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Oct. 17th, 2006 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIn the email today:
I was just perusing your very entertaining website and came across your article about the "religion of tomatoes." Being very interested on the subject of religion, and if it is not too much trouble on your part, could you express your reasons for being an atheist?
First off, is there something on my website that attracts the fruitbat minority? Seriously. I am not making this email up. I never make up any of the emails that get posted here. People just write me the darnedest things.
Y'know, I suspect that for the majority of, say, Lutherans and Jews and Catholics, they don't have reasons for being that, other than that's what their parents raised 'em up to be. I shouldn't have to justify my belief system any more than they do. Hell, nobody should *have* to justify. We have freedom of religion here and if I wanted to worship Offler, I could do so. (I don't, though. Too many teeth.)
Okay. I don't worship a deity *and* I don't think one exists. I'm pretty sure that you die when you die. I'm pretty sure there is no post-game analysis wherein folks pay for their mistakes and get cheered for their noble and selfless choices. I don't think you get a do-over where your starting point is based on how well you did in this iteration of the game. I don't think people are somehow special or different from animals in that their spirit or soul or other invisible part drifts off to become one with space aliens or whatever. We're all made of meat. Humans are not fundamentally different from animals and they don't have magical invisible immortal souls even though quite a lot of people would like to think that they do.
What we have here is what there is. Right here, right now, you are alive. This is your life. Do a good job with it, because you will not be getting another one. It isn't fair. There's no warranty of fun. It's entirely likely that you will not win. Heck, bad people win and good people lose every day in the Game of Life. There is pain. There is suffering. There are shitty choices. What's worse, the pain and suffering and shitty choices are doled out entirely without regard for who is a GOOD person and who is a BAD person. It's like that stuff is totally fucking random. Some people have lives where it seems that they can do no wrong, even if they're right royal bastards. Other people have Kobayashi Maru lives even if they're kind and considerate of others. This is not fair. It isn't fair at all... and you only get one try at it, with a stacked deck and uneven starting conditions and you think to yourself, "What the hell way is that to run a fucking railroad?"
Well, it isn't.
Near as I can tell, things can either be this hideously not-fair because of blind chance or they can be this hideously not-fair because God Wants It That Way. Mmm-hmm. If there is a God and He wants the world to be like this, I am all about denying Him to His face because there's absolutely no need to be such a shit about things, is there? (I am not buying "ineffable" because that's not really an explanation. I also don't think that the God-people feel He grades on a curve. Everybody is supposed to bear up under the load, even though some folks get way more load than others. The whole thing is very not-fair.) So, y'know, Fie! But honestly, I'd rather there be no God at all than one who really thinks this is the way things should be because that sort of God would have to be one sick puppy. Are we in a world designed and operated by one sick puppy, or is this all random and uncaring chance?
I know which way I want to bet. :)
Most of the time, the churched people assume that I do the atheism thing so that I get a Get Out of Being a Decent Human Being Free! card on the behavioral front. I don't know where they get this. Perhaps they have met other, different atheists who go around being complete and total shits just because the fear of God isn't there to MAKE them behave. I don't really believe that the lack of God is a mandate to go around being a shit to others. I believe that we should try to be decent, honorable, fair human beings because the world is hideously unfair and because we only get one shot at life and because we are our own judges, in this, our only (quite mortal) life. We cannot really level the playing field and we can't see to it that disease and misfortune target the bastards while avoiding the honorable sorts. The only thing we can really control in this world is our own behavior... and that is reason enough for us to do so.
Things I believe.
1. Religion is all pretend. (For this, I offer exactly as much proof as the folks who assert that "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." is true. If they're allowed to claim "true" by way of saying a thing, then so the hell am I. Just because they have more people saying their thing than I have saying mine does not make their thing *more* true than mine. Truth is what it is, no matter how many people repeat it or not.)
2. Not only is it all pretend, it's silly. (Pointy hats. Censers. Ritual cannibalism. Full-immersion baptism. Grape juice instead of wine? Spats over what version of the hymnal to use? Circumcision. Virginity balls where little girls wear white and dance with their fathers to promise to remain virgin until their wedding day?!? Like, y'know, Daddy owns the hymen. YICK, I say.)
