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| Was winning at football what Jesus had in mind? |
I was sipping Yellow Tail Shiraz and doing
yardwork yesterday, and the wine put me in mind of my Australian friends, Kylie
and Elephant’s Child. When I later found four dead gnats floating in my glass, I
thought of my vegan friend, All Consuming. Specifically, I wondered if a vegan
would, for reasons of veganism alone, avoid swallowing dead bugs. After all, lots
of foods contain bugs—flour and peanut butter, for example—making pure veganism
a practical impossibility. It then occurred to me that my dead gnats were like
roadkill in that their deaths were an accident, and I knew that, as one who
avoids meat, I wouldn’t eat road-kill, because vegetarianism isn’t just about
health, compassion, and environmental concern; it’s also about aesthetics, and dead critters are gross.
A little later, I was running a square-pointed
shovel along the curb to rescue earthworms that had been stranded by a week of
hard rain. When a neighbor walked by, I told her what I was doing, and,
completely free of charge, gave her a little speech about how a human life is worth no
more—if as much—as an earthworm’s life, because we humans have to destroy
other lives in order to live, whereas earthworms are a friend to everyone.
People look at me funny when I say things like
that. If they respond at all, they mention our bigger brains, opposable thumbs,
and the notion that God likes us better than he likes worms, which is why he
made us “in his own image.” Yet, of all the species on earth,
we take the cake when it comes to causing misery and death. How, then, do we know that
God didn’t make earthworms in his image, and that by rescuing earthworms, I’m
insuring myself a place in a wormy heaven alongside the very few other humans
who loved worms? Really, given the harm that we do, and the good that worms
do, why should we imagine ourselves superior?
“Because God said it; I believe it; and that
settles it.” “But how do you know God
said it?” “Because in Numbers 23:19, the Bible says: “God is not a man, so
he does not lie.’” “But how do you know
the man who wrote Numbers 23:19 didn’t just make that up?” Because in II
Timothy 3:16, we read: ‘All Scripture is inspired by God.’” “Well, gee whiz, thanks for your
compellingly rational answer.” “You smart-ass! You bastard! You atheist! Just
wait ‘til you get to the judgment throne! Do you really imagine that it will be
occupied by a worm? Do you dare blaspheme God?” “Oh, yes! It’s what we atheists
do for fun.” “Ahhhhh! The fires of hell await you, for in Psalms 14:4, we read:
‘The
fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,’ and again in Matthew 25:41: ‘Depart
from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the
devil and his angels.’”
You might doubt that believers really quote the Bible to prove the
Bible, but they do, frequently. But are
they so deluded as to think that sharing the Bible’s low opinion of
atheists will win atheists to God, or do they simply mean to insult nonbelievers
without taking responsibility for it, as in: “I’m not saying these horrible things to you; God is, but I’m only
too glad to share them”?
Why am I all worked up about
religion again? It’s because of a recent discussion with my Christian
blog-buddy, Joseph. As much as I would like to be understood by Joseph, it’s pointless because I can’t argue against a constant barrage of personal
insults, there being nothing in them to
argue against. My attempt at dialogue with Joseph inspired the following list
of things that atheists commonly hear
from believers, most or which are completely devoid of truth. Again, I’m
generalizing, it being impossible to portray every believer and every
atheist as thinking exactly like I’m about to portray them.
Atheists think they know everything. Otherwise, they would have admit
that they might be wrong about God. (Atheists do admit they might be wrong; they just consider it highly
unlikely. There is a big difference between saying: “I don’t believe God exists,”
and, “I can prove that God does not exist,” and most atheists do the former, because, strictly speaking, no once can disprove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, much less God.)
It takes more faith to be an atheist than a believer, because atheists
have to believe that the universe came from nothing. (1) In accordance with
the First Law of Thermodynamics, atheists believe that matter and energy can
neither be created nor destroyed, and (2) they would ask why it’s easier to
believe in the eternal existence of an infinitely complex and conscious being
known as God than to believe in the far simpler eternal existence of unconscious matter
and energy.)
Atheists know that God exists, but they’re too “swollen with pride” to
admit it. (Trust me, I don’t know that God exists, but with all my heart, I
would like to be proven wrong. I had much rather believe that I’m under
the eternal protection of a benevolent deity than to go around congratulating
myself for being an atheist.)
Theists believe in God; atheists believe in science, so what’s the
difference? (Science is not an entity in which one believes, but rather a method for understanding the universe based upon rationality and
evidence rather than authority and intuition.)
