Anton Thorn

As the result of religiously-inspired ostracism and persecution, the word atheism is unfortunately laden with a cargo of negative connotations. For many people, the word atheism is equivalent to the word evil, and the admission that one is an atheist is considered to be little else than an open declaration of war against the "righteousness" of "God's people" and an alliance with Satan himself.

For the atheist, however, such baggage is a silly consignment.

The word atheist, as I use it in all the essays at this site, is broadly defined as absence of god-belief. This definition is true to the word's root origins. The word theism, from which the word atheism is formed, means "belief in God or gods," or, simply, god-belief. Theism does not mean 'God' but the belief in the notion of a God or gods. See Post 65 "The Definition of Atheism" of The Tindrbox Files.

Since I am a subscriber to rational philosophy, which is Objectivism, my view of reality and of knowledge does not begin by rejecting knowledge claims, but by recognizing that existence exists, and that existence exists independent of my own consciousness. I also recognize that the task of consciousness is to identify reality, not to create it, as many forms of philosophy essentially hold.

When faced with claims such as "God exists," I submit such claims to the exacting cipher of my reasoning, which is guided by rationally principled thought, which itself is anchored to reality by perceptually based, objective axioms. Contrary to the claims of many religionists, as an atheist I do not begin my pursuit of knowledge with the conclusion that there is no "God," for any opinion or position on the claim that there is a "God" is not essential to man's cognition. Therefore, my atheism is not a primary - as it is not my intellectual starting point, but a consequence of my allegiance to Reason - as my investigation into the claim "God exists" must appeal to more fundamental recognitions about reality, man, the nature of knowledge and the nature of evaluating claims. The same would have to be the case for any man attempting to accept the claim "God exists" as knowledge of reality.

Because I have scrutinized both the claim that God exists, and the arguments that are proposed to support this claim, under the light of Reason and through a process of Objectivism, I have no trouble openly announcing my atheism unflinchingly. While this may perturb many of those who subscribe to various god-belief programs, it is my hope that those lacking confidence in their own reasoning skills will recognize that the intimidation of religious schemes is a chimera and a lifeless carcass designed expressly to rob man of his reason and his capacity for joy.

What I offer at this site is a profound investigation into the claim that God exists and into the argument schemes offered to support such a claim, as well as the proper tools Man requires to examine such claims and defend His mind from religious inculcation.



An Interrogation

A frequently asked question I have fielded from the curious is:

"Why don't you believe in God?"

This question is often asked so naturally, as if those asking thought it inconceivable that one could admit to not believing in such things. Many visiting this site who have tried to convince themselves that there is some kind of "superior intelligent being" responsible for the existence of the universe and for the events in nature, have most likely wondered to themselves, "Why doesn't Anton Thorn believe that there is a God?"

In one sense, my entire website is designed to explain why the claim "God exists" is false, and to warn the world of the dangers posed to man if he should attempt to build his philosophy on the idea that the universe came into existence by the will of a "superior intelligent being" beyond our ability to perceive and comprehend, beyond our ability to reason with or objectively study. In this essay, however, I intend to give the "crash course" of my reasoning why I reject all god-belief claims and related philosophical programs in order to address seemingly unmet questions at the door, so to say.

To accomplish this, I have taken a letter I recently wrote which addressed three primary questions about my choice to reject god-belief, and edited it slightly for posting on this site. Throughout the points I offer in response to those questions, I provide references hyperlinks both to essays on and off my site and to hard sources of related interest outside the internet.

The questions which I answer below were posed to me in response to my AOL profile, which appears below. My profile must come up quite early in keyword searches because I have received over the years numerous queries from other AOL users in response to the statements I make in my profile.



Question One

I, Anton Thorn, was asked:

<< 1. In your profile u say u r an atheist to the core, why dont u believe in God, for most of the world, it is just accepted that there is a God, so u must have a reason for not believing in one. >>

First of all, one does not need to have a reason for "not believing" a certain alleged mental content; instead, one ought to be able to state his reasons for believing what he does believe. However, as this questioner correctly points out, my AOL profile does say that I am an atheist. And this is true. As stated above, I define 'atheism' here as: Absence of god-belief. I have no god-belief, therefore I am an atheist. In fact, I was born an atheist, as are all human beings. All god-belief is a learned belief, not something with which one is innately born. Anyone who claims to believe that a God exists, does so because he learned this claim at some point in his life and has later learned to repeat it.

