(Part 3) Top products from r/atheism

Thank you for the effort! I'll try to do you justice with a thorough response.

----

> 1. God says what he needs to say to us through the Bible.

Sure it's the Bible and not Harry Potter? To anyone without your obvious bias, the Bible looks like a collection of fanciful but poorly edited fiction. God's message hasn't reached me and it hasn't reached 5 billion other humans alone among the living. In other words, if this is an omnipotent's idea of effective communication, God sucks as a communicator.

> 2. God is not inert, he sometimes does miracles

Prove this and I'll leave you alone. Has God ever healed an amputee? Has God ever accomplished a miracle that has no natural explanation?

No wait, references to the work of fiction mentioned in #1 don't count. There is not the slightest bit of evidence that your precious Bible is anything more than a stack of useful rolling papers. I've addressed this before. J.K. Rowling has Harry Potter performing scores of miracles in her books, it's really easy to create a miracle with pen and paper.

> 3. The evidence is not inadequate. If you want evidence of his existence, there is evidence everywhere, and in sheer necessity, it is pointed out that God must exist.

So you say. Your following arguments are... sorely lacking. Here we go:

> 3.1 The need of a creator
If you saw a car in the forest, you wouldn't say it randomly came into existence and over time came together by itself, because it is too complex for that to have happened.

Correct. That's easy for me to say because I know exactly what a car is and how it's made.

> In the same way, this universe and everything in it is far too complex to randomly explode into existence and come together by itself, a creator is needed and that creator is God.

Your analogy doesn't hold. The universe is not very complex conceptually, it's been satisfactorily explained how all heavenly bodies resulted from the expansion of space followed by the clumping of clouds of primeval hydrogen. Suns and the nuclear process in them? A natural consequence of packing a lot of hydrogen with gravity. Heavy elements? The ashes of nuclear fusion. Planets circling around suns? That's what happens when heavenly bodies nearly collide in a vacuum, influenced only by each other's gravity. Finally, the complexity of life on earth is neatly explained by evolution from very primitive beginnings from substances that occur -naturally- in the void of lifeless space. No magic is required to explain any of this. But I see we get to talk about this in greater depth in #4.

Still, for your interest, this video refutes Craig's Kalam Cosmological argument and is thoroughly captivating while presenting modern cosmology. Highly recommended!

> 3.2 The need for an original mover/causer
You know nothing moves by itself correct?

No, I don't know this, because I have a solid education in physics. Atomic nuclei spontaneously explode and particles fly from them - movement without a mover. Plato's Prime Mover argument dates back to a time when people didn't know anything about physics and science was done by sitting on your butt, guessing and thinking.

> 3.3 The need of a standard
When you call something, for instance let's say "good", there has to be a standard upon which good is based.

This response of yours -so far- is sounding suspiciously like a copy of a William Lane Craig debate argument. Please note that all of his arguments have been successfully refuted - though not necessarily within one debate or only within debates. But regardless, I can easily address your arguments on my own.

Now then. Basic moral behavior has been shown to emerge naturally as a result of evolution. Yes, this is why theists hate evolution so much. It explains a lot of stuff that used to be attributed to God. Animals in the wild show moral behavior such as altruism, fairness, love, cooperation, justice and so forth. Even robot simulations, given only the most minimal initial instructions, develop "moral" behavior because that turns out to be a successful selection criteria for survival.

If you try to point out that humans display and think about much more complex moral situations than animals, I'll agree. But you know who invented those extensions of purely survival-oriented moral behavior? Humans did, not God. Humans look at the behaviors that promote survival and well-being in animals and humans and call it "good." They see behavior that hurts and kills animals and people and makes them suffer, and they call it "bad." Your five year old kid can grasp this concept - you insult your god when you claim this is so difficult it necessarily requires divine intervention. I recommend Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics, a thoughtful and thorough discussion of morals far more nuanced and acceptable to a modern society than the barbaric postulates of scripture. Rape a virgin, buy her as a wife for 50 shekels, indeed!

> 4.1 About the Origin of Life/Finely tuning a killer cosmos

> Anyway, for life to come together even by accident, you would need matter

Correct.

> now the universe is not infinite and even scientists know that.

I'm not sure that's certain, but it's probably irrelevant. Let's move on.

> that scientists say made the universe would need matter present.

Correct. We certainly observe a helluva lot of matter in the present-day universe (to the extent we can observe it).

> Where do you expect that matter to have come from?

An empty geometry and some very basic laws of physics (including quantum physics). This is very un-intuitive, which is why people restricted to Platonic thinking have trouble with it. But you know that matter and energy are equivalent, via E=mc^2 , right? Given the raw physics of the very early universe, matter could be created from energy and vice versa. OK, that still doesn't explain where the (matter+energy) came from. Here's the fun part: it turns out that the universe contains not just the conventional "positive" energy we're familiar with, but also negative energy. And it turns out that the sum of (matter + positive energy) on one hand and (negative energy) on the other are exactly equal and cancel out. In other words, and this is important, the creation of the universe incurred no net "cost" in matter or energy. This being the case, it becomes similarly plausible for for the entire universe to have spontaneously popped into existence just like those sub-atomic particles that cause the Casimir Effect. Stephen Hawking has explained this eloquently in his book The Grand Design but you may prefer Lawrence Krauss' engaging lecture A Universe From Nothing.

> I know for a fact that people are smarter than an explosion and even they have been unsuccessful in making organic life forms from scratch

Wrong again. It took them 15 years, but Craig Venter and his project recently succeeded in constructing the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell.

By way of interest, people making the kind of claims you do were similarly amazed when Friedrich Wöhler, in 1828, synthesized the first chemical compound, urea, that is otherwise only created by living beings. This achievement torpedoed the Vital Force theory dating back to Galen. Yet another job taken off God's hands.

> let alone have them survive the forming of a planet.

