fundamental human rights must be universally recognised in order to ensure the basic dignity of man’s existence. Although many claim to support this in theory, they do not in practice. Indeed, much of the political zeitgeist of the day blatantly contradicts his philosophy.

The aforementioned three rights are claim rights. That is, they are claims made by the individual not to have his/her rights violated in these three ways. If I demand that you do not punch me in the chest, this is a claim right that all must recognize. If Sarah protests that you do not throw her NSYNC CDs into the path of an oncoming bus, this is also a claim right. A claim right is a negative claim one makes against oneself which ensures a duty on other parties regarding the holder of the claim. A liberty right, on the other hand is the claim one makes to permit himself to do something he wishes to do. For instance, I claim the liberty right to watch pornography and eat chocolate-mocha ice cream. My liberty rights end where another’s claim rights begin. I may claim the liberty right to stab Tim Allen in the neck with a Nazi youth dagger, but if Tim Allen makes the claim right that he does not want to be stabbed, then I am no longer at liberty to stab Tim Allen in the neck with a Nazi youth dagger. As needlessly complicated and philosophical as all this sounds, it ultimately boils down to the commonly shared belief that you cannot ethically hurt another person or steal from them without their consent. It seems like common sense that these rights should be respected. We have learned from infancy that stealing is wrong, violence is (usually) wrong, and slavery is wrong. Anybody who feels justified in thinking otherwise is a huge cunt.

Despite the fact that most people would agree that the right to life, liberty, and property make sense, it is not practiced in society and especially not in the political arena.  Socialism and Communism, by their very definitions are the antithesis of liberty rights and claim rights. Socialism, for example, is a socio-economic platform which advocates the social ownership of the means of production. That is to say, the private property of factory and business owners is not recognized. This is an imbecilic belief.  A political ideology that recognizes the property of some, but not the property of others is contradictory and morally corrupt. Either the right of property is universally recognized or it is not. There can be no grey area. A socialist government that feels justified in nationalizing a factory or textile mill one day may use the same justification to take your house, car, or your money the next. Either man has the right to own things or he does not. A government that purports the latter is a medieval tyranny.

Those who advocate socialism may do so for what they believe to be the common good of society.  The physical concept of a society however, does not exist. Society is merely an aggregate of individuals. The values and beliefs of a society are merely the conglomeration of all its respective individuals. A society cannot think or act on anyone’s behalf. The improvement of the standard of living of one demographic at the expense of another is not a moral or desirable evolution. If there was truly a need to assist some area of society (for instance: the poor, the disabled), then they would be assisted voluntarily through charity or philanthropists, rather than by the seized goods of others. Despite all the bleeding-heart rhetoric used by the socialists to justify their ideas, the core of their philosophy is:

“It is okay to steal property from people I don’t like in order to give to people I do.”

Those who put such a revolting belief into practice in their daily lives are known to us as common thieves. You can find them shoplifting from the mall, breaking into your house, holding shop-owners at gunpoint, or rotting away in prison.

Another commonly accepted means of thievery is taxation. Taxation is the initiation of force in the name of material gain. If somebody refuses to pay their taxes they are convicted and thrown in prison. Taxation operates on the same model that common extortionists do.

In any other circumstance, the idea of extortion is morally condemned. Take the example of a crack gang for instance. Crack gangs demand that all other crack dealers who operate within their turf pay them a share of their income. If they do not, then armed thugs are sent to break the disobedient dealer’s knees with a large bludgeoning objects (at the very best, they will use a pool cue). Such enterprises are morally reprehensible. Any crack dealer should be free to distribute his product to whomever he pleases without the threat of physical violence. A government who uses the same threat of physical violence is equally as reprehensible, regardless of why they do it.

Suppose that the very same crack gang used the money that they extorted in order to build homeless shelters and recreational centers for the inner city youth. Suppose that a substantial population within the community welcomed the crack gang and their iron-fisted antics. Does this mean that the gang is morally justified in stealing the income of some people and giving it to others? Fuck No. The initiation of force violates man’s basic rights to life, liberty, and property. It is irrelevant what the stolen money is being used on. Theft is theft.

No party is ever justified in threatening another with the use of violence for material gain. Even the most condemnable of all men are protected under the natural right to life, liberty, and property. It is immoral to violate another’s claim right regardless of the intention one may have in doing so. The ends never ever justify the means.

On Society

The society does not exist as a physical entity. What we refer to as society in colloquial terms is merely an abstract concept to denote the relationships between individual human beings. The school where I study is a society of students. The cafe where I go to drink coffee is a society as well, but the society within the cafe is only a relationship between all its constituents. It cannot think or feel anything for itself. As such, this relationship cannot assume responsibility, nor can it be held accountable for any initiative or project. Only an individual person can bear responsibility, and because the society is only an aggregate of individuals, it cannot possibly possess the capacity for thought or responsibility. A collective brain is an imbecile concept. All that has ever existed are individual minds and persons. If one addresses society as a whole without regard for those individual persons that compose it, they cannot be taken seriously.

For instance, when a politician says that drugs must be eliminated for the good of society, they are simply trying to impose their personal preferences upon individuals, and they are doing so under the guise of helping society. However, as society is no physical entity, it cannot be benefitted. Sure, many individuals may benefit from the elimination of drugs in our culture, but there will be those who do not. Thus, nobody can truly speak on behalf of society as a whole because every individual has entirely different dispositions that may not be accounted for.

When idealists and politicians clamour about how we as a society owe an obligation to some special interest, their argument is flawed at its very premise. Every person has different tastes and interests. It would thus be immoral to impose some particular interest on the whole of society’s shoulders under the guise of a universal responsibility to said interest.