Atheists have no reason to be moral because they don’t fear hell.
(Atheists believe that morality is the product of evolution, but that it should
be guided by respect, compassion, and reason, rather than by the authority of a
book or religious leader. As atheists see it, a belief system that rests upon
authority is prone to rigidity, contempt, oppression, and cruelty. According to the Bible itself,
God ordered “the faithful” to commit murder, rape, abandonment, and pillaging.
At his command, God’s people treated women as property, owned slaves, murdered
homosexuals, discriminated against the disabled, and on and on and on, so for
his followers today to claim moral superiority based upon the Bible is absurd.)
Atheists just want to make believers look stupid. (Some do, some
don’t, but I try to avoid sarcasm,
argue rationally, show respect for the person I’m talking to, and keep an open
heart rather than resort to insults. I know that I sometimes fail, but I have
also observed that believers typically go out of their way to be hurtful,
because (1) they hold atheists in utter contempt; (2) they know less about
religion than atheists do, so their rebuttal options are limited; (3) their
beliefs are based upon emotional need rather than rationality, so they feel
severely threatened by serious questions, and their fear gets turned into anger.)
Atheists are responsible for society’s problems because God is
punishing everyone because of them. (Dogmatic belief—whether in God or the
State—is a major reason for societal failure, which is why countries—and parts
of countries—without such a mindset are happier, healthier, safer, less stressed,
and better educated, than are places where the edicts of religion or the state
are beyond criticism.
Atheists think they’re smarter than everyone else. (Statistically,
atheists are better educated than believers, but conceit is a human problem not
an atheist problem and, in my experience, it’s more likely to be based upon
wealth and class than non-belief.)
Atheists just like to argue. (Most atheists keep their atheism a
secret because they fear discrimination that can result in name-calling, vandalism, job loss, rejection by their families, imprisonment,
and even being hacked to death with machetes. Personally, I enjoy
discussing religion, but, except on my blog, I don’t around looking to do it.)
The life of an atheist is without meaning. (The life of an atheist
is without a God-given meaning, but it is not without the self-given meaning of
work, family, and other interests.)
Atheists want to outlaw religion. (Atheists want to outlaw
discrimination based upon religion, and they’re far more likely than theists to
oppose other forms of discrimination as well. It’s NOT atheists who want to silence believers, but believers who want to silence atheists.)
Atheists go around trying to force their beliefs upon others.
(Atheists resist having the values, music, ceremonies, and visual representations of religion
forced upon them, but many believers decry any
such limits as oppression. Their advice
to those who don’t share their particular brand of Christianity is: If you
don’t approve of them, don’t listen to our prayers, sermons, and hymns, in schools
and at city council meetings. If you don’t like to look at Jesus; turn your
head when you pass his statue or poster in a park, courtroom,
post office, sheriff’s office, mayor’s office, etc., If you don’t want to read Bible verses, look at your feet when our
public school cheerleaders and football players run onto the field carrying banners with Bible verses on
them. In those parts of America where they can get away with doing whatever the hell they please and excluding everyone who disagrees with them, believers use public
property as if it were church property, and for anyone to argue that not all believers are that way is just not much of consolation given that millions of them appear to be exactly that way.)
Atheists hate God. (You can’t hate an imaginary being, but you can
hate what that being represents and the harm done by those who think he is real.)
Nearly everyone on earth believes in God, so atheism is a defect. (The
thinking of the minority has often been proven superior to the thinking of the
majority, so instead of atheism being a defect, it could be a positive trend away from a system of thought that has caused so very much pain and
grief.)
Atheism didn’t exist until the modern era with its emphasis upon
science and materialism. (Atheism originated way before Christ, but the word itself is only 500 or more years old.)
Atheists are insensitive, humorless, and unable to appreciate beauty.
(It’s rather believers who denounce the natural world as fallen and attempt to put limits on art, dance, literature, and music. As for sensitivity
and humor, these are individual characteristics, and if they’re limited at all
by belief, I should think the limits would be more common among among theists. I
don’t know the extent to which laughter is frowned upon by theism—right off hand, I
can’t recall a single instance of laughter in the Bible—but it’s not limited by atheism.)
America’s increasing secularism is why God is punishing it with storms,
crime, political turmoil, cyber attacks, military failures, and in many other ways.
