Category Archives: Atheism

Fewer than half of the Netherlands now believe in God but for those finding atheism later in life after a strict religious upbringing, it is not an easy path.

I was 21 when I became involved in a struggle with the church authority, Zeelander Inge Bosscha (45) told Dutch News. I was in an abusive relationship and wanted a divorce. They said that God did not allow this.

Unanswered questions

Inge, the eldest of 10 children, was raised within the Reformed Liberated Church at the western end of the Netherlands Bible belt, which stretches from Zeeland to Overijssel. The event, she says, raised old questions that I had never been able to answer satisfactorily. I pushed those thoughts away, she says. I feared that I would not be a good Christian if I doubted so deeply the foundations of the faith.

But when Inge went through with the divorce, she was ostracised by her community and the church refused to let her baptise her baby. Her reconciliation with the congregation a year on could not shake her inner conflict. Something had been set in motion in my mind, she says. Two years later, she left. Today, Inge helps others atheists and agnostics to rebuild their lives after leaving their faith via her support platform dogmavrij.nl.

According to a 2022 report by the SCP, the governments socio-cultural think-tank, Inge is one of around nine million people in the Netherlands, just over half of the population, who now say they are atheist or agnostic. This figure has almost doubled since 1998, making the Netherlands one of the most secular countries in Europe. By contrast, just one in ten Americans describe themselves as atheist or agnostic.

Mourning

Despite the swing away from religion, the choice to live as a non-believer is not always easy here for those raised in a religious community. Inge says she experienced an intense mourning for everything that I once thought was normal and good, but turned out not to be at least, not always and not for me.

Becoming independent was also a challenge. My self-thinking and problem-solving abilities were poorly developed, she explains. [Before], all I had to do before was pray and hope in God.

The crisis had a profound effect on Inges mental and physical health. In the final years of the release process, I started to get more and more ill. I suffered from chronic pain and fatigue I thought I was hypersensitive or maybe crazy, she says.

Since 2015, Inge has been sharing her experiences and has received thousands of reactions from people who recognised themselves in her story. It was a huge relief, but also a shock, to see that there are so many others who have had similar experiences, she says.

Isolation

Maarten Freriks is the director of Secular Underground Network, a project which helps people from all over the world who are isolated or persecuted because of their beliefs. Freedom of thought is very well protected in the Netherlands, he told Dutch News.

For this reason, the extreme loneliness of people whose beliefs force them to flee their community or country, he says, can be hard to understand.

They are often really excluded from everyone around them, Freriks explains. Usually, when I start a new case, I say, lets make a map of your network because we have to mobilise everyone around you to help you get a job, get funding, get a place to stay and thats usually very, very limited They dont have their social network any more, they dont have their family any more. The family even sometimes try to kill them.

Asylum

Securing residency rights in the Netherlands for persecuted atheist migrants is often harder than for those who claim asylum on the basis of a religious conversion. Yet for atheist refugees such as Mehrzad (38), who was on his final warning after serving two prison sentences for refusing to follow Islam, relocating to the Netherlands away from all his friends and family in Iran was the difference between life and death.

According to the book of law in Iran, there is only one punishment for atheists and that is execution and Im not sure if European governments know this clearly, he told Dutch News.

Intellectually, he explains, he was unable to accept the scientific errors and outdated claims which cannot be true that he found in religious books. Reflecting freely your own thoughts and ideas, he says, should be a universal right and not limited to the Netherlands or Europe.

As he moved away from religion, Mehrzad, like Inge, noted a difference reflected in my approach towards problems. Instead of relying on God, you have to rely on yourself, he says. And though in the Netherlands he enjoys a level of safety, leaving everything behind was very hard and it still is.

Death threats

Lale Gl (24), who grew up in a strict Sunni Muslim household in Amsterdam which followed the Turkish political and religious Mill Gr movement, was cut off from her family and received multiple death threats after she published her bestselling novel Ik ga leven (Im going to live) in 2021. Based on her own journey from orthodoxy to atheism, the story details the protagonists struggle with her strict upbringing and the painful process of breaking free.

Speaking to NPO Start in March, Gl described how her loss of faith devastated her understanding of the world. Everything that you thought you knew just disappeared, she said. Its not the truth for you any more. And then I had to work out what my truth was, what my norms and values were, and thats hard.

Far from seeking to recruit fellow atheists, Gl speaks openly about the challenges of being part of the slim majority of non-adherents in the Netherlands.

Being an atheist is not attractive, its not something Id recommend, she said. I think its fine that most people in the world are believers. Atheists believe in nothing, they have nothing to look forward to. Youre going to die and thats it. Bad people wont be punished and good people wont be rewarded Its no fairy tale.

The Secular Underground Network is seeking volunteers. Find out more here.

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Atheism still not always easy in the Netherlands - DutchNews.nl - DutchNews.nl

CLINTON Titles dont come any drier would grimmer be more accurate? than Images of Atheism: The Soviet Assault on Religion. Yet the show, which runs through Oct. 2 at the Museum of Russian Icons, is visually lively, even playful. Cuteness-wise, the smiling cosmonaut saluting viewers in Vladimir Menshchikovs 1975 propaganda poster There Is No God verges on Disney-adorable.

Karl Marx famously declared that Religion is the opium of the people. Right there you had the theoretical underpinnings of the Bolsheviks opposition to religion. They were Godless Communists for a reason. Furthermore, the Russian Orthodox Church had been a pillar of the czarist state. Religion posed a political threat as both belief system and institutional force. So it makes sense, however bewildering such a name may sound, that there was a Godless Five-Year Plan to go along with the economic ones. The newly installed rulers of the newly installed Soviet Union considered religion anathema twice over.

What those rulers didnt consider anathema at least not initially was artistic innovation. During the 20s and spilling over somewhat into the 30s, Soviet visual culture witnessed an unrivaled degree of artistic ferment and innovation in film, photography, painting, and applied design.

A revolution in the arts matched the one going on in society, and that cultural revolutions energy and experimentation are very much evident in the anti-religious propaganda from those years. Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykhs Blacksmith, Beat the Bells into Ballbearings, from his Anti-Religious Alphabet (1932), is textbook Constructivism, with its use of photomontage, solid color, creative typography, interplay of angles and curves, and lets not forget that exhortatory title.

The Anti-Religious Alphabet is the shows centerpiece. Designed by Cheremnykh for classroom use, its a set of 27 letter cards (Cyrillic has more letters than Roman does). The cards served the dual purpose of helping young pupils learn their letters and disdain religion. Theyre agit-prop for kids. The titles make the propaganda aspect plain. Fords Factories Are Fascist Forts. Sacred Stories Are So Silly! Vile and Virulent Is the Vipers Venom (the viper in question being Pope Pius XI). The top-hatted capitalist seen in Believing Is Bad for You, Badder than Booze bears an alarming resemblance to Mr. Monopoly.

