In USA Today on Oct 8th there was a nice little Forum article about how we should all just get along. It was written by Nica Lalli, who is a nice rational person who happens to be an atheist. She makes a few well reasoned arguments as to why atheists should be included in religious discussions and how there are different flavors of atheists just as there are different flavors of true believers.
She seems to think that it is possible to get together with true believers on common ground and agree to disagree. She also says that she doesn’t understand why so many atheists that write books seem to be pissed off at religious types. I wonder, Nica, have you ever actually talked to a true believer? Your arguments are well reasoned and logical, the exact opposite of what all faith is based on. An open mind is the hallmark of the modern world, and Nica seems to think that the true believers can share that openness if they just have the chance to engage in a well reasoned discussion.
She says that she doesn’t want to change any one’s beliefs, that’s the mistake that all the angry atheist make. But there are only so many times you can have someone tell you “I’m going to Heaven, Your going to Hell-Nay Nay Nanna Nay!’ before you get tired of hearing it. My experience with Christians, especially the modern type obsessed with being ‘saved,’ is that they have tightly closed minds and extremely set opinions- unless their spiritual guide tells them to have a new opinion. Most of these people will only be happy in heaven if they can look down into hell and stick their tongue out at the damned whenever they feel like it.
We all live in a diverse world and unless we ask everyone we met what their beliefs are, we have to assume that they are decent people no matter how they pray, or if they pray. True believers tend to work on the opposite side of the street though, they assume that everyone who does not believe exactly as they believe is damned and not worth talking to. Oh, they may ask if you know Jesus,but they won’t like any answer but yes. It’s also hard to take most of this stuff too seriously when everyone that ends up in prison finds Jesus, and even Michael Vick seems to have stumbled across the lamb on his way to the dogpound.
I was watching a show about one of those yahoos that got rich writing the Left Behind books. He talked about how he was hanging at in the Holy Land and saw the Dali Lama nearby. He runs over to the Dali Lama and asks him if has heard about Jesus, and that if he hasn’t, he can talk to him for twenty minutes or so if he would like. He doesn’t say what the Dali Lama told him, but I’m going out on a limb and betting he did not waste twenty minutes listening to the best selling author. Of course, the Dali Lama is a best selling author himself, so maybe the two had more in common that I thought. Hey, ten bucks is ten bucks.
So the real problem with Nica’s article is that she makes two broad, totally wrong assumptions which invalidate all of her other arguments. The First Wrong Belief-That all people who believe in God are sound minded, well reasoned individuals with the ability to be swayed in their beliefs by a well reasoned and logical argument. The Second Wrong Belief-that all people who don’t believe in god are sound minded, well reasoned individuals with the ability to be swayed in their beliefs by a well reasoned and logical argument.
Christian in particular believe that anyone, even other Christian, that do not believe exactly as they do, are going to burn in hell. Forever. Really-FOREVER. (They are really big on forever.) There is no room for common ground there. Believing in God is not a matter of having an open mind, it is about closing that mind as tightly as possible and refusing to hear anything other than THE TRUTH.
Religious types hate science, but love the scientific method and all the way cool stuff that goes with science. Tell a True Believer just about anything and they will smile beatifically and say something along the lines of-Isn’t God Great that he came up with that? No, he/her/it/they is not/are not great that they came up with that. It is great that science discovered it and put it use. They also love to use words like Fact, Truth, Certainty, Absolute, and the like about things that are not facts, the truth, certain, or absolute. This can lead to a bit of confusion, as True Believers use a different dictionary than None True Believers.
As an atheist, Nica Lallia is an opened minded, free thinker who likes to pretend that everyone else is the world is just like her. We all have that belief, but most of get over it once we enter the first grade and discover the rest of world doesn’t see reality as we see it. The rich and the poor, the white and the black, the tall and the short, all live in different worlds and see different things. I grew up in an all Democrats all Liberal household, we hated Reagan and Newt and still hate Bush and Scooter. So it was a major shock to me the first time I talked to a group of conservatives that thought Reagan walked on water and ended the Cold War. It was with outright shock and disbelief that I could know anyone so stupid. That is how all True Believers-in God, god, Atheism, or humanism, feel as well.
That was a few days ago, time enough for a few letters to the editor to come rolling in. The first one says that he loves her and wants her have a personal relationship with Jesus. He doesn’t say what he will do if she says no thanks-extreme interrogation methods are the historical favored response to a no thanks. He goes on to say that it is ‘not logical’ to have your own believes. After all, there is only one God, Jesus Christ, and anything else is just damned silliness. Tell that to a Buddhist or a Muslim or well, any of the pantheon of gods out there.
The second letter says there is no point in talking to Christians as they are a bunch closed minded nitwits. Well, he did say it nicer than that, but still.
The third letter is an Atheist that doesn’t like the term atheist, he wants to be called a Humanist. This is like the nut jobs pushing Creationism off as Intelligent Design. Yeah, right, it’s the same god damned thing, ok?
The fourth letter is back to the pulpit and believe or ELSE.
My own beliefs tend to lean toward the New Age and The Secret and the Thou Art God philosophies of Robert A Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. My favorite church came from the Heinlein book Job, which I thought was job in the want ads, not Job in the Bible. At the end of the book, after all kinds of trails and tribulations, Our Hero is in The Best Of All Worlds. On Sunday he goes to The Church of The One Orgasm and enjoys the after service orgy with all the rest of the worshipers. That might get a few butts in the pews.
As to Atheists, well, I don’t have that much faith myself. I’m more of an agnostic, or maybe a Humanist, if there is such a thing. Like UFOs and The Ever Expanding Universe, there are a lot of things that we just have take someone else’s word for. But believing in god is not one of them. You need to catch that bug yourself. It’s a virus that has never infected me, and God willing, it never will.
