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I’m an atheist. I’ve never practised any religion of my own volition. I went to a Catholic school as a child, but all that’s left me with is a fondness for elaborate churches with stained glass windows, as I spent most of my time staring out of them and daydreaming.
I find it odd when atheists trumpet themselves as more conscientious and intelligent than believers. OK, so not having a religious doctrine to give you a moral code for “free” might seem like it requires more mental effort. However, you also have legal and social frameworks to provide you with a moral code, and those are probably a bigger deterrent for bad behaviour in practical terms. No one wants to pay large fines, spend time in jail, or be Billy-No-Mates. I think those are the things that keep most people, religious or not, from being arseholes.
The assumption that every practitioner of a religion believes in the same moral code also bothers me. Have you seen the news at all, ever? I can only imagine what it must be like to be a practising believer, well-versed in one’s doctrine, watching some dickhead on television saying he’s just slaughtered a bunch of people who were worshipping in their house of faith, which they thought was a sanctuary, because God told him to. It must be heartbreaking, seeing someone who’s allegedly read the same texts, extracting that message from them.
As for intelligence, the very definition of which is highly problematic, especially when people get competitive about it, what makes anyone think that atheism is an automatic pass to ranking oneself above others? There are atheists who are also stupid, who speak and act illogically, and are ignorant and determined to stay that way. There are people of faith who are not.
Anyway, the point of this ramble was really to send a message to my friends who are believers: I don’t think I’m better or smarter than you because I’m an atheist. I think this is worth saying because there are an awful lot of atheists who do. If you want to talk about your faith with or around me, please do. Or don’t! That’s also okay, of course. I love you.
I find it odd when atheists trumpet themselves as more conscientious and intelligent than believers. OK, so not having a religious doctrine to give you a moral code for “free” might seem like it requires more mental effort. However, you also have legal and social frameworks to provide you with a moral code, and those are probably a bigger deterrent for bad behaviour in practical terms. No one wants to pay large fines, spend time in jail, or be Billy-No-Mates. I think those are the things that keep most people, religious or not, from being arseholes.
The assumption that every practitioner of a religion believes in the same moral code also bothers me. Have you seen the news at all, ever? I can only imagine what it must be like to be a practising believer, well-versed in one’s doctrine, watching some dickhead on television saying he’s just slaughtered a bunch of people who were worshipping in their house of faith, which they thought was a sanctuary, because God told him to. It must be heartbreaking, seeing someone who’s allegedly read the same texts, extracting that message from them.
As for intelligence, the very definition of which is highly problematic, especially when people get competitive about it, what makes anyone think that atheism is an automatic pass to ranking oneself above others? There are atheists who are also stupid, who speak and act illogically, and are ignorant and determined to stay that way. There are people of faith who are not.
Anyway, the point of this ramble was really to send a message to my friends who are believers: I don’t think I’m better or smarter than you because I’m an atheist. I think this is worth saying because there are an awful lot of atheists who do. If you want to talk about your faith with or around me, please do. Or don’t! That’s also okay, of course. I love you.
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There are atheists, it's true, who seem to have created an alternative religion which is a bit baffling to me!
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(Being a poly-henotheist highly based on personal gnosis: having all sides look at you, go " . . . ", try to fit you in their conceptual framework, give up, and go back to pretending you don't exist.) (Not aimed at you, so much as just a wry chuckle: the kind of twerp-atheist you're NOT is often very confounded with what to do with me, because the phrase "generally speaking [one of] my god[s] thinks I should do X but I think they're overreacting so I don't" doesn't WORK in their brains . . . )
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Compromise term: henotheist is someone who worships one god while accepting the existence or possible existence of multiple gods and conceptions of god. I am affiliated with multiple divine entities, but I have primary allegiance, and work within a specific system/conception, while being perfectly comfortable with the idea that there are many (many, many) other divine entities and ways of interacting with them.
The nature of the compromise term and how it's a compromise just underscores how much the entire monotheistically-influenced way of even talking about this shit in English applies badly to how I experience this stuff, though. laugh
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Oh, stained glass windows. <3
I admit to giggling aloud at "Billy No-Mates."
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This is a welcome counterpoint to a Facebook friend of mine observing on her blog, probably in response to me, that she gets irritated when people of minority religions point out that people in monotheist-usually-Christian–atheist debates haven't considered our position. Well, A, you obviously haven't, because if you had—well, I won't say you'd be a polytheist, 'cause I don't have any way to know that (and atheism is a perfectly reasonable response, in my worldview, to never having experienced the presence of a Deity to know it; I have no real quarrel with atheists). But you'd certainly have better, which is to say less tuned-to-Christianity, arguments for why you're an atheist!
(None of which I am saying to A herself because it would come out so much more vicious than I want it to. I am so sick of this murderpain!)
