The analogy of the windowless room

In a discussion I had with a pastor who wanted to understand my decision to announce my atheism, I constructed an analogy which I think explains the difference of opinion between him and I: The Analogy of the Windowless Room.

I was a member of a church in my township which is a 15 minute walk from my home. I have been attending the church since 2007 and I have participated in the church until I was elected youth leader last year, after holding a few important positions in the youth section of the church.

My decision to leave the church and express my scepticism and atheism has come as a great shock to some including my former pastor. My atheism stems from an inherent seed of doubt for everything I have ever learned ever since I was eight or nine years old.

Now, as I was trying to explain to the man of god that my scepticism is based on the lack of objective evidence for the existence of god or the validity of the Christian religion (or any of the religions for that matter), I was trumped by his refusal to acknowledge the facts.

He explained to me how the order of the universe is evidence of the existence of a loving creator. He then proceeded to undo the science of astrophysics and biology through evolution. His facts lacked a true understanding of science and this only served to support the widely excepted idea of believers in god and practitioners of religion being close minded.

This sparked an image in my mind during the discussion of a four-sided room with a roof completely disjoint from the outside room. In this room of the imagination, I conjured up a room where god exists and the walls and the roof are belief and indoctrination.

Inside this room (which is neither big nor small but merely finite in size) is where all those who believe without question reside. This room is as big as those who reside in it believe it to be but the room is still limited it its dimensions. Outside the room is the real world full of facts and wonders that are waiting to be discovered.

Having created this setting, I put my sceptic self on the outside, in the real world. In this real world that exists outside the room, there are things we know to be physical, things that are supported by facts and there are more things that are unknown but waiting to be discovered. The pastor understood my way of looking at things and he pointed out how it was ironic that this world view was in fact narrow minded.

He reminded me how there are professionals such as medical doctors and intellectuals who are theists besides their worldly education. This forced me to change my room and put small windows on it that lets believers have limited glimpses of the real world, the world outside of blind belief.

As we went our separate ways, he promised to pray for me and I nodded in appreciation. Anyway, I continued to modify the room, or at least what the occupants thought they saw. From outside the room, the real world, the room does not in fact exist, or rather the walls that hold the inhabitants back.

You see, the walls of belief, dogmatism, indoctrination and community acceptance are as real as the barriers that keep football players within the field of play. In reality, in my world of the imagination at least, these lines are drawn on the ground, and as the football players are conditioned to never cross their barrier lines, so are the believers bound by mere lines in the ground.

So, there are no walls; this means the inhabitants of the non-existent room can see everything, the real world they find themselves in, but they are not allowed to cross the lines drawn in front of them.

This is an imaginary world as you know and analogies can only stretch so far but this is how I see things as they are.

“Atheists are intellectual idiots”

This is a response to my How can we teach morality without religion opinion column published in the Stanger Weekly newspaper.

“IS it not obvious that we should do unto others as we would like to be done unto us?”

With reference to the column written by Sibusiso Biyela published on 20 February [2015]: since you referred to the Bible, I have a few things to say. What you referred to here is from Christ’s Golden Rule but the Bible contains and is so much more than that.

Some have accused Jesus of “borrowing” the idea of the golden rule from the Eastern religions, which you seem to imply by saying you don’t think you need the Bible for that. However, the texts for Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, cited below, were all written between 500 and 400 BC, at the earliest.

Confucianism: "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" (Analects 15:23). Hindusim: “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you” (Mahabharata 5:1517).

Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." (Udanavarga 5:18).

These sayings are similar to the golden rule, but are stated ‘negatively’ and rely on passivity. Jesus’ golden rule is a ‘positive’ command to show love proactively. The Eastern religions say: “Refrain from doing”. Jesus says, “do!”

The Eastern religions say it is enough to hold your negative behavior in check; Jesus says to look for ways to act positively.

Conclusion: I consider atheists to be intellectual cowards who choose simplicity over complexity and difficulty. They too have a religion (which they deny) where they are the gods because they feel that   they can do everything themselves and prefer the theory of evolution (non-scientific), basically saying that morality was refined in animals before animals evolved into men and women. 

Sue Naidoo.

Related: Jesus Heals Today (letter)

How can we teach morals without religion?

I have often wondered how atheists and secular people go through life without god. I have asked myself what hope you have for the future without a supernatural being in your corner looking out for you. And I have wondered even more what morals mean to someone who is godless (god free?).

The first decade of my life was quite turbulent as my family consisting at least four children at a time and my mother never really stayed in one place for more than a year or two. In this way, I do not remember that we settled and subscribed to any church as a result.

I really got exposed to the life of church much later in the decade and only then was I smart enough to ask myself some questions. If memory serves me correctly, I think I was nine and suffering the pain of my first (of many) wisdom tooth. I asked myself, who is god?

From what I had seen at the time I concluded that god was there to keep human beings in order and to try to keep them from killing each other. Satisfied with my answer I reasoned that since I was a good person at the time that I did not need god and that I did not need religion.