Therefore, the shorthand response to this question is: Why would I believe that a God exists?

However, there are many reasons why I do not have a god-belief which I am willing to articulate. Each point below is, in my opinion, sufficient alone to reject the idea of "God." Among them, I would immediately point out (in no particular order):

1. 'God' is a false idea: All attempts to "define" what a "God" is, are not acts of defining, but acts of wiping out. Most definitions of "God" begin by stating what God is not: "God is not material," "God is not physical," "God is not natural," "God is not comprehensible," "God is not perceivable," "God does not extend into space," etc. Such ascription does nothing to identify what something is, it merely tells us what it is not. This is not a definition, but the evasion of offering a definition. Further, those attributes which are ascribed to God by those who hold a god-belief, are either incoherent (e.g., "omniscience" as "knowledge without means or purpose"), or they are unable to be integrated into a coherent whole (e.g., a 'perfect' being that is both 'living' but 'immortal', yet is said to have a 'purpose' - these ideas cannot be integrated into a single unit). Further problems which theists do not expect but cannot resolve when they are identified, arise when the claims of the religious are examined with objective scrutiny.

See the following sources:
The Anti-Concept 'God'(#28) of The Tindrbox Files
God and Omniscience, by Anton Thorn
A Perfect Being? by Anton Thorn
A Survey of Presuppositionalist Reversals (upcoming), by Anton Thorn

2. God-belief undermines and disables man's cognition: The assertion of "God" as "creator of the universe" (i.e., of existence) commits its defenders to a false view of reality and several associated fallacies:

1. The assertion of a universe-creating consciousness (e.g., "god", "allah" etc.) necessarily presupposes the primacy of consciousness view of reality, which is false and has disastrous implications for man's thinking.

See the following references:

Bernstein, Andrew, The Primacy of Consciousness Versus the Objectivist Ethics, Taped Lecture (5 tapes: 1993); available through Second Renaissance Books.
Kelley, David, The Primacy of Existence, Taped Lecture (1 tape: 1985); available at Principle Source.
Peikoff, Leonard, "Reality," Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, (1991), pp. 1-36.
Rand, Ayn, "The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made," Philosophy: Who Needs It, (1982), pp. 23-34.
A Dialogue on Induction, by Anton Thorn.

# Asserting a universe-creating consciousness commits the fallacy of the stolen concept.

See the following references:

Common Fallacies Atheists May Encounter When Dealing With Religionists, by Anton Thorn
The Argument from Existence, by Anton Thorn
The Byron-Choi Dilemma, by Anton Thorn
Kicking Against the Pricks, Volley 11: The Final Word, by Anton Thorn
From The Tindrbox Files:

o
o 51. Existence Still Exists
o 53. Re: Tindrbox From Exile
o 71. Checkmate
75. Public Response to BKNewton, Pt. 1

Survey of Catholic Philosophical Errors: Part I - Metaphysics, by Nick Wiltgen

# Examination of the idea of a universe-creating consciousness reveals the fallacy of pure self-reference at its very root as a necessary starting point for theistic cosmology and epistemology.

See my essay "God and Pure Self-Reference" in the Letters To A Young Atheologist series which deals with this issue in detail.

# The assertion of a universe-creating consciousness commits its believers to a false view of concepts which is riddled with instances of the fallacy of 'reverse-packaging' throughout most fundamental terms (e.g., "natural reality" vs. "supernatural reality").

See the following references:

Dear Apologist, by Anton Thorn
The Issue of the Historicity of Jesus in my series of the Letters To A Young Atheologist.

# Attempts to construct knowledge systems (i.e., philosophy, or more specifically, epistemology), due to the false view of concepts which is borne in god-belief, inevitably result in breaches of objective knowledge hierarchy (such as the notion of "divine revelation"), the treatment of knowledge as a-contextual, and a commitment to numerous frozen abstractions which have no valid reference to reality, no basis in sound reasoning and which are essentially contentless. Religious philosophy also operates on the failure to distinguish between knowledge and emotion, and this is a direct result of the attempt to blend both as if they were one and the same.