Now this is just dumb. First the planet formed, then it cooled down a bit, then life developed.

> Because of that, I doubt an explosion could do it either.

So you're right there: The explosion just created the planet and the raw materials. Life later arose on the planet.

> Chance doesn't make matter pop into existence.

Yes it does. The effect I was mentioning earlier is called quantum fluctuation.

> 4.2 The human brain

(skipping the comparison of man with god. I don't see it contributing anything. All of this postulating doesn't make God plausible in any way)

> 4.3 The Original Christian Cosmos

> 4.3.1. Maybe because we are after the fall, we have already lost that perfect original cosmos Paul imagined.

Wait, this contradicts your next point.

> 4.3.2 You have to give Paul some credit for trying. He didn't have any the information or technology we have today.

Thank you, this confirms my assertion that the Bible and its authors contain no divinely inspired knowledge. The Bible is a collection of writings by people who thought you could cleanse leprosy by killing a couple of pigeons.

Now, about that original cosmos: either Paul was too uneducated to conceive the cosmos as it really exists, or what he imagined is irrelevant. In any case, what you consider the "after loss" cosmos is trillions of times larger than Paul imagined; it would be silly to call this a loss.

The fact remains that the world as described in the Bible is a pitiful caricature of the world as it is known today. And Carrier's main point remains that our cosmos is incredibly hostile to life; and if man were indeed God's favorite creation, the immensity of the cosmos would be a complete waste if it only served as a backdrop for our tiny little planet.

I feel like you bringing up
> Was it all the symbolism the Illuminati flashed before your eyes?

Is just proof that you're here to try and spark conflicts and upset people. If that is not the case then I do feel that this specific quote is disrespectful.

As I suggested, please go and read a satanic bible and also visit The Satanic Temple's website. Those should paint a pretty good picture of modern day Satanism. Alternatively, you can just ask me specific questions and I can provide answers. WARNING: I'm not trying to convert you or push a mindset on you! These are merely suggestions so that you may further your knowledge in these areas as you seem to know much about Christianity and Jesus but little about opposing views/arguments against that.

To answer this quote from you
> I wouldn't be so surprised if this was r/satanism, but it is r/atheism.

I agree that there are many different "sects", if you will, of satanism, but most of these sects are atheist in nature; hence, why I'm here and trying to educate you as best I can on the matter. Speaking as general as possible, Satanists don't believe in some great amazing sky God who created humanity as a bunch of worshipers, nor do satanists believe in many of the "holy texts" from other religions that have been mostly disproved by history.

Now let me go ahead and elaborate on this quote of mine because you keep coming back to it.
> Satan is perfect

You said something about how Satan symbolizes evil and corruption. Where does that definition come from, who taught you that, and why is this the case? When I read the satanic bible, that is not the impression I got. In fact, when you research Lucifer and many of the popular names of Satan, many of them have really amazing and beautiful origins. From what I've studied, these were mostly erased/twisted after the Christian church came into contact with the "pagans" who worshiped or new these Gods/"demons".

This is why I feel that Satan is a perfect counter in situations like the one from the original article. It makes people think. It makes people ask questions and many times the answers to those questions have to be found in something other than the religious text that they started in. Satanism doesn't have the "this is it, the only thing you're allowed to believe or you burn for eternity" clause that forces people to cower in fear about studying or believing anything other than what they started with. It encourages the opposite.

I'm happy to continue this discussion as long as you are and I apologize if you genuinely feel that this
> You people are not being very respectful at all.

is true. That isn't what I've intended in any of my discussion so far.

Yes, I do believe it is by chance and I don't believe one needs to posit a god as the creator of the universe to explain its existence. And if one does, then where did that god come from?

E.g., one could explain the existence of the universe as the eminent theoretical physicist and cosmologist Steven Hawking did in The Grand Design.

>In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
>
>He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

Source: Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe

I know it is hard for many people to accept that chance is involved in our existence. The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is reputed to have remarked about God in relation to quantum mechanics that "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice", which is commonly paraphrased as "God does not play dice with the universe." Supposedly, either Neils Bohr or Enrico Fermi remarked "Stop telling God what to do with his dice." - Source. And, Stephen Hawking remarked in a 1994 debate with Roger Penrose that "Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." Source.

Note: One shouldn't assume that the use of "God" by any of them means the notion of God commonly held by Christians today. But, their remarks do show that there has been much disagreement among eminent physicists regarding the role that chance plays in the universe.

If by chance most species of dinosaurs on earth had not been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, such as an asteroid strike on earth, 65 million years ago, the creatures posing the question "Do you really think that our existence is owed just to chance" might look something like one of the creatures depicted here.

We may simply be like that puddle mentioned by Douglas Adams.

>This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there's plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that's a very dangerous thing to say.

Source: Is there an Artificial God?

As to why humans tend to find certain environmental features beautiful, well natural selection offers an explanation.

>One of the most important considerations in the survival of any organism is habitat selection. Until the development of cities 10,000 years ago, human life was mostly nomadic. Finding desirable conditions for survival, particularly with an eye towards potential food and predators, would have selectively affected the human response to landscape—the capacity of landscape types to evoke positive emotions, rejection, inquisitiveness, and a desire to explore, or a general sense of comfort. Responses to landscape types have been tested in an experiment in which standardized photographs of landscape types were shown to people of different ages and in different countries: deciduous forest, tropical forest, open savannah with trees, coniferous forest, and desert. Among adults, no category stood out as preferred (except that the desert landscape fell slightly below the preference rating of the others). However, when the experiment was applied to young children, it was found that they showed a marked preference for savannahs with trees-exactly the East African landscape where much early human evolution took place (Orians and Heerwagen 1992). Beyond a liking for savannahs, there is a general preference for landscapes with water; a variety of open and wooded space (indicating places to hide and places for game to hide); trees that fork near the ground (provide escape possibilities) with fruiting potential a metre or two from the ground; vistas that recede in the distance, including a path or river that bends out of view but invites exploration; the direct presence or implication of game animals; and variegated cloud patterns. The savannah environment is in fact a singularly food-rich environment (calculated in terms of kilograms of protein per square kilometre), and highly desirable for a hunter-gatherer way of life. Not surprisingly, these are the very elements we see repeated endlessly in both calendar art and in the design of public parks worldwide.