As time went by and listened to priests from all manner of church, I started to realise that all that stuff they were saying from that black book made a lot of sense. In fact, I thought that all the good things the book said such as "do not steal", "do not kill another human being", e.t.c. were so obvious that I thought it a bit redundant to attend.

But attend I continued as by virtue of my mother, I did not have much choice in the matter. As time passed and I slept under the benches at "cross-night" overnight church services I noticed that every time the preacher man said these things, he promised the grownups and the other kids that we would go to heaven if we did these good things as god demanded.

This confused me quite a bit (existentialism can get very interesting for an adolescent). I mean, is it not obvious that we should do unto others as we would like to be done to us? Why the promise of bliss to add to it? And why perpetuate the promise of being branded a child of Satan if I am naughty?

I have always kept a cynical view of religion for these reasons. Anyway, when I first learned of atheism, I had this idea that they were devil-worshiping

freaks despite my own skepticism about god and religion. How can you seriously be a good person without having god guide you?

Through pop culture that I had witnessed from my more-than-fair share of television, I saw good deeds from people who did not acknowledge god in any of their works and trying this out myself I realised how much more pure it was to do good without the promise of heaven or prosperity.

Now, do not get me wrong, I am not goodie-two-shoes (this phrase always confused me), I have just been lucky enough to not get in a lot of trouble (relatively speaking) but I think I have a good grasp of what makes a good person good.

So, how do you live without god? How do you dissuade your children from evil without sending them to Sunday school? I think that you can be a good person by loving those close to you (and everyone else) and remembering to do to others what you wish to be done to you.

I don't think you need the bible for that.

Why I love to read and write

From childhood, I have been found escaping the boredom of chores while I busy myself with reading. I read everything from news stories to comic strips of an old paper used as cupboard lining.

This was noticed by my aunt when I was 11 or 12 years old while I was in her home in iNanda, near Durban. I was supposed to be washing dishes and I was caught with my head in the cupboard under the sink reading a Madam and Eve comic strip.

I don't know how long they had been standing there, but my mother and aunt were smiling when I realised I was being watched. They were proud my enthusiasm for reading but that did not exempt me from finishing up with the dishes that night.

As a result of this, I was given permission to read one of my late aunt's books from her collection in her room at my grandmother's house. Sliding my fingers  on the spines I perused which book I should engulf myself in I finally settled on the weird of them all called Gobbledigook.

What I can recall from the book is that it was a science fiction novel made for young adults about aliens that mistakenly abduct a boy and his friends and taking them to their planet or something of the sort.

I dug into that book and I was transported to another time, another country and to another planet. It made me forget my surroundings and even hunger failed to interrupt me from my journey.

The first full novel I had ever finished took me four days and I was impressed then seeing as I went through 50 pages a day from three or four hours' reading. My best friend, who goes through all of 600 pages Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in a day and a half (without sleeping) puts me to shame. I don't know why I still keep her around.

After I had finished with that adventure of a book, I quickly discovered that my avid reader of an aunt was a fan of the Archie series of comics and I went through her whole collection in a matter of days laughing at old humour and enjoying the adventures of a cartoon I had absolutely no connection with.

Archie saved me from many chores during my visit at aunt's as she would defend with my mother with muyekeni usafunda! (leave him be, he is reading) and I'd pretend to be none the wiser.

From there, I have since buried my head in many books of all genres and subjects until I came across a science book about Space and Time. Having not known that there was a connexion between space and time before, I dived into the unknown and came out the other end confused.

The book had illustrations and text explaining how time and space are actually manifestations of the same thing and how they can be manipulated by gravity to create blackholes which can be used to traverse vast distances in no time.

Half of the things I read at the time made little sense to me but they stuck with me. I started seeing answers in different places such as on the television and other books. Synapses lit up in a flurry of activity in my brain with every 'aha' moment and I proceeded to smile like a retard with each new discovery.

I soon discovered that human beings wrote these books that took me on adventures, told me things about the universe and about people who once lived. I realised that these writers were speaking to me from beyond the grave; in a way, their thoughts live on. I do not know of a better way to live after death than leaving your words behind.

And this is why I choose to write essays and columns most of which are published in newspapers and in this blog. I guess it is my attempt at living forever and a way of tracking what I have done with my life.

My words will stay forever in cyberspace and I want them to be things that will make people think and let some of my ideas be known or rejected. We all leave a digital footprint in cyberspace with the use of social media platforms and with the power of publishing your own words as blogs.

What are you leaving behind with your status updates, your tweets and Instagram photos? What will people think of you? Will they see the real you, or the you you chose to publish?

Just remember that whatever you put on the internet stays forever and becomes part of your online identity.

These days, when I am home and the chores are waiting to be done by me, I escape with "I'm writing something important for my blog". How things change as they stay the same.

Taken 3 took me nowhere

WITH many an internet meme suggesting that Bryan Mills' (Liam Neeson) daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), stay home for a change, following the much anticipated release of the third (and hopefully) last installment of the Taken series of films, I could not agree more.