Most items in the show are from the 20s and 30s, with just a half dozen from the 70s and 80s. The former are far more vivid and imaginative. The Brezhnev era was no less sclerotic artistically than socially. An exception is that cosmonaut poster. The work of an artists collective known as the Fighting Pencil, it was inspired by a remark from cosmonaut Gherman Titov. Sometimes people are saying that God is out there, he remarked of outer space. I saw neither angels nor God. Notice how the steeples at the bottom of the poster include a mosque. The Soviets were ecumenical in their atheism.

In addition to the posters, the show includes such amusing ephemera as playing cards with anti-religious images and an ashtray in the shape of an Orthodox priest. The most striking thing about Images of Atheism isnt anything in the show, per se. Its the juxtaposition with the contents of the other galleries, which are just what one might expect in a museum devoted to, yes, Russian Icons.

IMAGES OF ATHEISM: The Soviet Assault on Religion

Museum of Russian Icons, 263 Union St., Clinton, through Oct. 2. 978-598-5000, http://www.museumofrussianicons.org

Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.

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Believing Is Bad for You: At the Museum of Russian Icons, Images of Atheism - The Boston Globe

This Zen kan is attributed to Master Linji Yixuan. It is over 1000 years old. Amonk deep in meditation experienced what he thought was enlightenment the awakening, the Buddha-mind and reported this to his master.

The master explained to the monk that this is nothing special at all, and can even hinder his real progress. The master then instructs: If you see the Buddha, kill him.

Even though you will find Buddhism listed as a religion all over the internet,theinternet is rarely correct or accurate. So we get to the matter of definition andmeaning, and nuance. There are no gods of any type in Buddhism. No beliefs. In a God or a belief that there is no God. Atheism is not scientific. And anti-theism or hostility to all religions is the source and cause of all religious wars: Bigotry. It is the absence of belief in anything other than the truth and living a life without fear of anything like Hell, or Heaven.The Sanskrit term is Dharma. All dharmas are forms of emptiness. Your truth may be No Truth. Or even Many Truths, and thats how Hemingway put it, or rather his editors did, in the posthumously publishedIslands in the Stream. I read it was a compilation of three unpublished texts cobbled together,anexcellent work. All gods are false, even your antigod or null god. Thats the teaching of Buddhism. Atheism itself is based on a belief that no one can prove nor disprove. Period. Its a grift like anything else. And Buddhists are far more serene than any Anti-theist.

The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

As secularism grows, atheists and agnostics are trying to expand and diversify their ranks.

Atheism is faith in the belief that there is no God (or gods). In fact, it is considered one of the fastest-growing religions. No Religion, according to an article in The National Geographic. Atheism is not Anti-theism, a term Chris Hitchens coined and self-identified as, an anti-theist. And probably Richard Dawkins as well is hostile to all religions. That hostility towards religion, or the beliefs of others, is another word for bigotry.

No one is immune from behaving in abigoted manner.Bigotry is the cause of all religious wars. End of story. I have respect for Hitchens, in spite of his peculiar idiosyncrasies, or maybe even because of them. Dawkins is allegedly a scientist, so he should know better. Hitch was just a journalist, much like Hemingway. I would have been interested in discussing Marx with Hitchens. He retained his identification as a Marxist, but largely realized as he got older that this meme explains the difference between the genius of Marx and Historical Materialism vs. the complete imbecility of Marxism as an ideology. And for many reasons not even related to the banning of free thought and/orbelief.

To paraphrase Dr. Victoria Harrison from the University of Glasgow in her 2006 paperThe Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a Multi-Cultural World, she states that as Theravada Buddhism is atheistic, it would otherwise have to be classified as non-religious. This fact alone puts Atheism in the category of a religion. But dont despair, even some Christians claim Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship with God. A parallax view.

12 Step Programs, like the prototype, Alcoholics Anonymous, are often considered nondenominational religion, because of the faith in a Higher Powerfor your salvation. In the study of addiction, we know that AA is not evidenced based. It cant be evidence-based and still remainanonymous. I doubt the majority of the public realizes this simple fact. It was never useful to me, but I would recommend it to clients. We all did itout of desperation because we still rely on outmoded models of addictionthat make the notion of a cure quaint. Originally, it was the moral failing model. You are weak and amoral. This led to AA. We have slowly moved to the medical or disease model of addiction. This is because we as a society are still ignorant, and by we, I mean science.Some have found help in AAand there are a number of reasons for this unrelated to its efficacy which can never be testedbased on actual evidence which can never be collected. Anecdotally, we use it out of desperation.In the field, you will even find 12 Step Groups for people who are addicted to 12 Step Groups. Or Porn, Sex, Drugs, even shopping, (or what we call retail therapy),but never addictions to money, or greed. Food, Power, however

If I refer to the 7 Heavenly Virtues or the 7 Deadly Sins, it does not make me a Christian or even a Catholic. The Catholics even still include Liberality as one of the Heavenly Virtues. Many others have substituted Charity for Liberality. They are not the same thing. And I often suspect thats intentional. See? Even the Catholics arent all bad. But that depends on how you define bad. This is the original Padre with a machine gun:Father Camilo Torres Restrepo. MaybeThomas Merton is more your style, no machine gun. Both are often considered bad Catholics by the Church.

I cant really say the same about Scientologists. All bad. And a joke only a few people get.

Bigotry is defined as an obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction; in particular, prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group. As with most words we use each day, relatively few of us really have a clear and present definition of the terms we toss around. It is always easier to recognize the bigotry ofothers than our own, especially when you are the target of that bigotry.

For myself, I have always preferred Ambrose Bierces definition of a bigot.

One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

At the root of every conflict, you will find bigotry. Think about it. In fact, truly religious wars are very rare. About 7 %, but 10% are the deadliest. In military science, this is known as a force multiplier. Twitter and Facebook are force multipliers, all so-called social networking platforms are, for disinformation and propaganda. Holy Wars are a morale multiplier also. Zealotry. The desire to eliminate all false beliefs but your own limited understanding of your own personal false beliefs is differentfrom this lunatic how? Please tell me, I want to know.And the Romans tried this. Look around, there are millions of them now so it was as effective as Feynmans Cargo Cult Science.Its not even scientific.