See the following references:

Rand, Ayn, "Philosophical Detection," Philosophy: Who Needs It
________, "For the New Intellectual," For the New Intellectual (1961)
________, "John Galt's Speech," Atlas Shrugged (1957)
The Roots of Christian Knowledge, by Anton Thorn (future essay)

# God-belief is irrational and anti-philosophical: Religious beliefs encourage anti-cognitive default from genuine, honest philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality and existence in that god-belief claims and associated doctrines are dogmatically based on the testimony of ancient men whose character we cannot scrutinize, and on the assumed verity of certain alleged historical events which must be accepted on faith, not on the principle of objective evidence or on sound reasoning which appeals to objective evidence. Since the "truth" of religious systems is based on alleged historical events (e.g., alleged revelations, Noah built an ark to escape a flood, David slew Goliath, Isaiah prophesied the destruction of Damascus [which, by the way, still stands], Jesus rose from the dead, Saul was converted into Paul, etc.) rather than on the basic facts of reality (e.g., existence exists, A is A, existence is identity, consciousness has identity, that man identifies reality by the use of reason, that he needs an objective theory of concepts and that his existence requires a rational code of values, etc.), god-belief must generate a mysticism of profound proportions which sustains itself by evading the facts of reality which conflict with it, or by rationalizing the hijacking of those facts into the guise of actually servicing the mystical evasions themselves. In essence, because all god-beliefs stand on the fallacy-ridden claims of pre-scientific men, and are not essentially confirmed by objective reality, they necessarily contradict sound, rational philosophy, which is Objectivism.

See the following sources:

Visit The Ayn Rand Institute for more details on Objectivism.
Interview with Anton Thorn
At The Tindrbox Files, see the following:

o
42. Re: Ayn Rand on Christianity
o
44. On Proof and the Laws of Logic
o
46. More Howardian Presumptions, Pt. I
o
48. Re: More Howardian Presumptions, Pt. I
o
49. Existence Exists Absolutely
o
54. Adam, Howard, and the Flood Myth
o
67. Re: Just What Is Christian Epistemology? Pt. I
o
68. Re: Just What Is Christian Epistemology? Pt. II
o
69. Re: Just What Is Christian Epistemology? Pt. III
o
70. Re: Bible Alone As Evidence?
See also:

Peikoff, Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
____________, The Ominous Parallels (1981)
Rand, Ayn, "For the New Intellectual," For the New Intellectual,
________, "Philosophy: Who Needs It," Philosophy: Who Needs It
Ridpath, John, Religion Versus Man Taped Lecture (2 tapes: 1989); available through Second Renaissance Books

* Mass acceptance is irrelevant: The supposed fact that the idea of "God" is accepted by "most of the world" is neither essential to nor relevant in examining the claim that "God exists." Additionally, any scheme that argues for the legitimacy of the claim that "God exists" on the premise that "most of the world" accepts it, constitutes an appeal to the collective, which is no basis for the rational evaluation of knowledge claims and the acceptance of an idea as knowledge. "Truth" is defined as the recognition of reality and is not subject to popular vote or peer approval. "Most of the world" at one time used to believe that the world is flat and that the sun traveled around the earth. On the contrary, however, after examining the facts of the matter, we learn that the earth is obliquely spherical, and that it not only rotates on an axis, but also revolves around the sun. Here, the majority were completely wrong. Simply because a large number of people accept an idea as knowledge does not mean that the idea is true. An idea must be measured by its own merits. The idea "God" has no merits whatsoever.

See the following resources:

My Correspondence Series Kicking Against the Pricks with Mr. X.
My series Letters To A Young Atheologist.
Letter 1: The Issue of the Historicity of Jesus, by Anton Thorn
Letter 4: On Theories and Epistemological Obligations, by Anton Thorn

* God-belief claims and religious systems subsist explicitly on fear: Most people throughout history do/did not "believe in God" simply because others did, but because of fear. The Bible admits that its entire epistemology (which is the means by which man identifies the nature of knowledge) is built on the believer's fear (e.g., Proverbs 1:7).