3. The doctrine of original sin sucks ass and I don't hold with it. I'm not buying that. I am only responsible for what I have done. I refuse to be responsible for what some dead prophet claims a naked chick in an orchard did several thousand years ago. I only own my personal sins and I reject the idea that there is a vast, racial sin which I have to shoulder. Fuck that. To my way of thinking, the doctrine of original sin is for people with low self-esteem. Yes, God, I'm evil and bad and helpless in my evil baditude. Please help me to be better than this filthy, worthless flesh! Bugger that for a lark, say I. I don't hate myself that much, thanks, and I don't think I'm inherently evil, wrong, bad, or flawed. I make mistakes, yes, and then I realize that (sometimes way after the fact) and I try to do better next time. Unlike some of the churched-people, I don't have any way to atone for my mistakes. I don't get the luxury of confession and absolution. I have to live with my mistakes and their consequences bearing down upon whatever it is that I use for a conscience.
4. We die when we die. This is all you get. Pretending that it isn't, well, that's just to make people having shitty lives feel better about being stuck with a losing hand. Thinking that there's judgment after death is something folks do so that they can feel better about the bastards cheating the system and living well while grinding others under the heels of their boots because, yo, that's entirely NOT FAIR. Judgment-after-death as a concept exists to make oppression more readily borne by the oppressed. Life isn't fair and there isn't a great reckoning after you're dead. You're dead after you die. Game over. (I know that this is true the same way that people who believe they are going to the theme park JesusLand after they die know that that's true. Honestly, which is more plausible: food for worms, or JesusLand?)
5. I'm opposed to being expected to answer to some bearded guy in the sky for my actions. I answer to me for my actions and that is quite enough. I had parents to whom I had to answer and I'm done with that now, thanks. I don't need or want a heavenly father to answer to. One mortal father was plenty. 'Sides which, if my mortal parents did their damn jobs, I have a functioning moral compass to help me navigate the sticky wickets of modern life and I don't need a bearded vengeance demon in the sky to help me out with that stuff.
6. I have not, by and large, been notably impressed by the behavior of people who believe in various religions. It pains me to say it, but they seem to be just as fallible and as petty as ordinary unchurched humans. I'm not at all sure what is supposed to be improving about having a religion if the people who *have* one act about the same as the people who *don't* have one. It doesn't appear to make much difference, honestly. Actually, and this might just be sampling error on my part, the unchurched people that I know lead fairly well-examined, ethical lives. There's a lot less, y'know, bad behavior going on there than you might expect. Freed from the dictates of a God, most people appear to honor contracts and work hard and pay their bills and raise responsible children and recycle and tell the truth and try not to hurt others...
7. On the mixing of believers and nonbelievers of all sorts: Other people are allowed to do religion up to and until it starts to interfere with my not-doing-religion, even if I think they're fruitbat insane. If my tax dollars are involved, there should not be a whiff of religion involved but what people do with their own, private dollars is their own business. I do not generally bother with protesting religion or going about telling those people that they are wasting their time because it doesn't convince anyone and only upsets them. However, if I *wanted* to peacefully hand out anti-Chick tracts on a public sidewalk NEAR a place of worship or if I wanted to go door-to-door explaining how God was make-believe like King Friday on Mr. Rogers, I could do that and (this is important) the religious people would not be allowed to stop me. The people doing religion are not allowed to get shirty with me and my unGodliness. I am allowed to be a Heathen Unbeliever in relative peace, subject to such proseletyzing as I choose to listen to. However, if I slam my door in the face of the Jehovah's Witnesses, that's my perogative. They're allowed to knock and I'm allowed to slam the door in their faces. I do not have to be *nice* to them if I'm feeling particularly surly that day. People are allowed to hand me Chick Tracts in public places and I am free to take them or not. If I take them, I am allowed to make with the mockery on my LJ. Other people can ask me if I am saved and I can pretend not to understand what they mean or I can answer in the negative or I can laugh in the person's face. I am under absolutely no requirement to answer OR to take their question seriously. Pretty much all efforts at conversion have to stay civilized and at the level of Visit the Infidel With Explanatory Pamphlets. No kill-or-convert wars, anyway, because the hearts and minds you allegedly win that way are pretty fucking hollow. If you can't sell your belief system by smiting the unbeliever with cunning arguments, it ain't much of a belief system. :)
I was just perusing your very entertaining website and came across your article about the "religion of tomatoes." Being very interested on the subject of religion, and if it is not too much trouble on your part, could you express your reasons for being an atheist?
First off, is there something on my website that attracts the fruitbat minority? Seriously. I am not making this email up. I never make up any of the emails that get posted here. People just write me the darnedest things.
