The Reward of Being a Good Atheist

We all know that our life can end at any minute, today, tomorrow, or several years from now, from diseases, accidents or natural causes. Suppose we are all convinced that, after our death, we will simply cease to exist; for each one of us, it will be as if we never were. Some of us will go home, shut the door and cry desperately for a long time. Others will fall into apathy, wandering the rest of their days without purpose. On the other hand, there are others who will try to live intensively, in order not to waste any single minute. And there are also those, the bad ones, who will lie, rob and kill so that they can fulfil their ambitions before dying. Life would lose much of its meaning and will turn into chaos.

Suppose, however, we are all convinced that we have an immortal soul and that we are accountable for everything we do on this earth. When we die, our souls will go to another dimension where we will be rewarded for the good things done, or punished for sins and crimes committed when we were alive. In this case, the rules of the game are clear and straightforward; the fear of death will probably remain, but there is definitely some hope.

Doesn't the second version look like the same thing you do to an infant, telling him that if he stops beating his younger brother and finish his home work, he can go out and play with his friends tomorrow; otherwise he'll be grounded for the rest of the week? In his small and inexperienced brain, the boy doesn't know yet the difference between right and wrong. He needs an encouragement, a reward, or the threat of a punishment, so that he takes the right path.

The vast majority of human beings, young or old, needs encouragement and motivation to do the right thing. One needs the proper incentive in order to perform as a good person in life, as well as to keep his/her job as a good employee, for example. The salary you get will provide for all the things you need to survive and enjoy life, thus encouraging you to do the job right. Consequently, the hope that your immortal soul will be rewarded after your death will inspire you to be a virtuous person.

Only those who are enlightened will do the right thing without hesitation. They don't need encouragement or motivation because they simply assume that this is the only acceptable way to behave. But, unfortunately, these are not the majority of us. Because justice is not always done in this world, and crime can go on unpunished, it makes us feel confident when a clear and ever present reward for the good guy, or an awful punishment for the bad one, is expected after death. The good guy will go to paradise; the bad guy will be sent to hell.

When a religious person tells me that he believes in God, but the only thing he has to offer me to justify his belief is his own faith, then he has just transmitted his state of mind, a subjective feeling, without any philosophical importance. If a believer wants to be taken seriously, he must be prepared to offer some plausible justification. However, most of the time, as incredible as it seems, it is the nonbeliever, the atheist, who is asked to prove that God doesn't exist.

Until recently, I considered myself an antitheist, i.e., not only I didn't believe in any god, but I was also against such a belief. Thinking of a permanent divine presence, keeping track of all our moves, reminded me rather of Big Brother in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four". But, after a little bit of serious thinking, I have changed my mind in being utterly against religion. So, contrary to many atheists, I welcome religion. I welcome it only because I believe that most human beings have not yet reached a level of understanding that would cause them to behave in a civilized manner, based on the simple conviction that it is the only sensible way to live together on this planet.

It is a known fact that the more you know science, the less you will believe in God. In the scientific world, only a small minority of scientists are believers. Hence, one would say that, in our modern world where science takes a prominent place and is made widely accessible to the masses, religion should lose ground. Strangely enough, it is not so, and we observe a rise of fundamentalism in some religions and societies.

The most powerful nation on the planet, for instance, maintains the expression "In God we trust" as its motto, and most surely would not elect an atheist for the presidency, thus violating the separation of church and state, clearly stated in its own constitution.  It seems that the world is returning to God, despite the growth of educated people and all the advancements in scientific and technological areas.

This is probably due to the fact that being alive is just not enough. After all, we are the only beings on the planet who are conscious of death. The other animals simply have an instinct of preservation, i.e., they must avoid any danger at all costs in order to survive. They are aware and afraid of pain, but death for them, is an instant experience, at the moment it occurs. Humans know that even if we succeed in preserving ourselves, we'll die of old age one day. This constant awareness of an inevitable end is disturbing and devastating, unless we can make it more digestible. Furthermore, good is not omnipresent in our brains. After thousands of years of civilizations, mankind is still busy with wars, violence, killing, robbing and raping. Enter religion, that will give us what we are missing: strict rules for living and a fantasy for the after-life.

This is soothing and even necessary for the most of us. It prevents us from going astray and diminishes the agony of knowing about death.