See the following sources:

Religion Wears A Bloody Glove, by Anton Thorn
Why Faith Requires Force (#29), by Anton Thorn, in The Tindrbox Files
The upcoming essay The Roots of Christian Knowledge, by Anton Thorn
Peikoff, Leonard, The Ominous Parallels
Rand, Ayn, "Faith and Force: Destroyers of the Modern World," Philosophy: Who Needs It

* Genuine belief in "God" is not possible to man: Since the idea of "God" is completely arbitrary, having no reference to reality whatsoever, man cannot actually accept it as legitimate knowledge of reality. Instead, what must take place is a psychological conditioning process, a kind of mind-game, which must play out in the mind of the aspiring believer. This is why god-belief systems like Christianity (and its many, many offshoots) emphasize that its believers occupy themselves with trying to get others to believe their god-belief claims. The hope which is sold to the believer accepting the "mission" work of seeking converts and "defending the faith" is that, as more and more individuals engage themselves in the struggle of believing the arbitrary, the individual practicing his religious apologetic will "grow in faith." Sadly, many believers never discover that this is nothing but a sham, and the joke is really on the believer. The only thing is, however, the devastation caused by god-belief programs is no joke, but a serious threat to man's life.

See the following resources:

Cohen, Edmund D., The Mind of the Bible-Believer
Binswanger, Harry, The Metaphysics of Consciousness, taped lecture
Dear Apologist, by Anton Thorn

* Apologetic arguments and systems fail: Not only are there insurmountable philosophical and conceptual problems that arise as a result of asserting god-belief claims and religious ideas, arguments and argument systems which are proposed in order to conclusively demonstrate the existence of God and defend particular theistic orders, are either invalid or contain internal errors or presumptions which require those accepting questionable premises to contradict the known facts of reality. One cannot argue a "supernatural being" into existence, however, this is precisely what is attempted when one attempts to "defend the faith" according to some particular theological position. Consequently, theology and apologetics are constantly evolving and "ripening" in their fallacious pungency in order to keep up, both with the demand of the mystical marketplace and the criticisms which they suffer as the result of man's increasing reliance on reason.

Many apologetic methods actually resist offering a reasoned defense of particular religious faith claims (which arises out of the implicit or psychological recognition that such claims are untenable), preferring instead to concentrate on disabling the non-believer's view of reality and overall sense of life and capacity for happiness. For those who attempt to "defend" their faith claims through such schemes, the operative hope driving the apologist is that his non-believing audience will be unable to respond to the apologetic critiques of non-belief, and that the non-believer will consequently be "won over" to accepting the faith claims as true, even though no rational support in their favor has been provided.
See the following sources:

On the secular web:
Criticism of Christian Apologetics and Apologists
Survey of Arguments for the Existence of God

See also:

Peikoff, Leonard, The Best Arguments for God - Part I, Taped Lecture (1 tape: 1999); available through Second Renaissance Books
______, The Best Arguments for God - Part II, Taped Lecture (1 tape: 1999); available through Second Renaissance Books

* God-belief is evil: 'Evil' is defined as "that which works against, opposes or stands against man's life on a large-scale basis." And the history of god-belief shows that evil is both its means and its end. While many ignore the consequences in reality when god-belief programs are applied by man, preferring instead to pontificate on the 'virtues' of their god-belief system because of its alleged theoretical soundness, the facts of history document without dispute the fact that the application of religion to man's life has deadly ramifications. Contentions that hold that "much good" has come out of religion always point to some philosophically adscititious point of reference which has been hijacked and interpolated as religion's product. Take for instance hospitals. Many Christians have argued to me that "Christians were responsible for the first hospitals in America." While it may indeed be a fact that many of the pioneers of medicine and the health industry have been Christian, it is an associative fallacy to credit Christianity proper with this value. How can a belief system that urges its adherents to sacrifice themselves, to "crucify" themselves as they walk the earth, to "take no thought of the morrow" and "think not what you will wear...", be responsible for the life-saving virtues of the medical industry? Those who fail to make a distinction between the man-hating doctrines of Christianity and the choice of some individuals to build hospitals commit themselves to grotesque self-deceit and a denial of the role of philosophy in man's life.