Psychological scientists are exploring the causes and effects of atheismand finding that believers and nonbelievers may have more in common than they realize

Wars, and conflicts, are still caused by the same thing they have always been caused by, as Marx understood: Class Conflict, but whip up any zealots or fanatics and there are your front line Storm Troopers, like the SA, the forerunners to the SS.

According to scholars such as Jeffrey Burton Russell, conflicts may not be rooted strictly in religion and instead may be a cover for the underlying secular power, ethnic, social, political, and economic reasons for conflict.[1] Other scholars have argued that what is termed "religious wars" is a largely "Western dichotomy" and a modern invention from the past few centuries, arguing that all wars that are classed as "religious" have secular (economic or political) ramifications.[2][3][4] In several conflicts including the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, the Syrian civil war, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, religious elements are overtly present, but variously described as fundamentalism or religious extremismdepending upon the observer's sympathies. However, studies on these cases often conclude that ethnic animosities drive much of the conflicts.[5]

According to the Encyclopedia of Wars, out of all 1,763 known/recorded historical conflicts, 121, or 6.87%, had religion as their primary cause.[6] Matthew White's The Great Big Book of Horrible Things gives religion as the primary cause of 11 of the world's 100 deadliest atrocities.[7][8]

And The founder of American Atheists started out with a noble endeavor that quickly became a grift. And she toyed with holocaust deniers. Another belief she couldnt abide. So considering the way she lived her life, and how she died, Id be hesitant to adopt her as anything more than another crackpot.

Atheists are not the ones youd expect to be engaged in wars about something they claim does not exist. None of the beliefs in our heads exist.

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If You Meet the Buddha on the Road... Kill Him. - Daily Kos

Tradition and Apocalypse:An Essay on the Future of Christian Beliefby david bentley hartbaker academic, 208 pages, $24.99

David Bentley Hart was once the darling of postliberal theologians for his brilliant books on divine beauty and the illogic of atheism. But in his new book, Tradition and Apocalypse, he argues that the Christian tradition is bankrupt.UsingNewmansEssay on Development of Doctrineas a foil, he insists that the rational unity of the Christian tradition cannot be known with any certitude, and what we take to be apostolic is little more than the result of political compromise, rhetorical evasion, and institutional expediency. Put simply, creedal Christianity radically contradicts Jesus and the apostles, whoaccording to Harttaught anarchist communism, pacifism, and the rejection of all political authority.

The Churchs institutional form through history, Hart insists, has been often almost comically corrupt and divisive.It would cause Hart not a moments distress to walk away from . . . Christian beliefs and institutions if he were to find them false or incoherent, and he is more than willing to conclude that Christian traditions intrinsic unity . . . is an illusionor even perhaps a lie.Against traditional accounts, he sees Christianity as containing an inner force of dissolution that incubates movements of unbelief and nihilism, but tends to begin again in the formless realm of spirit rather than flesh, spirit not letter.Small wonder that Hart praises the Churchs early gnostic enemies and complains that they were misunderstood.

Christians must beware of thinking they see any rational unity to Christian tradition, for the living tradition is essentially apocalyptic: an originating disruption of the historical past remembered in light of God's final disruption of the historical (and cosmic) future.The past is ever dissolving, by Harts account, and the future apocalypse will surprise us with an altered theological understanding that is both radical and irrevocable.

As part of his polemic against creedal Christianity, Hart argues that Arius, the fourth-century heretic, was a much more faithful representative of the oldest and most respectable school of Trinitarian speculation than were the partisans of the eventual Nicene settlement. The Arian claim that the Son was a creature was not especially exotic.Nicaeas settlement onhomoousioslacked biblical attestation, and the Arians were very plausibly . . . more faithful to scripture than their Nicene opponents. In the end, Nicene Christology was only one among many possible conceptions of the meaning of the Gospel.

Along the same revisionist lines, Hart insists that the apostle Paul's account of salvation is closer to the gnostic Valentinus's understanding of salvation than to much of the Thomist tradition or to Calvins doctrine of substitutionary atonement.Marcion, who repudiated the Old Testament, practiced a faith more consistent with Pauls beliefs than did Luther.

Hart repeatedly denounces the doctrine of eternal damnation of those condemned to hell.Those who accept itwhich means the vast majority of Christians who have ever livedinvite psychosis and the destruction of their moral intelligence.Their misunderstanding of eschatology matches their nave assumptions about the rational coherence in Christian tradition, which it is the gravamen of Tradition and Apocalypse to show is an illusion.

Following in that modern tradition of scholars who imagine that they have discovered the true meaning of the Bible for the first time, Hart tells us that Christians have failed to see that the original tale of thenarrative of Eden has nothing to do with a fall, original sin, or diabolical interference.It was originally the story of a chief god Yahweh who lied to his two pitiable serfs to keep them ignorant of better things.The high god tried (maladroitly) to make the serpent a helpmeet to these serfs.The serpent truthfully told these peasants that Yahweh was exploiting them.They discovered after eating from the tree that the serpent was right, so Yahweh fled in panic to the council of lesser gods to warn them that Adam and Eve might now eat from the tree of life and displace them by also becoming immortal.This was why they had to be expelled from the garden.

A reader can only chuckle over this fanciful reading. Harts rendition of Genesis 3 betrays a surprising inability to distinguish between background Near Eastern myths and their subtle refutations by the biblical author. He frequently invokes reason, the historical-critical method, and historical scholarship for warrants. Again the informed reader smiles, knowing that historical scholarship changes from generation to generation, often producing wildly contradictory judgments, but always put forward with great confidence that the scholar-genius has finally settled the matter and put to rest the notions of the benighted fools who came before him.

Hart pursues other tendentious readings of Scripture that pretend to be informed by historical reasoning, often to support his claims that true Christianity is anarchic, socialist, and pacifist. Yet the role of the modern German theology professor is not enough for Hart.He makes a metaphysical leap to philosophical perennialism not unlike that of the American transcendentalists in the nineteenth century. Emerson, for example,posited an inner unity to all world religions and a final metaphysical oneness opposed to all dualism. Hart does the same. The distinction between God and the creation is illusory.Christians should learn this monism, Hart avers, from Hindu thinkers like Shankara, developer of Advaita Vedanta.Or we should go to Islamic Sufism, which sees the truth of metaphysical monism with unparalleled brilliance.

Why did Solomon turn to idolatry after God used him to lead Israel and after he had written some of the most profound parts of Scripture?Why did Gideon make a golden ephod that became an idolatrous snare to himself and all Israel after Yahweh had used him to deliver Israel? We will never have a definitive answer to these questions.But we can see a similar turn in an erstwhile orthodox theologian who now embraces a gnostic reading of Genesis and heterodox views of Christology, creation, and salvation.

