Materialist /Naturalist Statement of Belief
All members must subscribe to the following statement of belief:
1. Matter, energy, space and time are all that exists or has ever existed. They originated from nothing and for no reason. The universe consists only of that which is perceived by our five sensory organs, and nothing else exists or can exist.
2. All living things, including man, originated accidentally from non-living matter by means of natural processes. The first living cell came to be through random chance, and evolved by sheer effing luck over billions of years into da Vinci, Bach, and Mozart.
3. The pre-time, pre-matter event described in modern cosmology texts, commonly referred to as the Big Bang, was a prehistoric event that happened everywhere at once.
4. We are an organization of men and women of science who accept nothing except what can be poked with a stick as real. Human beings are animals — mobile automatons made from electrified meat — and are the result of the random action of wind and sunlight on dirty water billion of years ago. Neither the universe nor human beings have any special status, purpose, or destiny. Souls do not exist. Mind is an illusion. The order and structure we see in nature are illusions. Free will is an illusion. Right and wrong are matters of opinion; good and evil do not exist. Our only hope is that the human race continues long enough to build super-intelligent computers, which will then assimilate the data in our brains and allow us to “live” forever as virtual gods.
But it was a nice try. Better than many of the posts that folks send my way.