Unfortunately, religion is not all good, and it has been responsible for some of the worse atrocities in the history of mankind. Why is it that humanity has never been able to create a loving God, with no wrath or punishment in His dogma? Or is it that we are only able to create gods in our own image, using our own methods? The word atheist simply means "the person who doesn't believe in the existence of any god", which is exactly the opposite of a theist, "the person who believes in the existence of a god". Logically speaking, we should all be atheists because we don't believe in any of the gods humanity has created throughout the ages, except for the fact that we have the tendency to embrace the last one (I think it was Prof. Dawkins who originally mentioned this, in one of his lectures).

This refusal to go all the way and reject all manufactured gods is most certainly due to the reasons outlined above. Most of us are not yet prepared to accept death as the ultimate end. We need hope, as a navigator needs a compass. Without hope for an after-life, we will be lost in the middle of the ocean of life. Atheists, on the other hand, are able to dispense with compasses, and navigate calmly under the stars...

Throughout the ages, the believers of a god never felt real comfortable with the idea that there are some of us who reject their faith. They must convert us or destroy us (the wars against the infidels). As a matter of fact, there is antagonism even between factions that believe in different versions of God (the wars of religion). Curiously, atheists do not feel any need to force, or even convince, anybody to drop their gods. I challenge you to point me any war initiated by atheists; they just go on living quietly with their disbelief, taking care of their own business.

Because of that, I sympathize with my fellow atheists when they demand that those who need religion in order to go on living happily, should keep it for themselves and respect those of us who don't, leaving us in peace. Atheists should be considered as normal human beings, with full rights and entitled to freedom of thinking. Actually, I consider it an insult if anyone would try to convert me to any religion. It's like telling me that I don't know what is good and what is evil, that I need a candy, like a child, in order to behave well, or a beating to force me in the right direction.

However, there is a big issue with friends that are very religious, since they are told and firmly believe all atheists to be damned. Because they want to save us from our everlasting punishment, they develop the rather annoying notion of converting us before it is too late. I can't be really angry with them, on account of their action being motivated out of love and true friendship.

In order to make those friends feel a bit better, and also to get them off my back, I always try to reassure them by saying that if their God exists and is truly a merciful god, when I meet Him after my death, He will not care whether I believed in Him or not; the important thing for Him to know about me is that He has nothing to reproach in the way I lived my life on this earth. He'll then probably tell me: "My son, even without believing in me, you have naturally and spontaneously followed all the principles of humanity, and because of this you are better than those who need to be taught and continuosly reminded. Therefore, my son, I forgive you and welcome you to my reign in heaven!".

In other words, don't worry so much about me, folks, because any honourable atheist is sure to end up in heaven... ;-)

Social Networks: Good or Bad?

I have read, and also heard from friends of mine, some horrible stories related to serious incidents that occurred because of improper behaviour while engaging conversation exchanges through a social network. These incidents have to do with immoral and pornographic correspondence, seduction of children, swapping erotic photos, sexual harassment, disclosure of private information, etc.

With the advent of social networks, it is common to see cases like this happening. The first contact usually occurs through the social network site itself. In most cases, the communication will progress through a more private exchange of electronic mails.

When someone is not entirely satisfied with his/her relationship at home, instead of having an honest and frank discussion with the partner, one may fall into the entrapment of a virtual erotic compensation. It is easy, it is fun, it is exciting, they think it is safe, and they completely disregard the consequences. However, when the whole thing is unveiled, it can cause terrible damage to their current relationships.

With children and teenagers, it can become a serious matter. They have more spare time and are very active in those networks, looking for new friends, some fun and excitement, and a public place where to shine, swap ideas, and freely expose their aspirations. Real parental control is almost nonexistent. As long as they are quiet and indoors, parents are happy. The young people become, in this context, an easy prey for sexual molestation.

Social networks, as well as e-mail, were not created for erotic purposes or to replace dating sites. They are a very practical mean to keep in touch with friends and family. However, it is proven now that closed networks - the ones made of family and regular friends - are not very popular. This is due to the fact that these people are already engaged doing things with each other. Therefore, they are not exciting; they don't bring anything new into your life. On the other hand, an open network - made of people that hardly know each other - seems to be a much more exciting and attractive pastime. It offers more opportunities and gives access to a wider range of people and information.

However, from the dark side of our inner selves, given this opportunity to interact with strangers, some people feel attracted to engage in all sorts of deception. Without the social networks and e-mail, this duplicity would be difficult to be achieved. As long as there are weak human beings, with all kinds of personality disorders haunting them, I guess there is no way to prevent this from happening.