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I wrestled myself out of the church at 20 when I finally decided I could not square the church's teaching on LGBT relationships and the loving, just God I had always believed in. (I wasn't out to myself yet - that was about 18 mos later).
One of the great reliefs of no longer being a Christian was not being mortified and furious that my church was associated with the Southern Baptist interpretation of Christianity which I recognised as rulebound, power-hungry and cruel.
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I don't know if you have seen the facebook page Mean Trots, but they had this recent gem:
[Image: Regina George from Mean Girls. Text: "So you agree? New Atheists like Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens are better characterized as Imperial Athiests?" #MeanTrots]
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I'm an atheist myself, coming from a protestant-pietist low church background, but I have never believed. I have tried to believe, I wanted to believe at one time, but it doesn't work for me. Sometimes I am envious of those who can believe without questioning it, even those who question, but come up god(s) I sometimes envy. For me life seems to be easier with belief, but perhaps I am biased from by references. My family are all believers, and the idea that you can not believe is totally foreign to them.
Of course it doesn't mean I live in a world devoid of moral and ethic; both my own and the institutionalized ethics that surround me are primarily Protestant in origin.
Normally I am pretty laid back, and of the opinion that as long as you don't push your religion on me, I will not push my atheism on you. But I will push back. And I have read the Bible in more languages than most of those I debate with - my Classics degree has been pretty useful that way.
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I don't begrudge anyone their own beliefs, but I tend to think of most organized religions as little more than frameworks for controlling large numbers of people. However, since many people are able to adapt that framework to their lives in a positive manner, and basically aren't complete dicks with religion, (i.e. using God as an excuse to be homophobic, racist, etc.) we're good.
The only possible exception is Buddhism, but I don't really consider that a religion.
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ETA - and probably a soda-ist as well.
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And that includes atheistic fundamentalists, which are the type you're talking about. When you start putting yourself above others due to your superiority complex and say shit like "any sane person would follow my religion", you become a fundamentalist.
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I was a little dubious about sending G. to a school that described itself as "multi-faith" rather than secular, but in retrospect the lesson that all faiths should be treated with respect and, by and large, it is the actions of individuals upon which judgements should be made not the belief systems they use to justify the actions is a good one.
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I consider myself the defective one, not them.
I've looked at atheist communities in the past, thinking I might find some like-minded people, but was turned off by the incredible arrogance of many of the, usually though not always, men there. I noticed they were usually also socially inept computer guys, probably guys with Aspergers. Now, I have scored well into the "probably have Aspergers" range myself, but somehow managed to avoid the obnoxious (at least I hope I have) arrogance that so many Aspies exhibit in all or many facets of life, not just their atheism.
Anyway, I suspect that virulent atheism (not the easy-going, no big deal, humanistic kind) attracts people who are already virulently obnoxious in many ways. It's not the atheism that makes them that way - they arrived at atheism already so inclined.
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It's kind of a neat religion, other than the whole needing to believe in a spiritual being who oversees all. People think CS's are faith healers, but they actually just believe that the physical world, including our bodies, isn't real - we just think it is, and we create our own reality through our beliefs. God is love, and man was created in the image of God. God is perfect, therefore man is perfect, and when we become ill, it's because we've allowed doubt of God's love and of Man's perfection to creep in. When they "pray" over a sick person, they're not appealing to God for help, they're just trying to remind the sick person of God's, and their own love and perfection.
Anyway, sorry - this turned into a big long thing about Christian Science. LOL. But even with me thinking this is kind of a cool religion as far as religions go, I just can't get into it, because, like you, I'm missing that wiring in my brain for spirituality and ritual of any type that so many people seem to need.
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I think the high prevalence among atheists is because I feel like a lot of people are brought up agnostic but have to make a conscious shift to atheism, which takes though and processing and ends up with the result above. Whereas lots of people are brought up in a particular religion, don't really question it much and so aren't so smug about it.
When people do convert to a particular religion etc, I do think there is a similar GENERAL inclination toward fundamentalism and smugness. Which I get: I mean, why bother converting to another way of life unless you're planning to embrace it whole-heartedly?
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I tend to be a bit reticent about my religion because so many friends are strongly something else; some atheist fundamentalists of my acquaintance get very insulting, which I don't mind too much but feel that friends who are followers-of-other-faiths should not have to endure. Your attitude is perfect!
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And I think any person who spends their time endlessly pontificating about their specific beliefs (or lack thereof) is... probably someone I would prefer not to spend a lot of time around.
Because in either case you're dealing with someone who clearly thinks they Know More Than You. And that's not really a good starting point for an actual conversation, anyway.
(FWIW as a not-atheist, I do know the difference between an atheist and an anti-theist. I never figured you for the latter, you're far too decent and kind. Thankfully *most* of the atheists I've known aren't the shouty variety, I don't think they're even close to the majority - just the loudest.)
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And seconded - except for the Catholic school bit.
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