(Similar things were said about Europe during the Black Plague, so the people
burned “witches” and heretics, expelled Jews from their countries, and
threw their cats on bonfires, all in an effort to win God’s forgiveness. Today’s
growing tendency to blame Jews, homosexuals, atheists and other not nice people for America’s problems is
the first step toward a repetition of the crimes that Christians have committed so many times
before.
My discouragement around
dialoguing with believers is primarily based upon such insults as I have
listed, insults that are repeated endlessly in lieu of rationality no matter
how many times I try to say, “No, that’s not true. I’m not like that. I don’t
feel that way.” Now, I’m going to generalize
about believers in a way that I know is insulting, but I truly do believe it
based upon a lifetime of experience. Again, I’m generalizing, by which I mean I’m portraying believers as a group, but
with complete awareness that some believers are smart, educated, humane,
and thoughtful. To begin:
Few believers have a clue as to
what constitutes a rational argument. My discouragement with Joseph in
particular arose from the fact that—brilliant as he is—all he had to offer was
one insult after another combined with one very personal reason for his faith
and two arguments that he considered rational. His personal reason was that life
would be pointless without God, and his two arguments were: (1) Christianity
must be true, or else all those people wouldn’t have died for Jesus; (2) the
fact that nearly everyone who ever lived believed in God proves that God exists.
His claims represented an argument based upon authority, in this case, an
authority that I have no confidence in, so, combined with the constant insults,
I finally concluded that my attempts at dialogue were a waste of time,
considerable time as it turned out, because I really tried for all I was worth.
The believers whom I respect
don’t try to defend their faith, not because they’re afraid their reasons might
be shown to be lacking, but because they know
their reasons are lacking. They might consider the so-called evidence and
logical arguments for believing in God to be suggestive of God existence, but they recognize that, at best,
nothing they can say would prove
God’s existence. Why, then, do they believe? This is where it gets hard for me,
and not just because of the lack of evidence in favor of God but for the
abundance of evidence against God.
Most notably, why, if an all good and all-powerful God exists, are trillions of
the world’s creatures suffering undeserved pain and fear at this very moment;
pain and fear that my species, even if it tried its best, could not even begin to
eliminate?
Nothing that anyone has ever
offered has come even close to defending against this most important argument in
opposition to belief, and so it is that atheism isn’t just based upon the paucity
of evidence but upon the massive contradictions between the supposed
characteristics of God and the situation that we find ourselves in. Some
believers recognize that there is no explanation, so they take the position
that God is indeed all-good, but that he/she/it is not all-powerful, and so it
is that God needs our help. I consider this a fantastic claim because it means
that God had the power to create the whole damn universe only to be defeated by
the situation on planet earth. In other words, I should think that even a
limited God could at the very least do better than he is now doing. For
example, he could get rid of floods, droughts, famines, forest fires, and
earthquakes. Surely, the God who created black holes so immense that they could
swallow our entire solar system like the tiniest part of the tiniest gnat could
do better than he’s now doing, so why doesn’t
he, and why do people believe in him?
I have thought and thought
about this and, aside from them wanting the various comforts that belief
brings, I have no idea. They can’t tell me—at least not in a way that makes
sense to me—so the best that the more thoughtful of them seem able to do is to redefine
God in terms that, frankly, makes his existence irrelevant. Pantheism, for
example. I call the universe the universe, and pantheists call the universe God.
Well, so what? I guess it makes them feel good, but I don’t see that it would
make me feel good. Other people define God as “the force for good that
permeates the universe.” Surely, good (however defined) exists within almost
every human being and other creatures too, but why call it God?
It’s as if liberal believers
are able to give up each and every significant claim about God, but somehow find
comfort in retaining the word. They take the position that I, as an atheist, am
somehow missing the point, perhaps because I lack depth, sensitivity, and
openness. But no, I abhor being an atheist, and I would seriously doubt that
anyone who reads this blog would consider me shallow, insensitive, or unwilling
to go where my best thinking takes me. But just as liberal theists fail to give me credit,
so it is that I am at a loss to give them credit. They could, for example, define
love, gravity, and hundreds of other things, and tell me why they believe in them, so why not
God? It always comes back to claiming that, if
I don’t believe, there must be something wrong with me, but this ignores the contradictory diversity of belief, and besides, such a claim could just easily be turned back on
them.
I think that there surely must
be a physiological basis for belief, and that it is to their credit that
atheists lack it because it results in them
being the ones who are open whereas it is believers who are closed. Believers
might or might not be—I think they probably are—more content with life because
of their beliefs, but when I look at the amount of harm they do, is personal
contentment worth the harm done by religion?
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