Y'know, I suspect that for the majority of, say, Lutherans and Jews and Catholics, they don't have reasons for being that, other than that's what their parents raised 'em up to be. I shouldn't have to justify my belief system any more than they do. Hell, nobody should *have* to justify. We have freedom of religion here and if I wanted to worship Offler, I could do so. (I don't, though. Too many teeth.)
Okay. I don't worship a deity *and* I don't think one exists. I'm pretty sure that you die when you die. I'm pretty sure there is no post-game analysis wherein folks pay for their mistakes and get cheered for their noble and selfless choices. I don't think you get a do-over where your starting point is based on how well you did in this iteration of the game. I don't think people are somehow special or different from animals in that their spirit or soul or other invisible part drifts off to become one with space aliens or whatever. We're all made of meat. Humans are not fundamentally different from animals and they don't have magical invisible immortal souls even though quite a lot of people would like to think that they do.
What we have here is what there is. Right here, right now, you are alive. This is your life. Do a good job with it, because you will not be getting another one. It isn't fair. There's no warranty of fun. It's entirely likely that you will not win. Heck, bad people win and good people lose every day in the Game of Life. There is pain. There is suffering. There are shitty choices. What's worse, the pain and suffering and shitty choices are doled out entirely without regard for who is a GOOD person and who is a BAD person. It's like that stuff is totally fucking random. Some people have lives where it seems that they can do no wrong, even if they're right royal bastards. Other people have Kobayashi Maru lives even if they're kind and considerate of others. This is not fair. It isn't fair at all... and you only get one try at it, with a stacked deck and uneven starting conditions and you think to yourself, "What the hell way is that to run a fucking railroad?"
Well, it isn't.
Near as I can tell, things can either be this hideously not-fair because of blind chance or they can be this hideously not-fair because God Wants It That Way. Mmm-hmm. If there is a God and He wants the world to be like this, I am all about denying Him to His face because there's absolutely no need to be such a shit about things, is there? (I am not buying "ineffable" because that's not really an explanation. I also don't think that the God-people feel He grades on a curve. Everybody is supposed to bear up under the load, even though some folks get way more load than others. The whole thing is very not-fair.) So, y'know, Fie! But honestly, I'd rather there be no God at all than one who really thinks this is the way things should be because that sort of God would have to be one sick puppy. Are we in a world designed and operated by one sick puppy, or is this all random and uncaring chance?
I know which way I want to bet. :)
Most of the time, the churched people assume that I do the atheism thing so that I get a Get Out of Being a Decent Human Being Free! card on the behavioral front. I don't know where they get this. Perhaps they have met other, different atheists who go around being complete and total shits just because the fear of God isn't there to MAKE them behave. I don't really believe that the lack of God is a mandate to go around being a shit to others. I believe that we should try to be decent, honorable, fair human beings because the world is hideously unfair and because we only get one shot at life and because we are our own judges, in this, our only (quite mortal) life. We cannot really level the playing field and we can't see to it that disease and misfortune target the bastards while avoiding the honorable sorts. The only thing we can really control in this world is our own behavior... and that is reason enough for us to do so.
Things I believe.
1. Religion is all pretend. (For this, I offer exactly as much proof as the folks who assert that "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." is true. If they're allowed to claim "true" by way of saying a thing, then so the hell am I. Just because they have more people saying their thing than I have saying mine does not make their thing *more* true than mine. Truth is what it is, no matter how many people repeat it or not.)
2. Not only is it all pretend, it's silly. (Pointy hats. Censers. Ritual cannibalism. Full-immersion baptism. Grape juice instead of wine? Spats over what version of the hymnal to use? Circumcision. Virginity balls where little girls wear white and dance with their fathers to promise to remain virgin until their wedding day?!? Like, y'know, Daddy owns the hymen. YICK, I say.)
3. The doctrine of original sin sucks ass and I don't hold with it. I'm not buying that. I am only responsible for what I have done. I refuse to be responsible for what some dead prophet claims a naked chick in an orchard did several thousand years ago. I only own my personal sins and I reject the idea that there is a vast, racial sin which I have to shoulder. Fuck that. To my way of thinking, the doctrine of original sin is for people with low self-esteem. Yes, God, I'm evil and bad and helpless in my evil baditude. Please help me to be better than this filthy, worthless flesh! Bugger that for a lark, say I. I don't hate myself that much, thanks, and I don't think I'm inherently evil, wrong, bad, or flawed. I make mistakes, yes, and then I realize that (sometimes way after the fact) and I try to do better next time. Unlike some of the churched-people, I don't have any way to atone for my mistakes. I don't get the luxury of confession and absolution. I have to live with my mistakes and their consequences bearing down upon whatever it is that I use for a conscience.
