Golden Steer
250+ Posts
I’m an atheist. Not some wimpy Meathead style agonistic (oh I can’t make my mind up so I’ll cover both bases). Out and out atheist.
Not only don’t I personally believe in God, I don’t think there is one. I think religion is something invited by man to bring a sense of order and comfort to what can be a dangerous, heartbreaking world. That’s me.
And yet, I find public atheists a whiny and pitiful lot. They’re obsessed with taking the word God out of the Pledge of Allegiance, or off the dollar. They wet themselves with terror at the sight of a manger setting in a public place, or with a prayer over the PA system at a football game.
In spite of my similar lack of belief in God, I find myself on the opposite side of those atheists who attempt to either belittle the beliefs of religious people, or even worse, harp about the role of government and religion.
The full concept of atheism is a difficult one, and in general, I’m glad there aren’t more of us. For all the bad things people do in the name of religion, how many of those things would have been done anyway, it’s just that religion offered a way to convince people to get on your side?
And you have to balance that with the bad things people don’t do, because they’re held in check by the thought of what going to happen to them after they die.
To be an atheist to know that there’s no great purpose or scheme to things. They just happen. Babies die in fires not to be called to God, but because something caught on fire. Because their idiot parents fell asleep smoking, or knocked over a space heater.
There aren’t miracles – that’s why for every story of someone saved in a tornado or airplane crash or who has cancer, 100 others didn’t make it.
You live. You die. You don’t live on forever in heaven, or hell, or get re-incarnated. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people. There’s no score being kept, and an accounting of things at the end.
This life is all you get – make it a good one, and leave the world a better place than you found it – because there’s nothing but blackness after you pass.
Those are difficult concepts, and I don’t relish the thought of a whole world believing that – too much temptation for people to try to get what they want without regards to what they would have to do to get it. Even more so that our current world.
Religion brings people together, to see that their place in this world is a small one, that there are things bigger and better and more important than them. It attempts to take the focus off oneself and our selfish desires. And so I think the world is better with most of its humans being religious.
Of the different religions, the one I’ve been most exposed to is of course Christianity, though I’ve learned a lot about Islam from living in the Middle East. The central concept of Christianity is a very difficult one. It’s a message of pacifism. Of following the teachings and actions of a man, who being the Son of God, could have ruled the world, and would have used his power to make it better.
Yet, he was chosen by God to suffer, cruelly at the hands of lesser men, and though he could have saved himself with a mere thought, and brought pain to those who had made him suffer, instead chose to obey God’s plan, and offer himself as a way of absorbing the sins of man, and offering those same people peace and love.
Christianity, by nature of its central story, is a message of winning by loss. Of absorbing the evil of your enemies, of forsaking the comforts and victories of this earth in favor of eternal life in heaven. Its core image is the cross – a horrible instrument of death and torture that was used against the religion’s leader on earth. In choosing this image, Christians said to the Romans that you have no power over us. You can kill and torture us, and we will continue to believe. We will win in the end, even if we lose everything we have on earth.
Unlike Islam, early Christianity did not spread by conquest (I know it did later), but by the power of its message. The Romans desperate tried to stamp out this religion, and yet the message absorbed the might of their empire, until the empire became Christian themselves.
It’s actually easier by far not believing in the Truth of this story. In admiring its message, without having to take it into heart, and following its logic. For Christianity demands sacrifice, and suffering, and loss in a way the other religions do not do, and in that atheism does not demand either.
So religions people, and especially Christians, you have the support and assistance of this atheist. I don’t believe, but I do admire the beliefts of your religion, and know the world is better because of it.
Not only don’t I personally believe in God, I don’t think there is one. I think religion is something invited by man to bring a sense of order and comfort to what can be a dangerous, heartbreaking world. That’s me.
And yet, I find public atheists a whiny and pitiful lot. They’re obsessed with taking the word God out of the Pledge of Allegiance, or off the dollar. They wet themselves with terror at the sight of a manger setting in a public place, or with a prayer over the PA system at a football game.
In spite of my similar lack of belief in God, I find myself on the opposite side of those atheists who attempt to either belittle the beliefs of religious people, or even worse, harp about the role of government and religion.
The full concept of atheism is a difficult one, and in general, I’m glad there aren’t more of us. For all the bad things people do in the name of religion, how many of those things would have been done anyway, it’s just that religion offered a way to convince people to get on your side?
And you have to balance that with the bad things people don’t do, because they’re held in check by the thought of what going to happen to them after they die.
To be an atheist to know that there’s no great purpose or scheme to things. They just happen. Babies die in fires not to be called to God, but because something caught on fire. Because their idiot parents fell asleep smoking, or knocked over a space heater.
There aren’t miracles – that’s why for every story of someone saved in a tornado or airplane crash or who has cancer, 100 others didn’t make it.
You live. You die. You don’t live on forever in heaven, or hell, or get re-incarnated. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people. There’s no score being kept, and an accounting of things at the end.
This life is all you get – make it a good one, and leave the world a better place than you found it – because there’s nothing but blackness after you pass.
Those are difficult concepts, and I don’t relish the thought of a whole world believing that – too much temptation for people to try to get what they want without regards to what they would have to do to get it. Even more so that our current world.
Religion brings people together, to see that their place in this world is a small one, that there are things bigger and better and more important than them. It attempts to take the focus off oneself and our selfish desires. And so I think the world is better with most of its humans being religious.
Of the different religions, the one I’ve been most exposed to is of course Christianity, though I’ve learned a lot about Islam from living in the Middle East. The central concept of Christianity is a very difficult one. It’s a message of pacifism. Of following the teachings and actions of a man, who being the Son of God, could have ruled the world, and would have used his power to make it better.
Yet, he was chosen by God to suffer, cruelly at the hands of lesser men, and though he could have saved himself with a mere thought, and brought pain to those who had made him suffer, instead chose to obey God’s plan, and offer himself as a way of absorbing the sins of man, and offering those same people peace and love.
Christianity, by nature of its central story, is a message of winning by loss. Of absorbing the evil of your enemies, of forsaking the comforts and victories of this earth in favor of eternal life in heaven. Its core image is the cross – a horrible instrument of death and torture that was used against the religion’s leader on earth. In choosing this image, Christians said to the Romans that you have no power over us. You can kill and torture us, and we will continue to believe. We will win in the end, even if we lose everything we have on earth.
Unlike Islam, early Christianity did not spread by conquest (I know it did later), but by the power of its message. The Romans desperate tried to stamp out this religion, and yet the message absorbed the might of their empire, until the empire became Christian themselves.
It’s actually easier by far not believing in the Truth of this story. In admiring its message, without having to take it into heart, and following its logic. For Christianity demands sacrifice, and suffering, and loss in a way the other religions do not do, and in that atheism does not demand either.
So religions people, and especially Christians, you have the support and assistance of this atheist. I don’t believe, but I do admire the beliefts of your religion, and know the world is better because of it.