Source: Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology

Or see Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution by David Rothenberg

No, you certainly don't seem arrogant to me. I wouldn't assume just because someone has a different opinion on such matters that means he or she is arrogant. Nor do I downvote people just because their views don't match my own as I noticed someone did to your comments.

One of the reasons I visit reddit is to expose myself to others' viewpoints so that I can, hopefully, learn from doing so.

I am not totally sure what you are asking for actually exists in book form...which is odd, now that I think about it.

If it were me, I would think about magazines instead. And if you really want to push him, think about the following options:

1. Science News, which is very similar to the front-matter of the leading scientific journal Science. This includes news from the past month, and some in-depth articles. It is much better written -- and written at a much higher level -- than Scientific American or Discover. For a very intelligent (and science-interested) high school student, this should pose little difficulty.
   
2. The actual journal Science. This is weekly, which is nice. In addition to the news sections, this also includes editorials and actual science papers. While many of the actual papers will be beyond your son, he can still see what passes for presentation of data in the sciences, and that is cool.
   
3. The actual journal Nature. This is also weekly, and is the british version of the journal Science. In my opinion, the news section is better written than Science, which is important as this is where your kid's reading will be mostly done. IN addition, Nature always has sections on careers and education, so that your son will be exposed to the more human elements of science. Finally, the end of nature always has a 1-page sci-fi story, and that is fun as well.
   
4. If you must, you could try Scientific American or Discover, but if you really want to give your kid a cool gift, that is a challenge, go for one of the top three here. I would highly recommend Nature.
   
   If you insist on books...
   
   I see you already mentioned A Brief History of the Universe, which is an excellent book. However, I am not sure if you are going to get something that is more "in depth." Much of the "in depth" stuff is going to be pretty pop, without the rigorous foundation that are usually found in textbooks.
   
   If I had to recommend some books, here is what I would say:
   
   
5. The selfish gene is one of the best "rigorous" pop-science books out there. Dawkins doesn't really go into the math, but other than that he doesn't shy away from the implications of the work.
   
6. Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Dennett is a great book. While not strictly science, per se, it does outline good philosophical foundations for evolution. It is a dense read, but good.
   
7. On the more mathematical side, you might try Godel, Escher, Bach, which is a book that explores the ramifications of recrusiveness and is an excellent (if dense) read.
   
8. You could also consider books on the history of science -- which elucidate the importance of politics and people in the sciences. I would recommend any of the following: The Double Helix, A man on the moon, The making of the atomic bomb, Prometheans in the lab, The alchemy of air, or A most damnable invention. There are many others, but these came to mind first.
   
   Hope that helps! OH AND GO WITH THE SUBSCRIPTION TO NATURE
   
   edit: added the linksssss

I wish I could tell you that all you need to do is to stop believing in God and suddenly things will become much clearer. Unfortunately, this is not really the case.

Think of the God idea as a piece of malware, which is running on the computer of your brain. It's malware because it takes up your resources to do something that isn't beneficial to you. Once upon a time you installed the Loving Parents And Social Circle software, and it asked you to install the God program as part of it. You clicked OK at the time, but now you've figured out it's malware, and you need to find a way to get rid of the malware, but you don't want to uninstall the Loving Parents And Social Circle software too.

This is a very touchy process and I can't guarantee you'll be successful. Some people give up and simply decide to go without the Loving Parents And Social Circle software, because the licensing requirements are just too restrictive. I don't recommend this path. Even if the requirements are pretty rough, it's good software.

But here's the kick that no one tells you: by getting rid of the malware, you don't just suddenly have an awesome computer you can use for anything. You have to find and download lots of other software now. Getting rid of the malware was just the beginning, and now the real work begins. You're already way behind people who got rid of their malware ages ago, or maybe never had it to begin with. You need to play catch-up.

Here's the good news: most people, once they've finally gotten rid of the malware, wake up the next day and get really excited about all the new things their computer can potentially do, and they find themselves staying up all night downloading and running new stuff. There's a burst of energy that comes with suddenly finding all these free resources.

Maybe there's some old software sitting there that you never really used, and now you can run it much better than you did before. That was the case with me, and this was the software I ran. Then I started downloading more and more and more. Now I feel like my speeds are better than most and about as fast as the people I find interesting to talk to.

Overviews of the evidence:

The greatest show on earth

Why evolution is true

Books on advanced evolution:

The selfish gene

The extended phenotype

Climbing mount improbable

The ancestors tale

It is hard to find a better author than Dawkins to explain evolutionary biology. Many other popular science books either don't cover the details or don't focus entirely on evolution.

I will hit one point though.

>I have a hard time simply jumping from natural adaption or mutation or addition of information to the genome, etc. to an entirely different species.

For this you should understand two very important concepts in evolution. The first is a reproductive barrier. Basically as two populations of a species remain apart from each other (in technical terms we say there is no gene flow between them) then repoductive barriers becomes established. These range in type. There are behavioral barriers, such as certain species of insects mating at different times of the day from other closely related species. If they both still mated at the same time then they could still produce viable offspring. Other examples of behavior would be songs in birds (females will only mate with males who sing a certain way). There can also be physical barriers to reproduction, such as producing infertile offspring (like a donkey and a horse do) or simply being unable to mate (many bees or flies have different arrangements of their genitalia which makes it difficult or impossible to mate with other closely related species. Once these barriers exist then the two populations are considered two different species. These two species can now further diverge from each other.