Perhaps Harts turn toward heterodoxy goes back to his embrace of universal salvation. Not all universalists have come to heretical conclusions about other Christian dogmas.But in his magisterial analysis of the history of universalism (TheDevils Redemption), Michael McClymond shows that universalism begins with the ancient gnostics, and once embraced by Christians, tends to unravel every major Christian dogma.This powerful tendency helps us understandif not explainHarts fall into Hindu metaphysics and gnostic theology.

Gerald McDermott recently retired from Beeson Divinity School.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectlyquoted the phrase narrative of Eden as true Eden story. We regret the error.

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Hart's Turn To Heterodoxy | Gerald McDermott - First Things

The first thing I learned about natural theology was that it was wrong. The idea that Gods existence could be proven by simply observing life on Earth that divine presence could be found in human eyes, the wings of bees, the order of orchids or the movements of the planets seemed archaic in a secular world where science reigned. And by the late 20th century, even those who rejected this secular world had started to turn away from natural theology: in the United States, evangelical Christians and other groups looked to the Bible, not nature, to justify their values. The very grounds of natural theology became something worthy of parody. I remember the British author Douglas Adamss depiction of the Babel fish in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (1979). This improbable living creature could provide instant universal translation to anyone who placed it inside their ear canal. For Adams, its existence served as the definitive disproof of a deity:

Adamss fantastical parody of the design argument came at a time when natural theology was increasingly regarded as both obsolete and absurd. Just under a decade later, Richard Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker (1986), which also took aim at arguments that God was revealed through the natural world. Dawkins wrote that there was compelling evidence and logic behind the natural theology arguments of previous centuries particularly those made popular by the British clergyman and philosopher William Paley in 1802 but that these arguments had been rendered obsolete by Charles Darwins accounts of living creatures that were not designed. Instead, they had evolved by chance. By the early 1990s, even antievolutionists were latching on to a version of this argument. These groups, including evangelical Christians in the US, claimed that the fault was not in natural theologys inherent logic, but in the out-of-date scientific examples that informed its argument. All of this came to a head in 2005, during the Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District court case in the US, which determined whether intelligent design could be taught in a Pennsylvania schools biology classes. The opposing sides in the courtroom could agree on only one thing. The central question of natural theology, they affirmed, was this: Can a God, creator, or Intelligence be proven to exist? This is the version of natural theology we inherit today. The problem is, reducing natural theology to a question of proof loses much of what it stood for. If the first thing you learned about natural theology was that it was wrong, the second should be that you didnt really learn about natural theology you learned a truncated version rooted in historical misunderstanding.

During the past millennium, the arguments for natural theology were about much more than proving Gods existence. Natural theology advocates were not writing to merely dissuade atheists; their foils were other religious believers whose doctrinal or denominational differences might be arbitrated by the public evidence of empirical science. Natural theology was never about proof as we have come to understand it. We see this in the writings of the Italian friar Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century; in the works of the English naturalist John Ray and the clergyman Paley in the 17th and 18th centuries; and among myriad other texts, including the eight Bridgewater Treatises, commissioned in 19th-century England to document the goodness of God as manifested in Creation. For natural theologians, the specific line of reasoning used to arrive at a proof of God determined the kind of answers one could reach about moral and political questions, about the nature of salvation, the toleration of other faiths, and the validity and interpretation of scripture. Natural theology was never exclusively about proving Gods existence through the complexity of the natural world. And yet, our contemporary rejections of natural theology have focused almost exclusively on this argument. Natural theologians and philosophers were instead motivated by a search for answers to the pressing moral and political questions of their day, and their arguments were as much about considering the epistemological grounds of proof, as they were about finding God in nature.

To understand how the natural theologians made their arguments requires us to understand the purpose of proof differently. Many of the arguments put forward by Aquinas, Ray, Paley and others follow specific rules of reasoning. They also follow commonly accepted rules of logical inference and conventions of citing publicly observable matters of fact. And yet, the demonstrations of proof made by these writers that is, descriptions of the natural world also served as a literary genre through which rhetorical and emotional appeals could be made that go beyond logic. At the time when they were published, these appeals to rhetoric and emotion would not just have been seen as displays of wit or cleverness. They also showed an understanding of how humans think: an expression of how nature and divinity can open ones mind and spirit to be moved and persuaded. Perhaps anticipating what scholars of psychology and communication would only conclude centuries later, natural theologians knew that people are rarely persuaded by reason alone.

Although Paley is less well known than the two other scholars he is most often contrasted with, David Hume and Darwin, his examples of natural theology remain ubiquitous today and, for that reason, also distorted. Paleys book Natural Theology: Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802) begins with perhaps the most misinterpreted discussion in the entire history of theology: the analogy of the watch. Should a person happen to come across a stone, Paley argued, one would not draw grand conclusions from it. But upon stumbling across a watch, a reasonable observer would quickly grasp that its many parts had been assembled for a purpose. There must be, he wrote, a kind of watchmaker. Paley later shows that the interpretation of the watch as something that has a purpose logically parallels how we might interpret various animal organs (eyes, ears, wings and more) and other natural systems as demonstrating purpose, too.

This watchmaker argument is commonly described as an argument about origins and complexity. In calling his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins argued that both watches and complex living things could have, in the terms of the Babel fish argument, evolved by chance. By this logic, if things such as body parts and living systems didnt require an interventionist creator, then Paleys argument crumbles. No creator? No purpose.

Except that Paley wasnt writing in total ignorance of the theological arguments that had come before him.

Think of the argument about the initial creation of the observable world: the argument of the first cause. This is sometimes posed as a question, Why is there something rather than nothing?, which has taken on various forms since it was included in Aquinass Summa Theologica (written c1265-73). Hume, writing about a quarter-century before Paley, offered an incisive criticism of the first-cause argument, claiming that it was an error to presume that a deity or creative designer would have purposes akin to human ones, or that the analogy between human intentions and nonhuman ones could be justified through anything other than circular arguments.

Paley would have been familiar with these ideas, and his Natural Theology is partially an attempt to offer answers to the logical criticisms that Hume raised decades earlier. Paleys opening comparison of the stone with the watch is one such answer a response to Humes argument about first causes. By rejecting the idea that the stone provides useful evidence of a creator, Paley avoids the oversimplified argument that the existence of anything proves Gods existence. But the watch provides something different: evidence of purpose. Thats not the same thing as evidence of a creator. In a later chapter of the book, Paley considers the possibility of a mechanical watch-like object that creates a replica of itself. Logically, these self-replicating watches were directly created by their predecessors, and the watch could have been the most recent generation of an infinite cycle of reproducing watches that exist eternally. Paley avoids discussion of first causes to sidestep, rather than refute, Humes criticism, and focus his logic instead on the question of purpose.