4. We die when we die. This is all you get. Pretending that it isn't, well, that's just to make people having shitty lives feel better about being stuck with a losing hand. Thinking that there's judgment after death is something folks do so that they can feel better about the bastards cheating the system and living well while grinding others under the heels of their boots because, yo, that's entirely NOT FAIR. Judgment-after-death as a concept exists to make oppression more readily borne by the oppressed. Life isn't fair and there isn't a great reckoning after you're dead. You're dead after you die. Game over. (I know that this is true the same way that people who believe they are going to the theme park JesusLand after they die know that that's true. Honestly, which is more plausible: food for worms, or JesusLand?)
5. I'm opposed to being expected to answer to some bearded guy in the sky for my actions. I answer to me for my actions and that is quite enough. I had parents to whom I had to answer and I'm done with that now, thanks. I don't need or want a heavenly father to answer to. One mortal father was plenty. 'Sides which, if my mortal parents did their damn jobs, I have a functioning moral compass to help me navigate the sticky wickets of modern life and I don't need a bearded vengeance demon in the sky to help me out with that stuff.
6. I have not, by and large, been notably impressed by the behavior of people who believe in various religions. It pains me to say it, but they seem to be just as fallible and as petty as ordinary unchurched humans. I'm not at all sure what is supposed to be improving about having a religion if the people who *have* one act about the same as the people who *don't* have one. It doesn't appear to make much difference, honestly. Actually, and this might just be sampling error on my part, the unchurched people that I know lead fairly well-examined, ethical lives. There's a lot less, y'know, bad behavior going on there than you might expect. Freed from the dictates of a God, most people appear to honor contracts and work hard and pay their bills and raise responsible children and recycle and tell the truth and try not to hurt others...
7. On the mixing of believers and nonbelievers of all sorts: Other people are allowed to do religion up to and until it starts to interfere with my not-doing-religion, even if I think they're fruitbat insane. If my tax dollars are involved, there should not be a whiff of religion involved but what people do with their own, private dollars is their own business. I do not generally bother with protesting religion or going about telling those people that they are wasting their time because it doesn't convince anyone and only upsets them. However, if I *wanted* to peacefully hand out anti-Chick tracts on a public sidewalk NEAR a place of worship or if I wanted to go door-to-door explaining how God was make-believe like King Friday on Mr. Rogers, I could do that and (this is important) the religious people would not be allowed to stop me. The people doing religion are not allowed to get shirty with me and my unGodliness. I am allowed to be a Heathen Unbeliever in relative peace, subject to such proseletyzing as I choose to listen to. However, if I slam my door in the face of the Jehovah's Witnesses, that's my perogative. They're allowed to knock and I'm allowed to slam the door in their faces. I do not have to be *nice* to them if I'm feeling particularly surly that day. People are allowed to hand me Chick Tracts in public places and I am free to take them or not. If I take them, I am allowed to make with the mockery on my LJ. Other people can ask me if I am saved and I can pretend not to understand what they mean or I can answer in the negative or I can laugh in the person's face. I am under absolutely no requirement to answer OR to take their question seriously. Pretty much all efforts at conversion have to stay civilized and at the level of Visit the Infidel With Explanatory Pamphlets. No kill-or-convert wars, anyway, because the hearts and minds you allegedly win that way are pretty fucking hollow. If you can't sell your belief system by smiting the unbeliever with cunning arguments, it ain't much of a belief system. :)
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 06:14 pm (UTC)The difference between faith and belief becomes crucial when studying the historical progression of religions. What often happens is that some crisis of national importance will happen and everyone's beliefs will be shaken, i.e. those concrete facts they took for granted to always be true no longer prove true, but the faith, the intangible concepts, still hold true because they are harder to pin down and define. The people have to reorder their beliefs to fit the new situation they find themselves in, but they still have faith in the institution itself. Does this make sense?
Some historical examples: Babylonian exile, The Crusades from the Muslim's point of view, 9/11/2001
In all these situations, the victim's beliefs about their reality were shaken and had to be revamped, but the faith they had in their respective institutions was still there.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 07:36 pm (UTC)