The second thing to understand is the locking in of important genes. Evolution does not really take place on the level of the individual as most first year biology courses will tell you. It makes far more sense to say that it takes place on the level of the gene (read the selfish gene and the extended phenotype for a better overview of this). Any given gene can have a mutation that is either positive, negative, of neutral. Most mutations are neutral or negative. Let's say that a certain gene has a 85% chance of having a negative mutation, a 10% chance of a neutral mutation, and a 5% chance of a positive mutation. This gene is doing pretty good, from it's viewpoint it has an 85% chance of 'surviving' a mutation. What is meant by this is that even though one of it's offspring may have mutated there is an 85% chance that the mutated gene will perform worse than it and so the mutation will not replace it in the gene pool. If a neutral mutation happens then this is trouble for the original gene, because now there is a gene that does just as good a job as it in the gene pool. At this point random fluctuations of gene frequency called genetic drift take over the fate of the mutated gene (I won't go into genetic drift here but you should understand it if you want to understand evolution).

The last type of mutation, a positive mutation is what natural selection acts on. This type of mutation would also change the negative/neutral/positive mutation possibilities. so the newly positively mutated gene might have frequencies of 90/7/3 Already it has much better odds than the original gene. OK, one more point before I explain how this all ties together. Once a gene has reached the 100/0/0 point it does not mean that gene wins forever, there can still be mutations in other genes that affect it. A gene making an ant really good at flying doesn't matter much when the ant lives in tunnels and bites off its own wings, so that gene now has altered percentages in ants. It is this very complex web that makes up the very basics of mutations and how they impact evolution (if you are wondering how common mutations are I believe they happen about once every billion base pairs, so every human at conception has on average 4 mutations that were not present in either parent)

This all ties back together by understanding that body plan genes (called hox genes) lock species into their current body plans, by reducing the number of possible positive or neutral mutations they become crucial to the organisms survival. As evolutionary time progresses these genes become more and more locked in, meaning that the body plans of individuals become more and more locked in. So it is no wonder that coming in so late to the game as we are we see such diversity in life and we never see large scale form mutations. Those type of mutations became less likely as the hox genes became locked in their comfy spots on the unimpeachable end of the mutation probability pool. That is why it is hard to imagine one species evolving into another, and why a creationist saying that they will believe evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human is so wrong.

Hopefully I explained that well, it is kind of a dense subject and I had to skip some things I would rather have covered.

There's also the cyclic model; there's also a Wikipedia article on the cyclic model. That model seems to mesh better with Hinduism.

>If you are a Hindu philosopher, none of the above should surprise you. Hindu philosophy has always accepted the notion of an alternately expanding and contracting universe. In his book Cosmos, Carl Sagan pointed out how, in Hindu cosmology, the universe undergoes an infinite number of deaths and rebirths, and its timescales are in the same ballpark as those of modern cosmology. Here is a quote from Cosmos:
>
>"There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the cosmic dream.
>
>Meanwhile, elsewhere, there are an infinite number of universes, each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another, perhaps greater. It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."

Reference: The Conscious Universe: Brahma's Dream

Or for the Big Bang model, one might address the question as Steven Hawking has in his book The Grand Design.

>He adds: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
>
>"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
>
>"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Reference: Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

In any case, one can ask "where did God" come from as well. One can say "God has always existed", but one can say the universe always existed or there were other universes before this one, etc., also. Our limited intellects and knowledge of the universe may keep humans from truly knowing the answer indefinitely.

Some help:

Maybe Yes, Maybe No (LINK)

by Dan Barker

In today's media-flooded world, there is no way to control all of the information, claims, and enticements that reach young people. The best thing to do is arm them with the sword of critical thinking.

Maybe Yes, Maybe No is a charming introduction to self-confidence and self-reliance. The book's ten-year-old heroine, Andrea, is always asking questions because she knows "you should prove the truth of a strange story before you believe it."

"Check it out. Repeat the experiment. Try to prove it wrong. It has to make sense." writes Barker, as he assures young readers that they are fully capable of figuring out what to believe, and of knowing when there just isn't enough information to decide. "You can do it your own way. If you are a good skeptic you will know how to think for yourself."

Another book is "Me & Dog" by Gene Weingarten.

And Born With a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story : Books 1, 2, 3

Here Comes Science CD + DVD

The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins

Bang! How We Came to Be by Michael Rubino.

Grandmother Fish: A Child's First Book of Evolution
Grandmother Fish, free in PDF form online

Also:

Greek Myths – by Marcia Williams

Ancient Egypt: Tales of Gods and Pharaohs – by Marcia Williams

God and His Creations – by Marcia Williams

"I Wonder" by Annaka Harris

"From Stardust to You: An Illustrated Guide to The Big Bang" by Luciano Reni

"Meet Bacteria!" by Rebecca Bielawski

See also Highlights for Children - this has materials for younger children.

Atheism books for children by Courtney Lynn

"It Is Ok To Be A Godless Me", "I'm An Atheist and That's Ok", "I'm a Freethinker", "Please Don't Bully Me" and "I'm a Little Thinker" etc.

Courtney Lynn has a couple more for grown ups as well.

Grandmother Fish, free in PDF form online

A child's first book of evolution.

15 Holiday Gift Ideas for Secular Families

Bedtime Bible Stories by Joey Lee Kirkman - for mature teens only

Coming up: TINY THINKERS is a series of books introducing popular scientists to children, by telling their stories as if the scientists themselves were kids!

Ah man, good luck. Let me see if I can add anything... probably already been said.