For Hume, purpose could not be proven without presupposing that God had an anthropomorphic nature, with desires, goals and plans like our own. We cant assume, he argued, that a God has the same purposes as human artisans. Paleys argument took a different direction. His view that nature has purposes is based on observations that objects seem adapted to make use of natural laws even when those laws did not play a direct role in fabricating them. A watch uses its springs, chains and other mechanical laws in a way that coincides with astronomical laws that define the day. Observing this, we may infer that there is a purpose found in the ability of the material world to make use of natural laws. Paley is suggesting that Humes argument can be cleaved in two: whether purposes can be revealed by objects in nature is a separate question to understanding exactly what those purposes are. For Paley, we observe this through the parts of the eye that seem arranged to make use of the laws of optics, or through birds wings that make use of aerodynamics, or through an ears expression of acoustic principles. We can observe this adaptation even if we dont understand sight or flight.

This argument was intended as a logical response to Hume. But, more importantly, it unveils an expanded view of Paleys beliefs. This version of natural theology reveals a deity who is known not by the instances where science fails, but at the moments when it most elegantly works. The reductive argument from design so often faulted by atheists and praised by antievolutionists suggests God is the best explanation remaining whenever we cant account for why things came to be as they are. Its based on a thin process of elimination with a vision of a creator that the Scottish theologian Henry Drummond derided as the God of the Gaps and it can testify to nothing other than mere existence. By contrast, and design, Paleys arguments are focused on getting beyond existence to questions of the attributes of the designer. In his view, because natural laws are found universally on Earth and beyond, then surely the author of those laws is both singular and omnipresent. More debatably, Paleys writing indicates that the world seems to minimise purposeless suffering and permits creatures to experience pleasure without any apparent ulterior purpose a suggestion that there is goodness in the governance of the world.

To understand Paleys argument, readers had to exist in a society that built, sold, regulated and consumed watches

This latter point gets at the heart of ethics and politics in Paleys day. In The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), Paley responds to the question of whether (and by what means) a well-ordered society would prove naturally beneficial to its inhabitants. The reason for his affirmative answer was the chaos and suffering caused by the French Revolution, which he abhorred. He cautioned against the possibility of a similar uprising in Britain. Paleys views were in conversation with those of the English economist Thomas Malthus, whose primary aim in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) was not simply to demonstrate that societies naturally and inevitably outgrow their resources, but that the suffering caused by population growth was neither inherently the result of failed governance nor incompatible with the moral edicts prescribed by a good and caring God.

Paleys awareness of and conversation with the political and economic order of the day plays a key role in his arguments for natural theology, in particular his example of the watch. In his day, the people who fabricated individual parts of timepieces chains, gears, dials and faces were not considered watchmakers (nor were those who assembled those pieces). That title was accorded only to those who supervised and managed such people. When Paleys Natural Theology was published in 1802, he understood that English watchmaking was a geographically and financially complex industry that had as many moving parts as individual watches themselves. This context changes the nature of the watchmaker argument considerably. To fully understand Paleys argument, readers of his Natural Theology had to exist in a society that built, sold, regulated and consumed watches, a society in which timepieces had become objects of form and fashion. To even consider the arguments merits, one must already be part of a complex human mechanism that relied on the adaptation of human parts to a unified purpose. In this way, the argument is self-confirming in a more convincing way than any argument that God exists because existence is a necessary attribute of God the ontological argument for a God of the Gaps.

In October 1802, weeks after Natural Theology was published, Paley received a letter from Bishop John Law, his close friend, former schoolmate and intellectual confidant. Paley had dedicated his first major work, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, to Laws father, who was the Bishop of Carlisle and a patron and supporter of Paley. Having just read Natural Theology, Law told Paley that his arguments for the divine goodness are so strong, that not only our reason is convinced, but as Barrow would say, we even touch and feel it with our senses.

Law quotes from a published sermon by the 17th-century English mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow, perhaps best known as Isaac Newtons mathematics teacher at Cambridge. Barrow draws from both the Book of Psalms and from the evidence of nature to explain the Goodness of God:

For Barrow, the goodness of God, which is attested to throughout the Psalms, is also demonstrated to us by the sensual ways in which it is experienced:

Barrows sermon remained topical enough 125 years after his death that Law would quote it in a personal letter to his old friend. This says much about the long tradition of natural theology as an engagement of embodiment and emotion, through touching, feeling and sensing in ways that are separate from, though perhaps complementary to, our faculties of logic and reason.

That history extends from Barrow through other natural theologians such as John Ray, whose book The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691) provides an account of awe-inspiring contrivances of nature, and suggests that humanity was created with both the mental and physical abilities to perceive Gods wisdom. This synthesis of knowledge as both thinking and sensing was key to the emergence of empiricism, as exemplified by Barrow and Rays contemporary John Locke, and was deeply influential on both the theological and political thought of Edmund Law and Paley. Both believed that religious truths could be accessed through universally available human experience, making them staunch defenders of religious toleration. Unlike private revelation or doctrinally demanded interpretations of scripture, the evidence of religious empiricism sensing and feeling God could arbitrate the long history of religious disputes in England. For Law, Paley and others, religious toleration took the form of rejecting the mandatory oath-taking required in England to hold office or access society. They argued that the moral harm from swearing false oaths caused greater spiritual damage than believing in the wrong doctrine.

Paleys appeal to readers sensations as a form of argument is a practical application of his view of how the mind processes the emotions that come from sensory experience. He discusses this early in The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, which leads him to navigate a morally conservative tightrope, insisting that experiences of pleasure and happiness were necessary to understanding God, but also that overindulgence in pleasurable experience for its own sake makes divine knowledge harder to grasp. Paley notes that over time and through repetition the emotional force of a sensation becomes blunted. Paley suggests that this blunting of the emotional response to certain sensations comes from the strengthening or relaxation of the fibres of the nervous system. Much later in his same work, he suggests that the biblical injunction against taking the name of God in vain may be understood as a caution against that familiar levity with which some learn to speak of the Deity a deity who should evoke feelings of awe and reverence. This injunction, which is at the heart of Paleys concern about false oaths, is not merely about moral harm; its also about ones easily blunted ability to grasp an embodied knowledge of God.

