The Hammer Falls

I'm writing in a slightly different format tonight. I'm sorry if this post appears harder to read than others in the past.

I am in a rather pleasant situation. I disagree with people who are smarter than I am. It could be arrogance that keeps me opposed to their viewpoints, but I certainly hope it is something more substantive than that. After all, I also happen to agree with many people who are smarter than me. In this case though, I am talking about my personal relationships and how much I enjoy them.

Two faithful intellectuals whom I respect read my last post and both agreed with the "majority" of it. Obviously we are on different sides of the fence as to the underlying issue, but we have drawn similar conclusions about some topics. I was immensely proud of myself over this. It is healthy to judge one's self by those whom you respect. But this brought up an unavoidable question. If we agree on A, B and C and right down the alphabet...why do we disagree on Z when we get to it?

I have no doubt that someday I will awaken to a message on my phone and after blinking my eyes clear enough to read it, I will experience the blow of a logical hammer. Of the men whom I mentioned in my previous post I know any of them could do such a thing. Having met one of their wives, and read the work of another, I know their spouses could deliver as well. It is my guilty admission that I await such a message.

Why? Because I desire evidence and logic and reason above all else. I thrive on intellectual challenge and the struggle of seeing things differently. We all should. The world would be a different, and perhaps better, place. Just a few thoughts. G'night.

Your Meaningless Faith

     I know of exactly three men whom I consider to be true believers. Matthew, Mark and John. I know, I'm one "Luke" away from a set of the Gospels. These men practice what they preach. They do their best, harm no one else and seek forgiveness if they do wrong. If there were three billion of them instead of just three, I would have no reason to write what follows. If you are one of these people, this is not directed at you. If you're not one of the aforementioned, grab a snack cause we're going on a long ride.

     Your faith is meaningless. In every possible way, your faith is empty, useless, vapid and hollow. This is not my opinion or assertion, it is yours. Don't blame me for being the messenger of news you desperately need to hear. That you don't know it already is not my fault. After all, you're the ones who told me that your faith was pathetic and stupid.

     In the months and years I have spent being a non-believer I have frequently had to defend my non-faith. For years, I did this with ease. No person of faith has ever presented an argument to me that I have needed more than twelve seconds to overcome to a point where I am comfortable. This might speak of my arrogance. It definitely speaks volumes to the absurdity of religious arguments.

     One of the more frequent ones is this: "Well yes, the Crusades and Inquisition and Taliban and suicide bombings and the murder of abortion doctors and witch hunts and human sacrifice and rape in the name of ethnic cleansing were all bad... But look at Stalin and Mao and Hitler! They did bad things too and they weren't religious. "

     Even if we include Hitler, who was a Catholic and had very close ties to the church throughout his regime, the base of this argument is that religious people have acted no worse than non-religious people. As a humanist, I'm not terribly surprised. Evil people do evil things, no matter their belief in an afterlife. But for the faithful to use this as some kind of defense is laughable. The religious put themselves on even footing with the monsters of history as though that cancels anything out. It makes their faith meaningless.

     But I hear it now: "Well, I'm not like that at all. I go to church every Sunday and I sing in the choir and I hate atheists and I have awesome morals because I'm one of God's children." Well you know something, no you're not. You're a twisted, selfish, self-centered, arrogant asshole, just like the rest of us. You aren't following the example of Christ to love your neighbors. If any of you fundie freaks did that, there wouldn't be a Republican party in this country.

     GAP, McDonalds, Ford, Exxon, Bank of America, Apple....these are the gods we worship with our actions. We love fattening food, fast cars, sexy clothes modeled on girls just barely able to be called adults, energy that is destroying the planet we live on and technology that makes it easier for us to be alone together. You vote with your wallet and your attention span. Both are getting smaller by the day and you don't even notice.

     Football players thank God for a great play. You thank God when a skilled team of doctors performs a difficult procedure they have trained their whole lives to do. Survivors thank God when they don't die in a car accident that would have killed them twenty years ago before advanced safety equipment was mandatory on vehicles. You defend God when non-believers question his existence or when you feel "oppressed" by not being able to freely spout your shit without challenge. When backed into a corner you threaten violence either through direct action or the divine retribution of your made-up sky fairy.

     You are hypocrites. You are aimless, spiteful, vengeful people who are wasting your limited existence wrapped up in a materialistic world and thinking that you have an ace to play at the end where you will be rewarded with paradise eternal.

     Your faith means nothing to you. At best it is an excuse for you to be who you truly are while you act on the hate you hold for others. You use your faith to draw lines in the sand and to seperate your brother humans into groups you can pretend you are better than. While your faith is clearly just a label to you, it means a lot to me as a humanist.

     The humanist knows better. We know that we are all related through a family tree that is more vast than we can grasp. We are all of one species making up a single tribe that should be able to love one another in the way your god has commanded you to. Those lines separating us, we didn't put them there. The humanist is trying to erase them. My label is all-inclusive. My "god" doesn't exclude you for having different thoughts. You are my brother or sister no matter what you believe because that is the fact of biological science, like it or not. As your brother, I'm asking you to please stop believing all the bullshit.