1. He doesn't "reject" your belief so much as not accept it (just as you don't accept Islam). Some amount of reasonable evidence (to him) has convinced him that Christianity is false. This happens quite a bit and is becoming more common as people become more educated and have less trouble feeding themselves. People don't need a God if they're already comfortable, religion is comfort. I could provide numerous skeptical lists that show Christianity to be false, but that won't help you do anything if you aren't looking to change your mind. Approach it like this: do you need proof that Thor doesn't exist? Having a list of proofs of the non-existence of Thor will not help you reason with someone who doesn't believe in Thor. My main reason for being atheist isn't evidence against god, but lack of evidence for a Specifically-Christian god. Nothing in the Bible is believable to me and many parts of Christian theology completely clash with my moral compass. Devout Christians usually have a block that prevents them from thinking about the parts that are icky; he apparently lost his block.
   
   
2. This sounds like typical teenagery stuff combined with a new antitheist mindset. Like anything new, it becomes very important until the charm/novelty wears off. I'd say it's normal as long as he's not looking at bombs and stuff. A lot of antitheists are mad at the religious organizations more than the belief structure. You can try to guide it towards more reasonable outlets of antitheism. Like, since he hates religious hypocrisy, try to find a secular charity (Habitat for Humanity or something) and get him involved in activities that prove he's not a hypocrite like the religious people he despises. It will help develop social networking skills that he'll miss out on if he doesn't have any extra curricular social activities like church.
   
   
3. I would give up on trying to convince him of absolute moral truths and instead approach it from a position of logic and reason. If he's really turned his back on your religion, you really don't have a moral framework to approach him from; the Bible is moot, he'll pretty much have to rely on the conscience you've hopefully instilled in him as a decent parent. Morality is usually ingrained by this age, so you're probably safe from him becoming a psychopath. As an atheist I abhor drugs because they severely limit one's ability to maintain a rational mind and this is contrary to the things I hold dear: intelligence, reason, etc; but many atheists are nihilists and view drugs as beneficial. This is going to come down to peer-groups and his moral. It's hard to break conditioning. He's a boy, you shouldn't have to worry about abortion too much, but you're going to have almost no common ground on this topic. There is no reason to not have sex before marriage outside of unexpected pregnancy, STDs, and emotional scarring; you kind of have to work with that. Teach him caution and self-protection. Abstinence does have it's physical and mental benefits, but good luck convincing a teenage boy of that. Look up things on social contract. He's a teenager, he'd like the books of Sam Harris because they're just controversial enough to be edgy, but he argues for secular objective morality.
   
   Basically, like all teenagers, you're just in a holding pattern until he gets into his mid 20s and becomes the man he probably would have regardless of belief structure. Give him structure, maybe stop spying on him, let him know you're there to help him and that you love him even if he's going to hell.
   
   If he's a reader:
   http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/143917122X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394670215&sr=1-1&keywords=Moral+Landscape
   
   http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Animal-Evolutionary-Psychology/dp/0679763996/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
   

When I was a little kid I loved the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. They are very Christian, but I just enjoyed them as entertaining stories. So I guess that's an honest answer to your question. (Although reading his apologetics like Mere Christianity now it just looks like a lot of double-talk and logical fallacies, it seems like it would only seem deep or meaningful to people who really wanted to smooth-over their own cognitive dissonance, and doesn't prove any points if you weren't already assuming his conclusions to be true.) If you broaden your question to "from a religious perspective" without requiring that it specifically be a Christian one, it gets easier to think of answers. I just read "The Story of God" and even though the author was a theist (Jewish) I thought he made a lot of good points in explaining the cultural and religious history of how monotheistic religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam came to be.

I think Sam Harris stands out as a very readable atheist author. His books such as "The End of Faith" and its follow-up "Letter to a Christian Nation" are short and powerful paperbacks. Watch this short talk and you can get an idea of his perspective before you buy any books:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3YOIImOoYM&t=1m25s

I would recommend staying away from the polemics. Authors like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris all have books worth reading, but not really if you want a primer on atheistic alternatives in the areas of worldview, ethics, etc. I will say that Dawkins's earlier works on science would be good, but God Delusion is not an exposition of an atheistic worldview, but rather an attack on religion, and a messy, at times ignorant and oversimplified one at that (I bet I'll get crucified for saying that). As one religious studies student to another, it is a book that gets awfully frustrating every time you realize that he has a horrible grasp of the relevant data.

Books that would be really great to read:

George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God is an approachable critique of some of the more popular arguments for God's existence.

Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Brief Insight is a really good and thorough survey of the explanation, arguments, history, and ethics of atheism.

Greg Epstein's Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe really gets into where someone goes once he/she has already concluded that God doesn't exist. He looks at how one builds a nonreligious life of meaning. Epstein is definitely in the "friendly atheist" category. As the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard (strange, oxymoronic titles aside) he has done a great deal of work with the Pluralism Project in their School of Divinity. He has even worked with inter-religious groups like the InterFaith Youth Core.

A long, but very much worth the time and highly recommended book is Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. In it, she goes very thoroughly through the long history of religious skepticism. She looks at the lives and questions of philosophers, scientists, poets, politicians, even some religious figures who have gone through the "dark night of the soul." This is a book that I think every atheist should read to learn that religious folks aren't the only ones with a long and storied tradition. It is a good grounding in history for secularists.

Keep in mind that you can be spiritual and/or ascetic, while remaining atheistic. Buddhism is quite neat in this regard. Also, Sam Harris just wrote a book about this very subject: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636016 I haven't read it myself, but seems well-received.

Anyway... my advice would be this: do whatever you think will bring you comfort. Go to church with your cousin if you think it will make you feel better. I know this is controversial advice on this sub, but who cares... I think your psychological wellbeing is more important than appearing outwardly consistent. Please take care of yourself. You are still incredibly young and you'd be amazed at the surprises life can throw at you -- your life could be completely different in six months from now. Keep your head up. We're here if you need to talk more.

Best wishes.

I appreciate the sincerity of your view, but I think you might be overlooking some important points.

