disenchantedbunny.

Tec’ma’te, RAs.

I find it a strange coincidence that the less of a life that I have, the more of a nerd I become. Within half a year, I managed to watch every single season of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis and now own a few seasons of SG-1 on dvd (which, I might add, is impressive on a student budget). Originally, I hated the show. But my ex was into it, so I got the original movie to watch. I loved it.

The main premise of the Stargate franchise is exploring the universe using alien technology. The secondary premise of the Stargate Movie and SG-1 is killing off gods.

Of course, these gods are technically dead anyway. Chronos will never be thought to come back to create time again, and people will never again believe that Apophis will battle Ra to take the sun from the sky. But it would seem rather pointless to offend the religious majority. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to step on the toes of your audience. There are no real direct attacks on Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism (excluding arguments made by idiots like this). It is the reasoning that the show uses to justify this killing that intrigues me.

For those unfamiliar with the show (and I do hope there are few of you), the original enemy are the Goa’uld, a parasitic race of beings who enslave the galaxy under the moniker of waring gods. The societies that they enslave are not polytheistic though; they all believe that their one, theistic god is the true god, and in most cases they will die for their belief. They are arrogant and temperamental, much like OT god. I am sure that most secular Christians would not care seeing those attributes removed from their proposed deity. But apart from disposing of the personified deities, early SG-1 is rather religion-friendly. The religion (or spirituality) that they follow is the rational, scientific process of ascension. So really, the show is attacking ‘faith-based’ religions, or non-verifiable, subjective religious experiences.

But it gets better, and worse. After the Goa’uld are adequately disposed of (there will always be a few OT-style deities being worshiped somewhere in the world, right?), a new enemy is introduced. The Ori are ascended beings who have been kind enough to show the world their ‘book of origin’. Their followers constantly quote their good book when their faith is attacked. They send off missionaries to convert or destroy. Many theists will argue that this does not resemble their beliefs, and, long-gone witch hunts and crusades aside, this is probably true. But the Ori are certainly fundamentalism incarnate.

But what most conservative theists probably don’t realise is that part of all this Origin bullshit is exactly what they believe. The Ori will destroy those for disbelief. We know the Ori are the bad guys because they are willing to punish those who can’t find enough evidence for belief in Origin. But isn’t this exactly the same as a deity who punishes those who fail to believe in him solely because they lack the evidence for that belief? Isn’t the notion of a perfectly benevolent deity incompatible with the notion of hell anyway? People must see some similarity here, as the show has been canceled and ratings have slightly fallen since the introduction of the new missionary-style baddies.

SG-1 points out a reason why I do not believe; what evidence is there for a perfectly benevolent deity? If hell awaits those who hold rationally acceptable beliefs, even if they’re wrong, then something is terribly wrong. Take an example from the history of science. Ptolemaic astronomy was way off the mark, and geocentricism seems ridiculous now. But people like Tycho Brahe were completely justified in their observations and measurements, even though their theories were off. The scientific community had observations that could be checked, repeated and verified, and just because their theories could not be expanded upon without observations made with powerful telescopes does not mean that they weren’t justified in believing what they did. Why does this analogy not get carried over in religious conversation? Why, when an atheist has no direct or inferred experience of a god (or any good metaphysical proof for his existence), do many theists still insist that their caring god will punish them for being reasonable? Even if there is a god, I doubt that he would punish us for being reasonable. This is even assuming that the notion of hell is even logically compatible with a benevolent god.

Save SG-1!

Lek tol,

James

This blog is going to be about three things that are important to me: music, video and religion. There are many instances atheism can be found in these mediums, and I like to hunt more down in my spare time. I like to watch how religion is portrayed in popular culture, how atheism is (mis)perceived by the general population and how blatantly stupid much of the stuff around is. Many misconceptions about atheism are reinforced by popular songs, television shows and movies while the non-strawman material gets pushed aside. But we all know there is good stuff and bad, and I want to discuss them both.

Starting with one of my favourite songs..

Motörhead - Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me

Little girl sleeping in dreams of peace,
Mommy’s been gone a long time,
Daddy comes home and she still sleeps,
Waiting for the world’s worst crime.
And he comes up the stairs like he always does,
And he never turns on the light,
And she’s wide awake, scared to death,
She smells his lust and she smells his sweat
Curled in a ball she holds her breath
Praying to a God that she’s never met

Don’t let daddy kiss me,
Don’t let daddy kiss me
Good night

Little girl lies by her daddy’s side
And she listens to him breathe
She knows there’s something awful wrong
That she’s far too young to see
And she knows she can’t tell anyone
She’s so full of guilt and shame,
And if she tells she’ll be all alone
They’d steal her daddy and they’d steal her home
And it’s not so bad when daddy leaves her alone
Praying to her God with his heart of stone

Don’t let daddy kiss me,
Don’t let daddy kiss me
Good night

Why, tell me why, the worst crime in the world

And daddy lies by his daughter’s side,
And he sleeps both deep and well
No nightmares come to him tonight,
Though his daughter lives in hell
For his seed is sown where it should not be
And the beast in his mind don’t care
And the only sounds are the tears that fall

Little girl turns her face to the wall
She knows that no one hears her call,
But it seems like God hears nothing at all

Don’t let daddy kiss me,
Don’t let daddy kiss me,
Don’t let daddy kiss me
Good night

This is obviously about the argument from evil, but it deals with a specific strand of apologetic: The free will defense.

According to the free will defense, moral evils are permissible for the greater good, that of free will. Claiming that a benevolent god can let a father rape his daughter seems implausible even on first impressions. Suppose one was in the position to stop this from happening; would we be responsible if we did not intervene? Why would an omnipotent and omni -benevolent god to create agents who do wrong when he could plausibly create agents who did no wrong? Suppose a theist denies that this is possible; they are then making the assumption that god is not benevolent. Perhaps theists arguing the free will defense should avoid discourse all together in an attempt to avoid influencing anyone’s free will.

Of course, people do not have the free will that the defense is suggesting. People are often born with violent inclinations, short tempers, stupidity, mental illness, ADD- and these are just genetically determined. What about socialization? There is too much of a correlation between education and upbringing (i.e. religious indoctrination, political beliefs) for it to be completely coincidental. Whether or not we have any free will at all is irrelevant. If people can’t make free choices, if people do wrong without meaning to at all, the defense doesn’t even begin to work.

If an interventionist God exists, he sure is picky. Everyone reading this blog here probably know all the claims made of miracles.. cancer gone, loved ones healed by faith alone, AA cures after repentance, etc. Why can’t doesn’t he stop this girl being abused? No legs are ever grown back after they’re amputated. If an interventionist God exists, he isn’t omni-benevolent, and he isn’t worthy of worship.

I know this is nothing new to all of you. I know that everything that I’ve talked about is highly simplified. But what I want to know is this:

Why do events like those mentioned in this song not get the thought they deserve? Why does this not make more people think about their religious convictions? What kind of person thinks that events like these are for the greater good?

Listen to the song, it fucking rocks.

James