So… a brilliant article, The Decline and Fall of Christian America by Jon Meacham, about the state of Christianity that was printed in Newsweek has roused my Easter non believing from slumber… and it is time to chit chat about religion a bit.
You know… like the idea of the main tenant of this holiday surrounding a zombie. They don’t call it that in service do they? But anything brought back to life by supernatural forces is a zombie… so there you go!
If you Christians are having some difficulty reconciling that, well.. wow. How did you miss the other stuff? Whatever the case, you can pray all you want about this… it just doesn’t work. Hover over that work of fictional literature that has been promoting hatred and intolerance for the last 1800 years. I would say 2000, but it was written by scholars from shoddy oral history well after the fact and attributed to people they assumed would have wrote it. Brilliant!
What’s more, I don’t really want to waste my time on something that isn’t human-centric. Hell.. if there is a God it isn’t going to be concerned about our day to day operations, and it certainly isn’t intervening. Egads… using God as an excuse might actually be an intellectually lazy way of avoiding accountability or responsibility for your actions in this life. “God made me do it”, “it’s God’s plan”, “kill ’em all and let God sort it out”. Maybe it is just a badge to wear that justifies your insecurity, your hatred, your intolerance, and youor bigotry? Well.. maybe not you. Just most of them. What’s more, it might not be religion making people intolerant…. it might just be we invented religion to condone it. What’s more, all this belief may be no more than a psychological condition.
I do note, as Dawkins said, “There are no religious children…. there are only children of religious parents”. Atheism is the default… an absolutely lack of belief, in that there is no reason to believe in the first place. Sorry to say…
My gosh… if there really is no God, as Teller states in his brilliant NPR piece, “This I believe”…. are we really, *gulp*, responsible for one another, and our welfare, and our future, and our ability to continue as a human race? Sort of makes you want to pray! Which is what those who prefer to ignore reality and see magical space pixies intoned on a grilled cheese. I, however, see the Big Bang in a piece of toast. It is the way of my world view. Sort of like Penn…. I just think it is better to live, love, and cope rather than delude myself and waste the little precious time I have.
Of course, the religious know that atheist’s are deluded. In fact, they are irreparably deluded… so much so they have to make fun of themselves.
If you really need to belong to a church… try these!
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
and their Open Letter to Kansas School Board
Church of Naked Truth
(optimum number of churches and faiths is the same as the number of real gods… zero)
Church of the Sub Genius (hi Bob!)
Or… just realize if enough people believe in something ridiculous, it justifies it and grounds the belief in reality… just look at the church of the jedi!
Of course, with a new administration you have a new belief system… and it may be that we geeks are lucky enough to inherit the earth.
We could just listen to Christopher Hitchins, but not be so angry about it. I advocate less hatred, personally. Hugs for Christians and Hitchins!
Of course… all this is overwhelming. Just remember… reality exists. It’s just that it’s simplicity may be way too complex for us to cope with. And it may be a hell of a lot weirder than we might be able to understand.
Just remember….
When you feel yourself dying… kiss somebody. Anybody.
You’ll need something pleasant to focus on.
Until then, remember this…..
The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
— Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions p. 215