And yet, upon opening Natural Theology in 1802, Paleys first readers did not engage with his new book with all their senses directly. The texture of cut quarto pages, the smell of leather binding and the visual contrast of ink on paper are not what revealed God to them. Rather it was a remembered sensory experience, built upon Paleys expectation that his readers have been in the world, observed birds in flight and caught the scent of flowers in bloom. Theyve looked at the lights in the night-time skies and theyve heard the ticking of their watches. Paley relies upon that shared context of observing, sensing and knowing. His words contrive to evoke memories of moments of awe, experiences of beauty and wonder. However, this was often done with such skill that Paley was later dismissed as a populariser or educator rather than a theologian engaged in original argument and analysis.

They saw evolution not as a logical disproof of God, but as a tangible demonstration of divine power

In truth, natural theologians such as Paley and his successors were often doing both, and finding success in doing so for a variety of reasons. Their writing was not just a pragmatic marriage of natural philosophy and religious pluralism; nor was it a simple rejection of either the a priori rationalism that so often characterised continental European philosophy or the mystical-revelatory religious knowledge that took hold in some evangelical Christian movements in the 19th century. The English-language religious tradition of that period did not reject Darwins theory of evolution as incompatible with a Genesis account of creation or as a rejection of theism. This was not merely an attempt to broker a ceasefire between the opposing forces of science and religion. And it was not simply a compromise of compatibility. Rather, it was born out of a strong sense that the natural world revealed divine knowledge in a way that could be expressed logically and appeal extra-logically to emotion and sentiment. Many readers of Natural Theology have understood that a deity must be known not only through reason, but also sensed and felt.

This commitment to logic and feeling remained, even as new scientific discoveries compelled revisions to some of the naturalistic explanations that prior natural theologians had pointed to. By the 1830s, some editions of Paleys Natural Theology contained a footnote stating that it was now possible to explain not just the watch but also how the stone came to be. Paleys own writing, which Law had praised for its ability to evoke sensory memory, helped natural theology inspire a subgenre that gradually became what we call popular science or nature writing.

The union of logic and feeling reveals itself through theologian-scholars such as the US botanist Asa Gray and the English historian Charles Kingsley, who embraced Darwins theory of evolution in the 1860s. These same scholars also embraced the idea of a deity who could have enabled the living world to evolve into complex life, which they saw as testament to the wisdom, power and benevolence of a creator (one who hadnt simply created each species on an ad hoc basis). They saw evolution not as a logical disproof of God, but as an evocative and tangible demonstration of divine power, one that was felt every day in their own bodies.

However, efforts to promote more secular versions of science and less politically pluralistic interpretations of Christianity eventually came to dominate not just the debate over evolution, but the broader discussion of science and religion. To some concerned Christians, natural theology became associated with efforts to analyse the Bible through scientific tools and was subsequently derided as anti-Biblical. For them, biblical authority, not natural theology, was at the root of science-religion conflicts in the early 1900s. After the Second World War, English-language scientists tried to distinguish themselves from the militant atheism of their Soviet rivals, while also distancing themselves from caricatures of creationist fundamentalism. The compatibility of science and religion took hold as a logical possibility: one could now be both scientist and Christian. And so, over time, the work of Paley, Ray, William Buckland and many others was thinned out, and relegated to a mere God-proof that could, at best, be mounted as a defence against scientific debunking.

By the mid-20th century, natural theology was dying of the slow strangulation of faint praise. It was nothing more than a misguided if clever and well-intended attempt to prove that God exists without any recourse to scripture or revelation. The US scholar Ian Barbour, widely recognised as one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of science and religion, rejected the fundamental premise of natural theology when he wrote in 1966 that theology should not be based primarily on nature. Instead, Barbour suggested doing theology of nature something that was not natural theology. The primary difference seemed to be that one would do theology of nature from within a religious tradition, that is, after one was already convinced (by other means than nature) that there was a God worth doing theology about.

By the end of the century, this caricature of natural theology as a vaguely Christian effort to use nature to prove that God is real had taken root among both outspoken atheists and antievolutionists who had been compelled by American court rulings to demonstrate that they had an alternative to natural selection that was scientific. This version of natural theologys aims and origins became a rare point of consensus between those who wanted to prove that God didnt exist (thanks to Darwin) and those who wanted to prove that something exists (even if they couldnt say exactly what). It was further abetted by acolytes of Barbour and those of the science-religion dialogue whose positions rarely moved beyond statements that science and religion were logically or technically compatible. Mere existence, therefore, became the minimal and ultimate stakes for the argument from design a profoundly reductive vision of natural theology.

Intelligent Design and New Atheism converge on questions about the ethical and political nature of science

The erasure of the psychological and rhetorical complexity of natural theology that is, its recourse to embodied knowledge has had a damaging effect on religious philosophy in recent decades. Its contributed to the persistence of a so-called Intelligent Design movement, which, for years, has focused on trying to prove the existence of an intelligent agent without fully acknowledging or seeming to care that specific approaches to such proofs have implications for theology, politics or ethics. At the same time, the reduction of natural theology into a kind of logical proposition has allowed those who reject its repackaged proposition such as the New Atheists to assert that the disproofs of God and the secular science that they claim to be doing are value-neutral, apolitical and objective.

On the surface, it appears that Intelligent Design and New Atheism fundamentally disagree about the nature of biological evolution. However, the erasure of their shared intellectual history has allowed both movements to converge on more fundamental questions about the ethical and political nature of science. And often, theyve done this without acknowledging either their own biases or the ways that these arguments are inseparable from the cultural uses to which they are put. To get past the senseless duality that these two movements offer us, we may have to follow Law and Barrow, recalling that, in the synthesis of religion and science, we even touch and feel it with our senses.

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For natural theologians, proving God was beside the point - Aeon

Patrick Berg, MD will speak about the Origin of Life Wednesday evening at Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church in Kelly Hall as part of this years Los Alamos Faith & Science Forum series. Free dinner is offered at 6 p.m. and the talk begins at 6:30 p.m. Kelly Hall is located at 3900 . Trinity Drive. The Zoom link for the talk is: https://tinyurl.com/GodCosmos. For more information on upcoming lectures go to: losalamosfaithandscienceforum.org Courtesy photo

BY PATRICK BERG, M.D. MAJ, USAF

In 1802, William Paley published his famous watch analogy in Natural Theology. He asserted that if a watch is found in an open field, the inference we think is inevitable, (is) that the watch must have had a maker- that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other an artificer who formed it. He reviewed the complexity of human anatomy, as well as animals and plants, based on scientific understanding at the time. Seeing complexity far beyond a watch in plants, animals, and human anatomy, he concluded that there is a Creator.

William Paleys idea was not new. From the Greek philosophers to the Bible and the Quran, the existence of God was asserted to be self-evident on the basis of the wonder of the world we live in.However, after the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, scientifically minded individuals increasingly associated the theory of natural selection with the driving force that created the watch. This rigid association fueled an uptick in atheism.