See the following sources:

King, David, Guide to Objectivism, chapter 9: Religion
Peikoff, Leonard, Religion Versus America, Taped Lecture (1 tape: 1986); available through Second Renaissance Books
Ridpath, John, Religion Versus Man, Taped Lecture (2 tapes: 1989); available through Second Renaissance Books
_____, Religion and Capitalism: The Case of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, Taped Lecture (2 tapes: 1998); available through Second Renaissance Books

* God-belief fosters evasion: Furthermore, god-belief not only condones, but actually encourages the compromising and evasion of personal responsibility by alleging that one can rely on the invisible forces of the supernatural (e.g., "God's plan" versus the "influence of the devil") to guide one's choices and actions or to take the blame for one's own immorality, failures or poor self-esteem.

See my essay The Mechanics of Evasion in my series Letters To A Young Atheologist for more details of this vice.

* God-belief fosters lust for the unearned: God-belief compels those who subscribe to it to accept unearned guilt. The doctrine of unearned guilt, which holds that man is guilty (i.e., morally corrupt) by virtue of his existence, is a natural consequence of the idea that a supernatural form of consciousness stands over reality. The idea that the universe was created by an act of consciousness bestows upon that consciousness the notion that it is superior to man, a superiority which can never be rationally demonstrated or confirmed, but which man must worship. Once accepted, it follows from the belief that the universe was created by a supernatural conscious will that man, being natural, is "spiritually cut off" from the supernatural. Many myths are asserted to explain the "fall of man," but the essentials to such programming is that he is unworthy of independent self-esteem and incapable of achieving the good by his own efforts, by virtue of the fact that he exists. Arguments for the acceptance of unearned guilt ultimately reduce to the ad baculum fallacy, "Believe, or be damned."

Acceptance of unearned guilt fosters the desire for unearned redemption, which most theistic philosophies offer in the form of salvation doctrines. Unearned redemption is always disguised as the reward for obedience and self-sacrifice.
See my essay God and Omniscience for an exposé of the religionist's claim to unearned knowledge.
See my upcoming essay The Dialogue of the Unearned for a detailed expose of this programming cue which is crucial to the success of religious mind-games.

With all these problems (and there are certainly more) of which I am keenly aware, why would I accept the idea that "God exists"? Can someone tell me why I should discard all these facts and accept such an unfounded claim?





Question Two

I was also asked:

<< 2. u also say that religion is the enslavement of man, what do u mean by that, and who is the one enslaving the people? >>

Actually, my profile states: "Religion triumphs at the enslavement of man" (see below). Of course, this begins in the mind of the individual believer whose mental productivity can be severely disabled by the processes of the mind-game mentioned above. For an in-depth analysis of how the evangelical mind-game works, see Cohen, Edmund D., The Mind of the Bible-Believer (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books), 1988.

On a societal level, religion finds its most large-scale destructiveness. The Bible is quintessentially a guide for mind-control, and lends its "principles" particularly well to petty tyrants and world dictators alike. Nowhere in the Bible, for instance, is the practice of slavery at all prohibited; in fact, in numerous places, in both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible actually gives provision to slave-owners on how slave-trading and slave-mastering should be conducted. Nowhere is this injustice corrected or reversed. Similarly, the Bible makes NO attempt whatsoever to articulate a rational doctrine of individual rights. "Rights" are a concept that is completely absent from the Bible's principle vocabulary.

Furthermore, the morality of the Bible is perfectly fit for a society of enslavement. The morality of obedience to commands which one is not allowed to question tempers the mind of the obedient to do exactly as they are told. Thus, when the Bible-believer says, "Yes, Lord!" he is no better than the obsequious Nazi storm trooper who says, "I vaz just folloving örders!" Commandments are not the stuff of rational morality; following commandments make rationality impossible for man.

The morality of the Bible is also the morality of self-sacrifice. A good slave is one who is willing to sacrifice his interests in favor of the interests of those who assume control over him, whether they be priests, civil servants or "spirits" which no one can perceive and with which no one can reason. The morality of self-sacrifice tempers the minds of those who practice it to offer themselves as means to the ends of those to whom they sacrifice. Thus, a victimizer depends on those who are willing to be victimized, and those who depend on slaves depend on those who willingly surrender their own minds, reason and will for whatever "good" has persuaded them to do so.