First of all, yes, there are atheists who call themselves "spiritual," and who seek to reclaim the concept of spirituality from traditional religion. Sam Harris is one of them. He actually has a new book out that I highly recommend. But that doesn't mean atheism itself has anything to do with spirituality, or that atheists as a group are trying to replace religion. It just means that certain individuals, who happen to not believe in God, have an interest in something they call "spiritual." That's a subtle but crucial distinction.

>Yes you could easily have a thought provoking or even chemically induced journey, but not a spiritual one. As this would require belief in the spirit, something which religion itself hinges on.

On whose authority do you say their experiences are not "spiritual," or that adoption of the word "spiritual" demands belief in literal spirits? Not everyone uses the word in the same way you do, and that's permissible. Atheists who use the word are typically not talking about a literal spirit, but rather an experience of transcendence. I would argue that their conception of spirituality likely pre-dates yours, and would therefore urge you not to be dogmatically territorial over the word and how it's used.

>even chemically induced journey, but not a spiritual one

ALL human psychological experiences -- from sadness to love to a sense of oneness with the universe -- have chemical correlates. When a Buddhist monk or Christian nun experiences nirvana or the divine, do you think there's no neurological component to that experience? Researchers have demonstrated that spiritual / religious experiences have very specific fMRI fingerprints, for example. What makes you so sure there's a difference between a "spiritual" experience attained through contemplative prayer and one attained through an LSD trip?

>I would argue the very idea of having a spiritual journey as an atheist, is an attempt at substituting religion

If you notice a few atheists growing mustaches, would you conclude that growing facial hair must be an essential tenet of atheism? But more to the point, I think you're confused about what you're seeing. In the case of folks like Sam Harris, they are not trying to substitute religion. They are trying to recover the small seeds of wisdom that religion has co-opted and corrupted. They recognize that religion wrongly and unnecessarily ties the experience of transcendence to supernatural dogma. They are, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, attempting to separate the diamond from the dung hill.

There are some good responses here. I'd like to just tackle number 4. First of all, this questions seems to suggest that if a person believes evolution by natural selection is true they therefore must not believe in helping the weak. In other words they equate accepting the occurence of evolution with adopting a survival of the fittest moral code. This does not follow. It is like saying "If you believe it is natural that a person caught in the elements may die of hypothermia, then you should be oppossed to giving such a person dry clothes and shelter." It's silly. Its possible to recognize the truth of evolution and also see that it would make a terrible basis for morality.

The second thing is the actual question of, how did such behavior come about? There are a lot of ways natural selection can favor, or select for, altruistic behavior. Altruism benefits the genes that code for it because the individuals most likely to carry the altruistic genes, the offspring of the altruistic parent, have better reproductive success as a result of the atruistic traits of the parents. You really should read some Richard Dawkins. He has several really good books on evolution which also cover this subject starting with The Selfish Gene if you haven't read it already.

The other thing to keep in mind is that not all behaviors did get naturally selected. Some traits and behaviors are biproducts of other biology that was advantageous. A parent my carry a gene that causes it to act altruistic toward its young. It is easy to see why this is advantageous. But, the most efficient code for this behavior will not likely specifiy exactly which individuals to act this way towards and so it may result in the parent sometimes acting altruisticly towards individuals who don't share its genes. It is sort of like the way sexual pleasure is naturally selected because it increases reproductive rates, but it can also have the non-advantageous effect of causing masterbation or other forms of sex that can't lead to offspring.

Genes in social species that allow them to function in communities can misfire in all sorts of interesting ways giving us all sorts of interesting cutural phenomenon. Once you have a community, social/cultural evolution can take over and produce things totally unrelated to biological evoltution.

What on Earth are you talking about? This isn't about being stoned (which I don't do anyway). It's about being well educated about evolutionary biology and pointing out that your assertion that humans will be like this forever is inaccurate.

What is so difficult to grasp about that simple point?

Further, as I've also pointed out multiple times, understanding the neurobiological reality of the human mind right now has important implications for how we treat our fellow human beings right now in relation to society, the justice system, etc.

That is very real and very much right now.

I'm not sure how to make myself any more clear.

If you're not smart enough and/or educated enough to grasp modern neurobiology and neuropsychology, on top of my explanations that should be explaining clearly enough the ramifications of those modern day objective realities... that's your shortcoming my friend, not mine.

I can suggest a couple books to help you get a better grasp on this subject... two very approachable and enlightening books I can recommend are "The Moral Landscape - How Science can determine human values" by Sam Harris (a doctorate of cognitive neuroscience) and "Braintrust - What neuroscience tells us about morality" by Patricia Churchland

Is there some other way I can get you to grasp that these are contemporary issues of objective scientific understanding of our own minds right now and how they function right now and how that relates to what we believe, how we relate to each other, how our societies function etc right now?

I understand that you feel the chronospecies issue doesn't have any real bearing on issues right now. I've agreed with you on that in every comment I've written. But that doesn't change the validity of everything else I've said, and for some reason you just seem postively obtuse on that point.

I'm seriously not trying to fight with you, so I'm not sure what has you so upset and so stubbornly resistant to grasping the simple objective realities I'm pointing out, which include some that are very much relevant to right now in our modern society.

Order some Jesus! http://www.amazon.com/Communion-Wafers-1000-Broadman-Press/dp/0805470859

> These little beauties are perfect for the dieter. One can only eat so many carrot and celery sticks before one screams. How better to spruce up the blandness than the crunchy goodness of Jesus? Jesus is good with fat-free dips, as the base for cucumber sandwiches (especially with lemon salt) and out of this world on salads! I mean, do you have any idea how many calories croutons have? But not Jesus. Oh, no. He's fat and virtually calorie free.

> We are taught to bring all our problems to the feet of Our Loving God, Jesus, and many of us have prayed for years in vain for help loosing the inner tire or the cottage cheese legs. And you know, He was answering us all along! Order several boxes of Jesus, and He'll help you out with that unsightly double chin, just as you prayed!

