Friday

I don't hate god

What follows is my response to someone who obviously was referring to me, when he wondered why it is that people hate god. It may interest you to know he has now erased the post I refer to, so he might not have had the chance to read this, my comment. So now my valuable commentary will be somewhere for him to read, since we don't email any more.

I can't speak for all nonbelievers of the bible, as many of them also are believers in another organized faith based on a historical novel, but in my case, I think it will help to understand that you've got me all wrong.

I don't hate god. There isn't a god for me to be mad at. But you can't see that and therefore are confounded. That feeling you have is called cognitive dissonance, and it's what people experience when they find out that what they formerly believed was wrong. Like when they realize Santa Claus isn't real. Imagine the feeling you think I'm going to have on judgement day, when I am humiliated in front of god and feel all the horrible burning shame and whatnot. It's sort of like that, but real. You start to feel it when you really consider the biological impossibilities of a virgin giving birth, or a man building a boat that holds many (maybe seventy?) thousands of pairs of animals, which he then distributes carefully all throughout the world, careful to keep the kangaroos only in Australia, et cetera. And I don't like it. I don't want you to feel bad.

I'd be a lot happier if I felt like I could give you credit for being reasonable, and that's no lie.

So I'm not mad at god, and I am seeing your reaching for this as a means of your changing your thoughts to ones that you are more comfortable with. I'm mad at people, yes. People just like you, who, while on one hand spend time trying to convince people that bizarre psychedelia such as the cannibalistic fantasy of "drinking the blood and eating the flesh" of the leader is normal, and also claim that your religious view is the only legitimate one and that all other belief systems must be inferior.

It's this dogged determination to keep facts (reality) away from you that makes you a drain on the social fabric of America, which enjoys a waning reputation as the greatest country in the world in terms of liberty NOT because of god, but because of the secular nature of our constitution, which established a nation that respected the tension between two enemies, enlightenment rationalism and organized religion, and didn't try to combine them. And these people I am mad at, who you have come to represent for me, also have the gall to claim to be morally superior, which is the last straw. I would be delinquent in my duty as a conscientious human being, and a patriotic American, if I didn't speak to you honestly on this subject, and to question the basis of your faith because of its harmful fallout.

It's not dangerous on the level of one small congregation, but the grouping of people suffocates the individual spirit, the ability to ask questions, and what soon follows, as a direct result of group thinking, is political apathy. Once in the habit of following the leader, even the most grotesque self-deception is easily swallowed. Cheap lies from the leaders of churches and political parties (think G.W. Bush) who people like you are too sheepish to rise up and challenge pass unnoticed, and it is utterly frustrating to try to have a meaningful, rational discussion with you because what I am talking to is a collection of dogmas.

“There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world, wrote Pat Robertson. I think you think it's true.

And because of party-line Christians such as yourself, because of your commitment to lap up whatever you're thrown by the church or its political associates, America is an increasingly ungly place, and that affects me every day.

I hope I've made it clear that I hate not god, but ignorance, and I dislike people who embrace it as completely as do conservative Christians.

Thanks.

posted by dale @ 11:09 PM