Gospel of Atheism
1 Salvation by atheism
2 What is self-esteem?
3 Why is self-esteem important?
4 How to love yourself
5 You want to be happy
6 You can be happy
7 To love yourself means loving yourself alone ultimately
Fear is the father of evil
9 Nobody makes you unhappy but you
10 Let happiness come
11 Be easy to please
12 You just need to see your worth
13 Egoism is the way to go!
14 Distracted selfishness is your salvation
15 See that you are not a sinner
16 Be your own person
17 PT 1 Only God you need is you!
17a PT 2 Only God you need is you!
18 You have a will but it is not free in the religious sense
19 There is no free will and we don't really want it
20 Belief in fate is not really that bad
21 Liberation and guilt
22 Forgiveness in the popular sense is a snare!
23 Hatred in a spiritual disguise
24 Probability not possibility is what counts
25 Using reason correctly means protecting yourself correctly
26 There is no God - be your own God
27 Discard the oppressive God belief
28 Belief in God undermines your self-regard
29 Don't condone "God's" often cruel plan
30 Religion is harmful fantasy
31 Prayer is patronising
32 Harm of crediting revelation
33 Miracles are a toxic belief
34 Fast inner transformation for the atheist
35 Don't expect too much
36 Atheism in a positive way
37 Transforming your inner self
38 Feeling that life is meaningful
39 Mature optimism
40 Irresponsibility of the afterlife doctrine
41 Difference between right and wrong
42 Being fair
43 Value on human life
44 Can an egoist be a martyr for others?
45 Animal rights
46 Ways of being complicit in society's evil
47 Lying and stealing
48 Gossip is a plague
49 Need for social regulation
50 Proper relationship of church and state
51 Value of education
52 Evils of marriage
53 How to have a happy love life
54 Erotica is harmless and to be enjoyed
55 Overview, pillars of atheism
55a Essentials of atheism
56 About Humanism
57 Humanism is not a religion
58 Atheists here are the rules if you want them!
59 Being an atheist in a religious world
60 Making friends for humanist atheism
61 Spread the good news of atheistic humanism
62 End goal of atheistic humanism
63 Theorems of atheistic humanism

IT'S EASY TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE

Nobody can deny that some things are good - for example, good feelings. The only problem is in determining how to do what has the most good in it. Despite all the clashes between religions and schools of philosophy it is easy to distinguish right from wrong and the religious tenet that we need to believe in God to do it is a lie. We know for a start that if there is no perfect code of right and wrong we have to choose the best one. It is because there are faults with every moral code that there is so much of a dispute about what is right and wrong.

The law is that what is right is what promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This law has rarely been interpreted or implemented correctly. So it should be made a bit clearer: what is right is what promotes the greatest self-esteem and greatest rationality (you can't have self-esteem without correct thinking) of the greatest number. It matches the code of right behaviour that we want to believe in very closely. No system will be perfect so you just have to find the best one and stick to it. Motive is all-important in this for an action is only good when it is meant to be good. If the motive is bad then you defile, hurt and demean yourself. We need rules to make sure people have the right motives for if we let them bend the rules all the time they can do it with bad motives and say the motives were good.

There can be no security, order or contentment without rules. Some say we should stick to rules no matter how much harm it does. "Believe in God and serve him and never do other than these" is a notorious example. Others say we should have no rules but do whatever makes the most happiest. The right doctrine is found when we cross the two approaches and come up with, "Make the rules that are the best for most of us." We should do what is best for most people which means keeping the rules for it is best to be happy yourself and to make another happy for two happy people are better than one.

Some things that are called evil are really just neutral, neither good nor bad. But most of the time there is something that can be done that will be for the best.

Reason tells us what is right and wrong. Reason forbids the pollution of the environment. Reason forbids parents not supporting their children who depend on them. That's two examples.

Some may object: "Why these rules and not others? Order will still be maintained if we permitted a little child neglect and a certain amount of pollution. You can't say that permitting these is bad for it causes trouble for the law has to be enforced by causing trouble."

The answer is that these two things would be needless evils and evil is essentially an attack on self-esteem.

We feel that we want these rules. Even when we feel like breaking them or do break them we prefer them to be maintained even when our breaking them will be secret for they make us feel safe. The way we naturally feel about them would be a sufficient reason to stand by them and preach them for that would guarantee the greatest possible happiness of the greatest number in a harmless as possible way.

Rules should be confined to the bare minimum. A moral precept that can be done without, eg that a very decent man and woman living together outside of wedlock is a sin, is an extra burden on the world and it slanders the one who contravenes it as bad while the real baddies are the people who keep the precept and preach that it should be observed. The rules need to be as liberal as possible for you don't need a lot of control over people to organise society. Where there is no law we have to live as if there were a law. We have to live out the best code of right behaviour that we can find.



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