In the U.S., some states are already trying to ban registered sex-offenders of being accepted in social networks. Although this is much more related to the dangers of paedophilia than straightforward love affairs, it seems to me a good thing to do.

Many people I know are afraid to take part in social networks, considering them evil and unsafe. I tend to understand their feelings, since social networks are indeed an ideal environment for all these troubles to originate, even if this sort of purpose was never intended by their creators.

Nevertheless, if your objective is just to keep in touch with family and friends, a social network can be a great tool as long as you know how to use it, by applying some basic security and adopting a discrete behaviour when setting up your account.

Read below some recommendations on how to protect yourself and your family, when you decide to sign up for an account in one of the most popular of these networks...

How to protect and avoid surprises with your Facebook account

1. Before signing up, make another e-mail account, one that you will use only for Facebook (Facebook requires that you have an e-mail account). In the settings of your new e-mail account, set the forwarding of all messages from this account to your normal e-mail account, to avoid having to monitor one more account. Leave the addressbook empty in this account, don't add any of your contacts. In this way, you will be protecting also your friends.

2. Protect your profile by making as few as possible private items visible to the public. Go to Account -> Private Settings, and under Sharing with Facebook, choose Friends Only as your security settings. This will allow only the persons you accept as Friends to see your profile and your posts.

3. Choose a discrete and composed photo of yourself as a profile picture. For women and children especially, avoid sexy and provocative photos that may attract sex-offenders.

4. Only accept as Friends, people that you know or, at least, people that were referred to you by a reliable source. Never accept strangers, of whom you know nothing about. Take advantage of the fact that Facebook allows you to categorize the people you add to your pages. You can fine tune your new friends by putting them into different groups: Close Friends, Friends or Acquaintances. Adopting this natural selection, you will be able to decide what parts of your Facebook you will make available to each of those groups.

5. Never disclose private or confidential matters in your posts. If you need or want to discuss delicate subjects with some Facebook Friend, use the Messages feature, which is only visible to the two parties. And if some Friend posts something that seems improper on your Wall, immediately delete that comment and contact that Friend, to warn that if it happens again, you will remove her/him from your list.

6. Do not hesitate to Unfriend, or even block, a person that shows some other purpose than an honest exchange of ideas. Many are using Facebook, and other social networks, as dating sites, looking for an easy prey. Women, especially, should be very careful when adding a new male friend of whom they know very little about. One good practice is to always check the profiles of these new friends. If they specifically mention Interested in Women, then you already know what to expect of them...

7. When creating Photo Albums, again, avoid publishing sexy and provocative photos of yourself or of your family and friends. Set the privacy of your photo albums to Friends except acquaintances. This can be done when customizing your privacy settings for each album. Never set the privacy to Public.

8. Be careful with your wording, when posting messages or replying comments from anyone. Analize the text carefully, before commiting it, to make sure that it cannot be any misunderstanding or double-meaning to what you intended to say.

9. Pay attention to what Apps you authorize to post to your wall and to access your profile information. I would stay away from Apps altogether, if my intention is just to communicate with friends and family.

Lastly, in the Private Settings, click on Learn more under Controlling How You Share and carefully read the guidelines and explanations about all the privacy settings in Facebook. You may want to go even further than the basic rules that are described here...

jQuery: Javascript on steroids!

For those of you, happy web developers already using jQuery, you may jump to the bottom of this article when I will be revealing some nice tools and links to assist you further. For the others, read on, and I will try to explain to you what is jQuery, and why it is so important that any web developer coding in Javascript gets to know it.

I think that most web developers would agree that Javascript can be many times a daunting endeavour. The sheer amount of functions, objects and methods is a challenge for anyone trying to integrate it with their web applications, even if they are experienced developers. Besides that, there is the nightmare of cross-browser compatibility: when coding for the web, one needs to take into consideration at least four of the existing browsers (IE, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari).

If we consider just the Microsoft Internet Explorer alone, one the most popular browsers for the web, there are all the idiosyncrasies of the different versions adding to the confusion and generating more bugs to solve. Take IE6 and IE7, for instance: a design and code that works perfectly in IE6 may very well be broken when viewed by IE7. Even though IE6 is currently being quickly phased out by the newer IE versions, there are still many differences between those and the other browsers. To make things worse, Microsoft has a long history of preferring to implement its own solutions instead of complying with web standards, like the other browsers try to do...