However, natural selection as the mechanism of creation falls apart when we get down to the ground level. When we look at the mechanics of what is actually happening in all living organisms (which is biochemistry), the contribution of the theory of natural selection is placed in its proper perspective. It becomes evident that a completely naturalistic view of creation is actually a belief, which doesnt come anywhere close to meeting a burden of proof and isnt destined to at any point in the near future. In fact, while sometimes the devil is in the details, this presentation might demonstrate God is also in the details. When the details are examined, the wonder of life is affirmed as well today as when William Paley first published Natural Theology.

A cell is the basic unit of all life; therefore, the natural starting point for exploring whether natural processes explain how life came to be is to explore the development of the first cell. This presentation will briefly explain the primary mechanisms inside all cells, and then review the current degree to which a naturalistic explanation for them seems plausible, based on the current scientific research.

Patrick Berg, MD, Maj, USAFCritical Care Surgeon, 60th Medical Group, SGCS/SGCQClinical Assistant Professor of Surgery, Department of General Surgery, Division of Acute Care Surgery UC Davis Health

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Patrick Berg, MD To Speak On The Origin Of Life At Los Alamos Faith & Science Forum Wednesday - Los Alamos Reporter

In a sleepy Kerala village, three hot-headed atheists play a prank to mock superstition by installing Nireeswaran, literally anti-god. But beyond their wildest imagination, the mutilated idol is soon anointed as a god by the public, attracting hordes of devotees to the spot. It does not take long for miracles to be attributed to Nireeswaran. A lisping boy starts talking, a man wakes up from a coma after24 years, a jobless youth bags a government job after a prolonged wait, and a prostitute turns ascetic. In a fix, the trio turn against their own creation.

This, in a nutshell, is the plot of Nireeswaran, penned by V J James, the celebrated Malayalam novelist. First published in 2014, the novel, which has won many awards, including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award and the Vayalar award, has seen 13 editions. The work raises questions about blind faith and gives an insight into what spirituality is.

Known for innovative themes, unique characters and a distinctive style, James novels take readers into realms that are often unreal where reality and fantasy merge. No two novels of his are alike.

Anti-Clock is a novel depicting the quest for timelessness. Dathapaharam (a rumination on solitude), is about mans bonding with nature, and the links that attach us to this world. In Nireeswaran, James makes copious use of science and philosophy. Antony, Bhaskaran and Sahir draw up an elaborate plan to create a false deity to prove that belief in God is just a superstition. They have chosen the abode of Nireeswaran carefully. First, they rename the gods street Abhasa (debauched) street. The spot for consecration has been picked below a peepal and mango tree standing intertwined. They call the tree Athmavu. The trio manages to get Eswaran Embrandiri, a dejected priest, to do the consecration on a new moon night. The idol faces westwards unlike east-facing deities in temples.

A different trajectory

From then on, events take a different trajectory transforming Nireeswaran into an established god. As the number of devotees swells, a prayer group Niprasa emerges as an intermediary to help those seeking Nireeswarans blessing. Word spreads that Nireeswaran has miraculous powers. A protection force for Nireeswarans safety also emerges. The village witnesses unexpected prosperity. The creators are not amused. The villainous character has acquired a life beyond the control of its creators. Their efforts to destroy the idol boomerang.

Lively characters draw the reader to the novel. The transformation of the boisterous trio with a messianic zeal into objects of derision struggling to survive is depicted deftly. Roberto is a scientist researching smell. He also explores immense possibilities of the mind. He is determined to find a unit for measuring smell. The person who is enlisted to assist him is Janaki, the fallen woman, who has experienced the scent of many men. Villagers find their friendship hard to stomach.

Indrajit who wakes up from a coma after 24 years without ageing finds himself trapped between two worlds. When he emerges from the Rip Van Winklelike sleep, he develops the skill to read others minds. For his self-effacing wife Sudha, the husband becomes a stranger. She wants him back in his old form, asleep. Sumitran, whogets back his speech, turns intoa foremost devotee of Nireeswaran. Barber Maniyan, who has prospereddue to his proximity toNireeswaran, Khoshayatra Annamma and her four daughters, Damu, all impress.

Belief and disbelief

The novel is not about atheism but about ritualistic religion. A passage from the work says that seemingly illogical traditions are often the moral foundations that an individual relies on during difficulties.

Our society is certainly not ready for irreligion. Can atheism be treated as a religion in itself? Belief and disbelief are fundamentally the same, Embrandiri tells the rebellious atheists. The commercialisation of religion also comes into sharp focus.

A lot of philosophy and science have crept into Nireeswaran. Engineer-writer James says: I needed to travel to the interfaces where philosophical depths met the microscopic realms of science. But he doesnt take science as the last word.

It is humanity that ultimately triumphs. Some readers are bound to treat the heavy dose of philosophy and science as irrelevant to the story; however,the author succeeds in making it readable by the use of simple language.

Ministhys translation keeps the spirit of the original work largely intact. But it is doubtful whether it can match the simplicity of the narrative in Malayalam.

An incisive sense of humour permeates the novel. Satire is a powerful weapon in the hands of the novelist to attack a decadent system. An undercurrent of social satire is all-pervasivein this work and it forces the reader to reflect.

The maxim that literature holds a mirror up to life holds good for Nireeswaran.

What we are witnessing in recent times in the name of faith and religion is unnerving enough to numb our conscience, which makes this novel all the more necessary and readworthy.

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Head of gold and feet of clay - Deccan Herald

Id like to offer a rebuttal to the hypocritical letter submitted by Meredith Driscoll and signed by a cohort of other residents (LGBTQ+ students deserve same representation in Mt. Lebanon, June 19, TribLIVE). Ive lived in Mt. Lebanon for 30 years, and my children were educated in the schools.

Driscoll makes a few inane observations. LGBTQ+ students arent denied representation. They have the same representation and right to the same education that every other student has. There is no discrimination.

This lawsuit stems from the fact that a rogue teacher, with an agenda (that she admitted) decided to use materials that were not on the approved curriculum set by our school board.

This writer doesnt seem to understand her hypocrisy. How would she and her fellow letter signees feel if a teacher decided to come in and teach from the Bible? Or perhaps another teacher would come in and teach from Mein Kampf? Or is it only this writer and her pro-LGBTQ+ letter signees who want their views to be taught? I should add that this is for elementary children.

