Bitch, please.

Here are a few of my objections, and why in principle I can’t say any longer that I’m “good without god”. “Good” is an over-used and generic word; the only word worse would have been to declare that we are nice without god. It’s so vague and context-dependent that it is meaningless… It’s an empty word that offers nothing but vague reassurances. It gets worse. We’re addressing the misconceptions of Christians by telling them we’re good, but many Christians have a specific understanding of goodness: it’s defined by their religion. Being good involves obeying the laws of their faith, of heeding the rules that their god uses to determine whether you get into heaven. Do you obey the Ten Commandments? Do you believe in Jesus? We overtly and explicitly reject the rules: by their definition, we aren’t good at all. They see our claim to be “good without god” as a contradiction in terms that proves that we’re bad. Yet I can still see myself as “good” because my definition of the word doesn’t involve obedience or blind loyalty or acceptance; it’s all about integrity, honesty, principles, questioning, independence. Try replacing “good” with any of those words — it becomes more accurate, but it also loses the blandly reassuring quality that is intended. And that’s really my big problem with the phrase: I don’t want to be reassuring to people whose awful bogosity I oppose. I want to provoke and challenge, I want to change the status quo, I want to tear down the gooey conventionality of morality and narrow standards of public behavior. I want us all to mock and laugh at public professions of piety. I want to change how people think, and I want people to reject the absurd claim that our morality is founded on an odious holy book.

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PZ Myers: Bad Without God (via cocknbull)

I think this also ties in with the idea that atheists have to be MORE pious and good so that we can prove we’re not a threat. But, y’know, fuck that because I don’t owe any religious institution my being good to impress them, and because atheism is a threat to religious dogma in the same way anyone not conforming to a status quo is.

(Source: extremeliking, via sixtyforty)