History shows the carnage and unspeakable horrors for which religious philosophy is responsible and of which religion is still quite capable when taken seriously and applied consistently with its reality-rejecting roots. Any brief look at the Dark Ages, which were ruled by Christians, will show a time that was dark on principle and an age when human suffering was an unquestionable part of life. Is it any wonder why nations like Germany, Italy, Russia, and numerous other nations, all highly influenced philosophically by centuries of Christian rule, finally declared outwardly what the world should have recognized long ago: that mysticism, collectivism and dictatorship all go hand in hand, because faith and force are corollaries?

Russia was "christianized" in AD 988 by Prince Vladimir I, and officially remained Christian until the October Revolution of 1918. For over nine bloody centuries, Christian mysticism prepared the soil of Russian society for the communism of Lenin and the gulags of Stalin. Prussia, Austria and most of today's Germany were for many centuries hotbeds of Christian mysticism, vying between the north's Lutheranism and the south's Roman Catholicism. This influence prepared the soil of these societies for dictators like Hitler and his obedient minions, who justified their unprecedented evil by standing on biblical doctrine (read Hitler's Mein Kampf some time for a real eye-opening experience!). Hitler's political sales pitch found many buyers, precisely because he explicitly wed his racial wrath with its religious roots with amazing persuasive ability.

Given these facts, including the facts that the Bible actually attempts to give "rules" to the practice of slave-ownership, that the Bible is completely silent when it comes to defining a rational doctrine of individual rights, and that biblical morality actually encourages the slave-like behavior of its believers, I rest my case that the statement in my profile, that "religion triumphs at the enslavement of man," soundly holds.

See the following references:
How Nazism concretized the horrors of Christian theism: Post 19 "The Philosophic Parallels Between Religion and Nazism" from The Tindrbox Files
Religion Wears A Bloody Glove, by Anton Thorn
Krueger, Doug, Copin' With Copan at the Secular Web
Peikoff, Leonard, The Ominous Parallels



Question Three

Finally, I was posed the following question:

<< 3. Do u believe in the historical figure of Jesus Christ (not necessarily all of the miracles, just that he existed)? thats basically all of the questions that i have, u dont need to hurry to respond, im just curios why u believe what u believe, and i find your beliefs very interesting. Thanks for your time >>

Whether or not someone named Jesus actually existed in first-century Palestine is uncertain, and most objective scholars agree with this. This is actually a very broad field of study, and one that interests me greatly. But no matter what one believes about the historicity of Jesus, there is no way at all by which one can prove that the claims made about Jesus are factual. In order to accept the claims about Jesus, one would have to simply take the word of the anonymous authors who wrote and compiled the New Testament at their word, and this is, in my opinion, very unwise.
See the following references:
The Historicity of Christ compendium on the Secular Web
Letter 1: The Issue of the Historicity of Jesus from my series Letters To A Young Atheologist
See also:
The Formation of the New Testament Canon, which is an excellent article by Richard Carrier on the Secular Web

Conclusion

Answers are possible, especially when one arms himself with reason. If one is willing to look at reality, and identify it on its own terms, he is capable of achieving objectivity. One cannot look at reality objectively and come away with the idea that a form of consciousness is responsible for its existence. For to do so undermines one's own cognition, not the cognition of others.

When one thinks in terms of essentials, when one adheres to the standard of reason, he no longer experiences the compulsion to submit his mind to the whims and deceits of others. From the failure to identify the objective starting point of one's cognition (i.e., the recognition that reality exists independent of consciousness), to the pursuit of unearned knowledge and unearned authority over others, to the evasion of the fact that man requires the free use of his own reasoning to exist, to the rationalizations that make those evasions seem palpable, the litany of philosophic errors committed by theism has its genesis.

God-belief, as I have pointed out above, is a destructive venture for man. It not only contradicts his own values, it undermines the very root that makes his values possible. By undermining his cognition, compelling him by fear and enslavement, committing him to the evil ravages of the arbitrary set in motion in his thought and to the standard of collective agreement, the wages of god-belief on the life of man are purely destructive.

I have offered a snapshot view of my reasons why I have no god-belief. Many may take exception to particular points here and there, but none would be able to surmount even one of them. The charges against the suspect, which is god-belief itself, have been identified and put before the court. And the verdict is in: god-belief is contrary to reality, sound philosophy and Man's life.