by doug | January 12th, 2009 @ 7:52 pm
It has been made strikingly clear to me – by several different and respected corners of my grammatacalaxy – that last week’s Imagine No Religion post needs some elaboration. Some are troubled by the blanket statement, “religion is bad,” that the graphic implies. Others are simply incredulous at the very idea of my atheistic rebellion.
Allow me first to point anyone seeking clarification to my October post, Blind Faith. That particular article still sums up my foremost thoughts on the subject of Christianity (you will, if you please, ignore the part about my intentions of making this the subject of a weekly blog posting). I have delved deeper into current literature on the subject over the past few months – enough to be able to define myself as a Humanist rather than simply an agnostic. That statement is not meant to be some declaration of a new philosophical outlook. I have seen the world in this fashion for some time… only now I have a label for it. And, at any rate, humanism is not necessarily incompatible with all forms of Christianity. I would ask that my Christian readers keep that in mind.
Now, on to the points of contention. The point of the previous post was not that all religion is bad. Good people do very good things in the name of God. I only believed that the image of the twin towers, coupled with the immortal lines of John Lennon, was a poignant, thought-provoking and succinct message: without the influence of religion, those towers would still be scraping the New York City sky and some 3,000 human beings would still be alive. Would anyone contend that the 9/11 terrorists would have carried out their suicide mission had they not fully believed that there would be 72 virgins waiting for them in an eternal paradise reserved for Islamic martyrs?
Do the virtuous acts cancel out the atrocities carried out in God’s name? I do not think so. Others do. I do not have a mathematical equation that would prove the superiority of my viewpoint over the other. An agreement to disagree is, thus, in order. I only urge dissenters to ponder the grotesque periods of human existence when religion was used to justify grossly immoral acts – the Inquisition, the Massachusetts witch trials, gay bashing, misogyny, etcetera.
People can be, and are, kind and ethical without the influence of religion. People can also be hateful and murderous. Neither statement proves or disproves the sentiment expressed in last week’s post. I can tell you one thing for certain, though. I have a hard time professing to be a member of a faith that uses its dogma as a justification for bigotry and violence.
The closed-mindedness speaks to the second cry of “foul” from the masses – the point being something to the effect of “how can you disavow something you have professed to believe your whole life?”. There are variations on that theme that boil down to everything being cheapened because I do not believe in the God under whose name I professed certain truths. Let me say that my oaths of loyalty, my professions of love, my allegiance to my friends and family are not governed by God. They do not have to be sanctioned by God for them to carry weight. They are true and good and real because I say they are. The existence or non-existence of God makes no difference. I would be as faithful and true to the people I love and the endeavors I care about with or without an all-knowing, all-powerful creator watching over everything.
And I find it sadly humorous that the same persons who would rake me across the coals because I choose to read books written from an atheistic viewpoint refuse to read those books themselves – almost in the very same breath in which they would insist that I include Christian books in my to-read list. I value REASON. If my careful exploration ultimately leads me to believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins, that he is the resurrected son of God, and that I will live forever with him in heaven after I die – if that is the conclusion I come to, it will be after a long consideration of all viewpoints. I refuse to attach myself to a philosophy simply because that is what my parents believe in, or my friends, or my countrymen, or the motherfucking Pope. My head is not in the sand any longer.
I would point out, too, that there are indeed Christian books that I intend to read. I am reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity right now, and I recently purchased the very intriguing Language of God by Francis S. Collins – the head of the Human Genome Project. Now that’s what I am talking about – a scientist who will relate his Christian faith to his scientific knowledge of the world. I am extremely interested in reading this one, as it would seem to speak to my desire for evidence and sound reasoning.
So, in closing, dear friends and readers, please do not fault me for questioning what has long been my blindly-followed and tacitly believed theology. I want to know the truth, no matter how troubling or empty it may ultimately be. I want to understand the world as it is, not how I would like for it to be. If I am merely an organism that will wink out of existence at the end of what will, hopefully, be a long life – I want to know that the end is the END. I do not wish to be comforted by a comforting lie.
