Religion can be a very important part of someone's life. Providing support, hope, and light at the end of a very dark tunnel, it can be the hand you hold during difficult times or the joy you feel on brighter days. Having faith, believing in something is as old as time. We all need something or someone to turn to at some point in our lives. It doesn't have to be formal religion, it can be meditation or just the feeling that something greater than you exists. Some people are raised in one faith and convert later on in life when they find the comfort they need in a different belief system. Many don't find a higher power until they are either much older, or are feeling their own mortality creeping up. No one way is correct. There are no rules regarding how or when you should believe. Very personal and private, belief and faith exist in our hearts and don't require explanation...to anyone.
Those who don't practice a formal religion or seriously believe there is nothing else out there but space and time are free to do so. Freedom of choice exists for all in our country, one of the many reasons I am proud to be an American. Atheism at its core is not a bad thing. Rejecting the existence of a deity or many deities due to a lack of empirical evidence makes perfect sense. Saying there aren't gods or a God because you believe in scientific evidence and theories like the Big Bang and evolution is perfectly understandable. Many Catholics are scientists and also believe in evolutionary theory. We accept the incongruities religion holds, and are able to juggle anthropological proof of life with our faith. It may seem a little like multiple personality disorder or total confusion on our part, but many of us are smart enough to separate the two. Like church and state, while they may have influence over each other in a very distant way, they are distinct entities and should and can be treated as such.
What this leaves me to wonder, are some atheists so stupid that they cannot accept that other people don't agree with them? Spouting off about how ridiculous religion is and how dumb assed those of us who believe in something other than the current alcoholic beverage we are drinking are for actually having faith in something we can't see or prove. While you are entitled to feel however you'd like about another human being, you are also expected to have respect for the differences that exist between us. We are all unique, no one is like anyone else completely. From skin color, to hair color, to size and shape. We've learned to accept those differences and like each other based on the person that is on the inside. Since, aren't we all the same under the skin? You may drink tea and I'm an obsessed coffee drinker. That doesn't mean I will mock you on the internet for all your friends to see. I watch Dexter and love the serial killer in him...I get his Dark Passenger. You may think I'm bat shit crazy, but you are still my friend. Differences are what make us fun to be around. If we all thought the same, believed the same things, and acted the same way, the world would be painfully boring and we'd have nothing to talk about over coffee OR tea.
And there's where I take issue with quite a few atheists. It's one thing to hold a belief that there is nothing TO believe in, it's quite another to criticize me for being Catholic. Easter is our holiest holiday of the year, a very solemn time for Christianity. While it does bring out the overzealous nature of some Catholics, we all experience the feelings and emotion of this time of year, remembering the sacrifice Jesus made for all of us...even you Atheists because God loves everyone. Some of us went public and sung the praises of our Lord and His ultimate sacrifice and miraculous return to us. To me, some were overdone and a bit preachy, but I made no comment and respected their need to testify. At the same time, there were quite a few non-believers who made no bones about being rude and judgmental about those who did believe.
I was shocked and horrified by some of the posts I saw all over Twitter and Facebook. Accepting the freedom of speech afforded us by the Constitution, I didn't respond to the barrage of nasty remarks and ecards that were all over my feeds. In retrospect, I probably should have reminded you that just as you have freedom to speak your mind, we have freedom of religion. Welcome to the United States, asshole. Oddly, I kept my mouth shut and my fingers still. But now, I am fuming and you need to hear what I have to say. Being an atheist is your choice, and I am fine with that. What I am not fine with is reading posts about "Zombie Jesus Day" and other bitchy posts about how Easter is bullshit and only an excuse to eat chocolate. No one is asking you to believe what we do, what we ask is that you allow us to celebrate our religious holidays in peace, free from your uneducated, fucktarded opinions.
My favorite post had to be the Ricky Gervais message. While you may have thought he supported your atheism and disgust for our organized religions, what he did was point out what a horrible person YOU are. One thing I've noticed about some atheists, is that they use their lack of belief in a higher power to justify the horrible life decisions they make and treating people like shit. Just like some Catholics hide under their bibles while stabbing friends in the back by gossiping, some Atheists are just as fucked up. Simply because you believe in nothing, doesn't give you the right to be a total douchebag. Ricky Gervais listed the Ten Commandments and was able to truthfully say that were he a Catholic, he'd have broken not one of them. This only proves that he is an innately good person, in possession of high moral standards. He is, but you are not. Those of you who don't believe in God but have coveted your neighbor's husband, and then dragged him into committing adultery...can you compare yourself with the standards Mr. Gervais has set? Lying and taking what is not rightfully yours, aren't acceptable whether or not you believe in God.