In what seemed like an attempt to revive a long-dead story, the producers decided to kill Bryan’s ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and frame him for her death. I guess, this time round, the title ‘Taken’ is used in the figurative sense. Much of the movie’s plot centres around Bryan running from the cops and finding his wife’s killers as he is being hunted down by detective Frank Dotzler (Forrest Whitaker).

The first Taken movie, I thought, was one of the best action flicks I had seen in a long time as it revived the ‘sterring’ (sic) persona so many of us grew up with and admired in other sterings like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and various other members of the expandibles. I especially liked it for how clever it was made, how raw the action scenes are and the witty one liners:

               … I don’t know who you are,

               But I will look for you,

I will find you,

And I will kill you.

Okay, maybe that’s four lines, but my point is that the first movie was amazing only to be crapped on by Taken 2. Admittedly, I didn’t see the second one but I hear that everybody hated it.

One scene that really killed what little tolerance I had for the film; is where Bryan hijacks a cop car like a bad ass and veers into on-coming traffic (because no car chase scene is complete without going the wrong way on an already dangerous highway). Gone are the days when action movies crashed real 18-wheelers for the enjoyment of the audience.

The scene with the jack-knifing truck was so fake that I involuntarily face-palmed the rest of the scene and all I could hear were the sound effects of that typical wheel-squeak from a jack-knifing truck. I also hated the rudimentary user-interfaces that Bryan used on every computer and cellphone which were designed to show what he was doing with the computer in case it was not obvious enough to the audience who have never used a computer before.

 I can count so many things wrong with this movie but all I want to say now is: do not go watch it…but you will because you’re rebellious and I’ll say I told you so.

The Hulk hates the SAPS

In this new Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer, the Hulk is seen kicking at a South African police van (or bakkie) with the guys in blue trying in vain to shoot at him as the car rolls over like a flimsy piece of paper.

In the scene, the Hulk is seen fighting with Tony Stark in a bulky Iron Man suit (armour really) without much detail to spoil the movie.

Early reports by Avengers directors indicate that the first 10 minutes of the movie was all shot in South Africa, and I can't wait to see it and see what got the Hulk so AAAAANGRY in SA but I can think of a few things...

The much anticipated film, a sequel to the first Avengers movie is due to be released in May 2015 and I am one of the many who can hardly wait!

You want to start seeing the cop car being trashed at 0:49, but I'd suggest you see the whole video so you'll get excited as I am.

A case for atheism

A case for atheism

I am an atheist. I have come to realise that I was born was born one just as everyone else is. This includes you, your family and all your friends.

Others may refer to me as an infidel, others a lost soul, some might even think me the anti-Christ. These labels and others are quite effective at turning many a heretic into a believer.

An atheist, by definition, is an individual who does not believe in god. Going further, not believing in god does not necessarily mean that you automatically are certain that he (or she or they) does not exist. Atheists do not generally claim to know for sure what they do not, but we can, with certainty, spot bovine feces.

If reliable evidence would be found and a falsifiable theory proving the existence of god, then the atheist would start 'believing' in god without the burden of faith, but by the fulfilling use of reason in light of reliable evidence.

Atheists do not try to disprove the existence of god as his existence has never been proven in the first place. The atheist would rather point out the holes in your religion, which there are in abundance both in the holy books and the actions of devout fundamentalists and extremists.

Children are born not knowing of god and it is at a tender age that they get indoctrinated into believing that there is a god. It takes a lot to convince a child that god exists as they are coaxed into foregoing their common sense and the use of their senses to believe in the unseen.

As a child, you start to believe in god yourself as you are told that the unconditional love of your god will unleash his wrath should you choose not to love him back. It is like this in some traditional religions, at least.

A lot of us get the atheist beaten out of us from subliminal threats of social exclusion if we do not conform. So we give in to the beliefs of the elders and our peers although it goes against all of what we have independently learned about the world.

We stop caring. We stop asking. We already know what the answer is for everything. Who needs evidence when you have faith? Faith becomes everything. We start seeing manifestations of it (god) everywhere, in places where there is no such god.

We start to believe that he has a predetermined plan for us, which we have no control over, yet we still find ourselves praying to him. The atheist in each of us keeps rearing its ugly head begging us to see reason. Reason? Who needs such sacrilegious nonsense? It is pure blasphemy, the works of the devil himself.

We are told of a god who creates the universe, creates us himself with predetermined plans for all of us. Knowing full well what would happen, he still kills almost all of us to start anew. We are made to subscribe in such a god’s morals.

We are told of a god who then sacrifices himself to himself to save us from himself. We are made to see love in this act - an unconditional love that asks me to love him back for it or else...

This atheist in each of us challenges our faith. So we gather with others like us to convince ourselves of the inconceivable, and re-enforce our unsupported beliefs.

This column was inspired, in part by a quote from a prominent atheist and well-known actor, Emma Thompson where she says:

“I’m an atheist; I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Qur'an and I refute them.”