It is a well known fact that developers do like to reinvent the wheel. Nobody can program better than you, right? So, you are going to code that function yourself and turn it into a real masterpiece! While this mindset was attractive in the past, nowadays it is a pure waste of time. The world is full of good programmers, and a considerable number of them have joined communities that are engaged in high caliber Open Source products.

jQuery is one of such products, an Open Source Javascript framework. There are many out there, but for me jQuery is the easiest to learn and one of the richest, thanks to a very active developer's community. jQuery is a brilliant piece of engineering that encapsulates an enormous range of Javascript functionality into a lightweight, well structured and easy to understand architecture.

jQuery helps you at least in so far as the Javascript code is concerned. It facilitates, among other things, the nightmarish task of making the code compatible with all major browsers, and this is not a small feat. The clear and concise syntax of jQuery is also a big advantage, turning your scripts into much more readable and maintainable code. Also, the Ajax capability of jQuery is among the best and most flexible you can find.

Learning to use jQuery is a small effort, compared to all the benefits you may get from it. My advice to you is to give it a try: download the script, experiment with it and take a good look at all the examples on the jQuery main site. You get good support, frequent upgrades with a lot of improvements, and it's free for the take, it costs nothing.

Sounds too good to be true? I can assure you that it is true, and to confirm that, we see a plethora of jQuery tools, controls and additional functions being created every day by an enormous community of users. I dare say that almost everything you may ever need in Javascript, has already been coded for you as a jQuery extension or control. If, by any chance, you stumble on a very specific need, the excellent documentation will explain clearly how to program your own extension to jQuery.

I always thought that one of the most important characteristics of any piece of code is simplicity. When the code is simple, it can be easily understood, maintained and expanded by someone else. And what can be simpler, for example, than this one-liner:

$("p#msg").load("/errors/wrong_date.html");

The above will call the server to deliver the error message for a wrong date entered by the user, and display it on the paragraph with an id of "msg". And the following one-liner will simply clear the error message from the display:

$("p#msg").html("");

These two lines implement an important part of what is called "real-time error checking", a feature that gives immediate feedback to the user while he's filling each field of a form. This technique is much more user-friendly than waiting for the user to submit the form, and then check all input at the server, to return a long list of errors in one go.

This is the jQuery way of doing things: concise, simple and easy to understand. Isn't the small learning effort worth while?

Tips for advanced usage of  jQuery

An alternative way to work with the jQuery library is to include it in the webpage with a script tag, using Google's API hosting service:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Doing this has several advantages over hosting jQuery on your server(s): pages will load faster (decreased latency, increased parallelism, better caching), and you will be sure to always get the latest release of version 1 (the current version).

In the jQuery website, take your time to browse through the extensive list of plugins and get acquainted with what you have at your disposal. This will certainly avoid you to embark in a "reinvent-the-wheel" adventure.

It is a well known fact that the jQuery documentation is excellent. However, due to the sheer amount of functions, a cheat-sheet may prove handy once you are familiar with the arsenal at your disposal, but can't remember the precise syntax for a certain statement. This site offers 25 different jQuery cheat-sheets for web developers.

Smashing Apps is a great place where to look for jQuery plugins and techniques in order to create visually exciting websites. The same Smashing Apps, presents you also with a large number of plugins to render beautiful photo galleries.

Noupe is another very useful repository, listing jQuery plugins ranging from slideshows to graphic charts and various text effects.

On the website of Marc Grabanski you will find a huge list of useful jQuery plugins for all purposes. The best ones are marked EXCELLENT.

You may also want to check the ultimate jQuery plugin list at Kollermedia.at. This list is especially useful because the plugins are nicely grouped into categories.

Webreference will introduce you, step by step, to the techniques that will allow you to extend jQuery with your own plugin. Another excellent tutorial on how to develop a jQuery plugin, is to be found at Sitepoint's, the well known book publisher.

Alternatively, if you are an absolute beginner in jQuery, pay a visit to net.tuts+ website, where you can follow the complete series of 15 screencasts that will help you to become a jQuery pro.

I could go on and on, listing many other jQuery resources spread all over the Internet. What I listed above is just the tip of the iceberg, to show you the popularity of this framework, and to give you a taste of the huge amount of resources and support you will be able to discover in the web. To find much more, there is always Google Search, right?