It's been mentioned at least once here in this thread, but I'll second Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. It's an excellent manual for developing critical-thinking skills that is great for anyone, not just people interested in god claims. The book touches on religion a bit but mostly deals with pseudoscience and magical thinking in general - it covers a lot of ground.

A few books I've read that I'll recommend specifically:

• Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation
  
• Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus (an excellent introduction to textual analysis)
  
• Karen Armstrong's A History of God
  
  The last one has a video summary you can watch here which is one video in a series titled Why I am No Longer a Christian. The series itself is often cited as the most comprehensive video series on what it's like to go through the deconversion process.

counter-counter clockwise... and yeah. I live in the south, and it seriously isn't a stereotype. It really is about 90% Bible thumpers. There's a special place in my heart for any post related to Christians whining about being oppressed, when every few months I'm made to feel extremely uncomfortable about my lack of faith. And I'm not a preaching atheist, I grew out of that after a couple years of falling on purposefully deaf ears.

(I mean like, I'll comment on my Facebook something funny and atheist in response to someone on my page, always, and rarely, if ever an OP from me re: atheism. And every once in so often I'll get a roommate pissed at me cause her grandma read it and was offended... no joke, or one of my 'bros' will randomly decide to pseudo-debate (read: trash talk) me because he knows no one else is atheist, or would admit to it publicly. High school shit.)

Sam Harris' book The End of Faith kind of re-kindled my openness to... well being open about it, but it was much worse. Once I hit my 20s and it really just settled in to my mindset and my regular day-to-day thoughts were no longer bogged down by faith and whether I had it, whether I really believed in all of it and then apologizing to Jesus for driving a fresh nail into his skin for having sinful thoughts...

I don't know. Once you hit that stride it becomes really, really difficult to have any patience for perfectly intelligent people who are also... fundies. Of course there are the samaritans and the non-denominationals and the small churches where the Real gospel is preached and those people tend to be awesome people. People I love dearly. But their small percentage of good deeds in the name of a false god legitimizes extremist sects of the same faith, whether they denounce extremism or not. Which means the blood shed by extremists is ultimately on the hands of us all: the extremists for the sword, the moderates for defending the faith, and the non-believers for demanding a stance of non-involvement.

It's a simple fact that by globally refusing to reject the teachings of moderate religous sects, we grant that same acceptance to extremist sects of the same religous affiliation. They will always continue to co-exist, because the teachings of Islam and Christianity, for example, literally demand the conversion at the cost of death of every other sect on Earth. As long as moderate faith persists, there will be extreme faith. As long as there is extreme faith, there will be war.

That's fine and fucking dandy when we're all scimitars and swords. But we live in a global world now. I don't need to spell it out in put-you-on-a-list keywords, but holy shit man. What else do we drop the big bombs for? We're pretty well settled up on land- the only people callin' nukes these days are Ahmadinejad (yes I know he has no real power) and wild card-ass North Korea. Israel doesn't even have to call em, everyone knows they got em and Big Daddy 'Murica got em all day, come GIT SOME!! GIT SOME! 'MURICA!

TL;DR The world needs atheism, but isn't ready for it, and will probably end in nuclear fire while we all pretend it's not over fucking fairy tales so as not to offend. Oh and also, I should really go to sleep because the sun's coming up.

> God wants you to "be good" because He has given you the ability to do so. That is, be good for the sake of being good.

If that were true, there would be no reason for heaven and hell. Just admit it -- "God" is a "father" figure for people who cannot grow up. You need a system of punishments and rewards in order to behave... because you can't trust yourself to behave.

> Santa is an icon for the commercialization of Christmas and nothing more.

No argument here. And you can certainly argue that "presents vs. coal" in the stocking is a system of rewards/punishments for good behavior. But I'm still looking in the Bible for the passage that says "Be good for goodness sake."

While you may believe that God = "Good," many people believe that Morality can exist without some external, transcendent basis.

http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Goodness-Without-God-Metaphysical/dp/1420802933

http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/05/can-morality-exist-without-god.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma%20rel=

Check out neuroscience. It can, and does, explain how we experience, understand, and learn about things like love, beauty, etc. And it's getting better at it every day. To me, calling something "just a chemical reaction" doesn't diminish it; rather, it makes me marvel at the complexities involved in all of those reactions occurring at once, and me being the type of animal with a brain evolved enough to appreciate those complexities.

In general, I applaud you for asking questions. The questions you are asking, however, show me that you should read more into biological evolution and philosophy. Sure, we might me able to give you short answers here, but I highly doubt that (even of the civil responses) you will get the detail and back-story needed to truly understand the answers to your questions. Again though, keep asking questions; it's the right way to approach everything in life. For starters, I think Dan Dennett's Breaking the Spell might be a good place for you to start with the religious/philosophical questions and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene a good place to start for your evolution questions. All of Dawkins' book about evolution are amazing, and there is one to address pretty much any question you might have about evolution. Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea combines the two subjects a little.

Hijacked is too strong a word, but I think two points are notable. First, arguably most of the really popular and notable books on evolution released in the last twenty years were penned by New Atheists proper or by authors who basically fit the New Atheist mold but aren't one of the four specific authors. A big part of the reason for that is simply Richard Dawkins. He's a popular writer and a biologist, so it was almost inevitable that he'd pen books about Darwin and that they'd hit the bestsellers lists. And if it were limited to Dawkins, I'd think nothing of it, but there's Dennett and Shermer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Harris release one before long. Another part of the reason is that a number of the other books about Darwinian evolution that have sold well in past decades were penned by creationists like Michael Behe, so a certain measure of response is, from my perspective at least, welcome. At that point, it's about market share, and we don't want creationists having too big a piece of the market share. Their point of view is, after all, problematic to say the least. If it weren't for my second point, it wouldn't even be problematic that a) popular books on evolution are basically split between creationists and New Atheists, and b) that New Atheists make up such a large share of that market.