My point is, and I do have one, that many of you who mock us for believing in God, should look in your own backyard before casting judgement on us. Maybe we use religion as our own moral compass, but at least most of us have one. Can you say the same about yourself? You can lie to yourself, but I and many others know the truth about you. Pretending to be so righteous while behaving so heinously, you've outed yourself over and over. Don't for a second believe you are fooling anyone. Actions speak louder than words, and yours scream scumbag! Acting like a total shit heel and then mocking the religions of those who strive to behave in a, dare I say it, godlike manner, only serves to point out what kind of person you are...it doesn't prove your point about us at all. Make a fool of yourself publicly, that IS what you are doing every time you mock something you don't fully understand. Are you friggin kidding me right now???
This woman's essay is incoherent. In the first paragraph alone, she says she has no problem with believers believing whatver they want, and acknowledging how deeply-felt their religious beliefs are and how they developed over a lifetime, but then saying they shouldn't base their opinions on their faith and to do so is immature. I find it unsurprising that this woman finds atheist tweets more annoying than bible-thumpers trying to lock her vagina in a cage, because she's a believer, and if she didn't make excuses for other religious people, she'd have no basis on which to make excuses for her own.
ReplyDeleteThis "live and let live" line is jive. Atheists let you live, they just don't let you evoke bad thinking in their presence without bristling over it. Religion happens to be a culturally-enshrined form of bad thinking. It's disrespectful to expect other people to just excuse your crazy ideas because they don't want to make bloggers mad. I don't bust into churches on Sundays and throw atheist flyers in the air. But out here in the real world, bad ideas have consequences. And the fact that some atheists, like anybody else, can be poor diplomats doesn't in any way validate the longstanding policy in society that we mustnt be "disrespectful of religion", just because it's religion. What exactly makes the belief, for example, that Hell is a physical place worthy of respect or deference? Wouldn't people who believed in such myths be better off not teaching them to their children? Wouldn't we all be better off? Being respectful and letting live doesn't seem to extend to the religious nuts trying to influence legislation that affects my life, does it?
And permit me to clarify something that might help you understand where I’m coming from. I don’t hold any idea or belief because it makes me feel good, or because I was raised to believe it, or because it feels nice to believe the same thing as everybody else in a given community. I believe things because I have been convinced of them. I cherish the opportunity to find out I am wrong on something, if only because it means I am now better informed than before – wiser, if you will. I honestly don’t know what it feels like to have an emotional attachment to an idea, where, when someone criticizes it, the first thing I feel is outrage and personal offense and defensiveness. I could understand feeling that way about an idea like “My son is super-smart and handsome and a good kid”. I’d be mad, not rational, if someone called my kid names in front of me. But everybody knows that those kinds of feelings are about emotional attachments, not the cool analysis of what’s factually true. I don’t know what it feels like to have an emotional attachment to an idea like how old the universe is, or whether an all-powerful entity made me, or that there’s some sort of “reward” coming after I kick off if I play by a certain set of rules. If those things are true, me thinking they’re keen doesn’t make them MORE true, does it? And if they *aren’t* true, surely my belief in them doesn’t change that fact? I recognize that people have emotional attachments to their religion, and operate from that basis, but I don’t consider it any more rational or defensible than trying to argue in court that my child couldn’t have committed that robbery because “I know in my heart that he’s a good kid and could never have done this”.
Anyway, just understand that I feel like Spock in all this. I don't approach the discussion of religious ideas with any focus other than understanding what people believe and why, so when the answer to Why? is How dare you ask me that?, I'm just baffled and dismayed...
It seems that the blog is perfectly coherent, while your tirade is a rambling mess. Our blogger clearly states "some atheists" and goes on to explain what specifically bothers her about certain behaviors that certain atheists have perpetrated. Why do you feel threatened by that? Why do you feel that you must defend atheism and atheists?
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