Driscoll says religious schools that actually do indoctrinate and discriminate. I realize that faith is an easy target these days, and everyone wants to point a finger at it and blame it for the worlds problems. However, it is actually the lack of faith, or atheism, that has led to the worlds largest genocides, such as the Bolshevik revolution, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

Brian Foster

Mt. Lebanon

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Letter to the editor: LGBTQ+ students represented in Mt. Lebanon - TribLIVE

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a state tuition program in the case Carson v. Makin.

In a 6-3 ruling, this decision sets a precedent for other states, that schools who choose to subsidize private schools cannot discriminate against religious ones.

As the decision was released to the public, several people took to Twitter expressing how displeased they were with the final ruling. Many felt that it could impact the separation of church and state, something founders of the United States expressed concern over when declaring independence from England.

People channeled their angry feelings into the form of comedy where many made the same joke about how under the new rule schools affiliated with non-traditional religions like the Church of Satan would benefit.

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"The best version of this story is if [Church of Satan] opens a high school in Maine and names its team mascot the Angels," Erin wrote on Twitter.

"What ever happened to the separation of church & state? On the other hand does this now pave the way for the [Church of Satan] to finally launch a federally funded kindergarten class?" Ted tweeted.

u201c@SenatorTimScott I cannot wait for the government to fund @ChurchofSatan schools!u201d

u201cThe Church of Satan definitely needs to open a High School in Maineu201d

In response to the jokes about it, the Church of Satan wrote "Satanism does not condone the indoctrination of children" as per one of the rules they adhere to is "do not harm little children."

Despite its name, the organization does not worship Satan or promote evil rather it believes in human autonomy, self-determination, atheism, and more in a mostly peaceful way.

u201cSatanism does not condone the indoctrination of children.u201d

In a separate tweet the group added "Our positions do not change with press cycles. We are not here to be your political punchline."

Chief John Roberts delivered the majority opinion of Carson v. Makin and noted that "a State need not subsidize private education but once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious."

Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion in which she highlighted the concerns that others expressed.

"This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build," Sotomayor wrote. "If a State cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any State that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens."

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Supreme Court ruling leads to jokes about the Church of Satan - indy100

American actor Johnny Depps defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard concluded on 27th May after six long weeks of testifying, cross-examination and various witnessesbeing called to the stand.

During the trial that took place in Virginias Fairfax County Court, Heard recalled her early childhood along with details of her first interactions with the Depp on the set of 2011s movie The Rum Diary.

Lets take a look inside Amber Heards childhood, journey to atheism and early acting career. Where is the Hollywood star from and how did she gain onscreen success?

Long before Amber Heards marriage disagreements were making headlines, the actress was described as a shy girl from her hometown.

On 22 April 1986, Heard was born inAustin, Texas to an internet researcher named Patricia Paige (formerly Parsons) and business owner David Clinton Heard.

Her father owned a small construction company and she has a younger sister named Whitney Henriquez who is now aged 34.

Independent reports that the Heard sisters were raised in a conservative Catholic household with modest finances. The 36-year-old now resides in Los Angeles.

Heard competed in beauty pageants in her younger years. In 2018, she told Glamour that her family made her responsible for raising the funds that she needed, so shed often ask businesses in her area to sponsor her ahead of the competitions.

However, the former beauty queen expressed her mixed feelings when asked how she feels about the industry now as she admitted: Pageants are weird, and I cant support the objectification.

Aside from her time spent on stage, Amber Heard had a few hobbies with her dad, who worked construction and broke horses in his free time. She told Glamour: I was his hunting and fishing buddy.

Prior to becoming a Hollywood star with a private life now the trending subject of a media frenzy, Heard was seen as an introverted schoolgirl.

Recalling the actress old school days, a former classmate told the Daily Mail that she was very quiet, and even earned herself the nickname Amber seen and not Heard because she was so timid.

However, the classmate said that Amber was always ambitious: She always seemed almost like her mind was just off somewhere else and she always said, Im going to go and be an actress and that is what I want to do.

When Heard was only 16, her best friend tragically died in a car accident. Independent states that as a result, she became an atheist. Amber previously told USA Today: That was the hardest blow emotionally that I have ever had to endure. Suddenly, you realize tomorrow might not come. Now I live by the motto, Today is what I have.

After her best friends death, Heard reportedly met her first serious boyfriend who introduced her to the writings of Russian-born atheist Ayn Rand. Nicki Swift reports that after reading all of her books, Heard stated: Ever since then, I have been obsessed with her ideals. All Ive ever needed is myself.

In an interview with Rob Brink for Misbehave, as per Friendly Athiest, the subject of religion came up and Heard was asked about her Catholic upbringing.

She said: Id like to thank the way I was raised for giving me enough knowledge about organized religion to make the adult decision to live the rest of my life without it. I dont think you can believe or not believe in anything unless you know a lot about it. I know Christianity, especially Catholicism, like the back of my hand. And my education has given me the freedom to know that it is completely absurd for me to believe it.

Amber later dropped out of school to pursue a modelling career in New York until switching gears to try acting in Los Angeles.

Heard began by sending her pictures to NYC agencies and doing modelling gigs, as she told The Independent.

While the young teenager apparently had no interest in being a model, she loved how different the big city was from her home in conservative Texas: I thought I had died and gone to heaven, she stated: From that moment on I was different.

The stars father previously told the Daily Mail that his daughter always had her heart set on becoming an actor. He added that she had dropped out of her private Catholic school at age 16 to pursue fame:

She wanted this for her career since she was 12-years-old, from the time she was a little girl.

Although Heards family eventually convinced her to return to Texas, she left again once she was aged 18.

According to USA Today, she later earned her diploma by going through a home-study program.

As an actor, she relived her competition days by playing Miss San Antonio in the action film Machete Kills.

Heard received her first leading role in the unconventional slasher filmAll the Boys Love Mandy Lane. The production premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival but was not released in Europe until 2008 and in the US until 2013 due to distribution problems, Wikipedia states.

During the defamation case that concluded on 27th May, Heard shared details of her first interactions with Johnny Depp on the set of 2011s movie The Rum Diary in Puerto Rico.

On 18th December 2018, Amber Heard wrote an op-ed forThe Washington Post, which was titled Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our cultures wrath. That has to change.

In the article, theAquamanactress detailed her exposure to abuse from a very young age and her experience of sexual harassment in college.

Johnny Depp is suing Amber Heard for defamation because of an op-ed she published in the Washington Post in 2018. Heard is countersuing Depp. The case is set to continue.

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In other news, A look at Jana Kramer and Gleb Savchenko's relationship amidst affair rumours

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Inside Amber Heards childhood, journey to atheism and early acting career - HITC - Football, Gaming, Movies, TV, Music