But my second point is this: New Atheists aren't just popularizing or "standing up for" Darwinian evolution; they're attaching a political and ideological agenda to that effort, and that runs several risks, the most obvious being that it can polarize people against evolution, as some commentators have warned it might do in Muslim countries. To my mind, the more insidious risk is that, once you've connected a scientific theory to a political or ideological effort, it becomes all to easy for its patrons to see it in those terms even when it has nothing to do with that effort. Without much noticing it, pro-Darwinians may start seeing barely articulated associations as part and parcel of evolution, until evolution is something more than a scientific model. Dawkins, for example, has turned evolution into a theological disproof with the subtitle of "The Blind Watchmaker". The title of Shermer's "Why Darwin Matters" sums up the achievement of evolutionary theory as a form of polemic against intelligent design theory. Dawkins, at least, is close enough to the professional practice of biology that he probably doesn't need reminding that evolution isn't really about atheism, but all of these guys are writing books for people who don't have the continual reminder of working in the field where evolutionary theory is most functional.

I say none of this in defense of the Guardian article, but I do think there's something to be said for the idea that our society stands to lose by leaving it up to the New Atheists to give evolution its popularly received meaning.

Yeah. I am thinking about having a little piece that goes something like.

For people who have just known (or thought to have known) that God existed, the idea of him possibly not being there is daunting. This is because for these people, their world view was delicately interweaved with their religion. Questions such as how did we get here? Does my life have meaning? Why should I be good? had answers. However, by taking God and religion out of the equation, the world view built around those mainstays is shattered. These questions again come to the forefront.

Luckily, there are many godless world views. These are ways to view life, and its questions, that do not need to invoke the existence of God. Two popular views that members of this subreddit subscribe to are Naturalism and Secular Humanism. These philosophical standpoints are grounded in the natural world, they use science, logic and reasoning to arrive at conclusions about the nature of self, life and the universe.

For a more in depth read on an aethistic philosophy, see Richard Carrier's Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism .

EDIT: Made changes suggested by NTP below.

http://amzn.com/0805470867/

No offense, but you're really really lazy.

edit:

>These little beauties are perfect for the dieter. One can only eat so many carrot and celery sticks before one screams. How better to spruce up the blandness than the crunchy goodness of Jesus? Jesus is good with fat-free dips, as the base for cucumber sandwiches (especially with lemon salt) and out of this world on salads! I mean, do you have any idea how many calories croutons have? But not Jesus. Oh, no. He's fat and virtually calorie free.

http://amzn.com/0805470859/

Get books then and read them together. The ones in our sidebar are pretty good and the best part is Amazon has a little carousel of related books so you can quite easily end up finding a whole shelf full of potential content.

One particularly good book to promote skepticism is Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics

The page says its for older children but if you read the reviews you'll find it's just fine for kids your daughter's age as well.

There is also the Awkward Moments Children's Bible, Vol. 1

Which says it isn't for children and I'm going to hee and haw about that as I feel the Bible itself is inappropriate for Children and I further feel it is dishonest that many children's Bible's gloss over some bad parts in order to only sew a dishonest sense of good feelings in children through cherry picking which I would challenge most people to distinguish from indoctrination, brainwashing, whatever you want to call it -- they're weaponized books and the authors often carefully study child psychology to maximize indoctrination potential. If you get it maybe read over it yourself before deciding if it's appropriate, I'd definitely give it to a teenager without reservation but younger children it depends on how mature they are and what you want them exposed to.

Anyways best of luck!

the new stephen hawking book the grand design is pretty fantastic. it's a very interesting, easily readable explanation of modern physics as well as the history of physics. this book is where hawking finally comes out of the atheist closet in a very non-political way, basically explaining that while people can believe in a god our knowledge of physics doesn't have a need for it.

Coming out is a big and unpleasant step. Kudos for planning.

Also, welcome to the party.

Many stay in the closet for years for good reason, coming out to religious family can rend that family to bits. No amount of logic, documentaries, or articles can bridge the fundamental gap if they decide you aren't family anymore. End result=huge unpleasantness.

That being said, there are two general trajectories for this type of thing. Fast and hard, or slow and kind. Both have their value, sometimes a swift thwap to the skull can break down barriers, for others a slow approach can provide better results over time. Slow and kind isn't my forte and others can help with that. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris and Dear Christian by JT Eberhard are the top of my list for kicking down doors and taking names.

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really go into anything new or original, but the strength of the book is that is a great, concise summary of all the beginning arguments for atheism.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004

I'd follow it with Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", also a good recommendation. Same goes for Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

Christopher Hitchens is a bit vitriolic for some, but "God is not Great" has some nuggets in it.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/

I personally didn't like Sam Harris' "End of Faith" but I did like his "Letter to a Christian Nation".

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/

For the topic of evolution, Talk Origins is great (and free) http://toarchive.org/
Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" is also a good read (and short). Not so short but also good are Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "Unweaving the Rainbow"

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0393316823/

http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734/

I like Dan Dennett's Breaking the Spell, but I wouldn't make it a Christmas gift (or at least not the sole gift). Give her the book because you care, but make her actual gift something romantic that she'll remember.

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." ~ The Buddha

Buddha never wrote down anything he taught, nor did he ever appoint a "successor". This was done for the explicit purpose of allowing for changes and interpretations amongst different cultures and generations. Tibet just so happen to create its own variety that is more of a political tool and religion. Buddhism at its core is completely agnostic and devoid of any supernatural or metaphysical ideas. Its merely a way to train your mind to be at peace with your present reality.

I highly recommend you do a bit of reading on the subject. Especially Stephen Bachelors book, Buddhism without Beliefs

Great! My best advice for you is to start your reading with Sam Harris' The End of Faith. You can buy a hardcover of it on Amazon for $3.11 plus shipping and in my opinion, it gives an excellent overview of the subject.

Another one I would read concurrently is Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. Both are excellent for beginning your exploration.